An off-duty police officer has been shot with a Taser stun gun by fellow officers after becoming involved in a fight with them in Perth’s entertainment district.

Two women complained to officers patrolling James Street in Northbridge early this morning that they were being harassed by a group of people.

As the officers took their details, an off-duty sergeant was standing with a group of men nearby.

When he tried to become involved in the situation, the officers advised him to let them deal with the matter.  Read the full story

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Texas officials investigating a potential child abuse case said on Saturday 183 girls and women had been removed from a ranch that is home to a breakaway Mormon sect linked to jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs.

Texas Child Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner said the 183 consisted of 137 girls and 46 women, but she could not discuss why they were taken from the ranch or whether they had left voluntarily.

Only 18 members of the group had been placed in the legal custody of the state agency, she said in a telephone interview.

Buses and vans were seen on Friday driving some of the women and children from the ranch, located near the small western Texas town of Eldorado, and more were taken out overnight, Meisner said.

Local news reports said temporary shelters had been set up in churches and government buildings to house them.

Texas authorities descended on the ranch this week in response to allegations a 50-year-old man there had married and fathered a child with an underage girl. The ranch is a compound for the renegade Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamist group led by Jeffs until last year.

In November, Jeffs was sentenced in a Utah court to 10 years to life in prison as an accomplice to rape for forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her 19-year-old first cousin.

He is in jail in Arizona awaiting trial on similar charges for arranged marriages there.
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More and more foreign law enforcement officials are coming to Sweden to learn more about its 1999 law. With latest scandals involving prostitution some countries are considering emulating the Swedish law which prosecutes the client but views the prostitute as an exploited victim. The same law that was ridiculed 9 years ago when it was introduced.

Under “Sex Purchase Law” paying for sex is punished by money fines or up to six months in prison, plus the humiliation of public exposure. Swedish officials say that this approach to prostitution reduced the demand for it and totally reshaped the attitude towards sex trade.

“We don’t have a problem with prostitutes. We have a problem with men who buy sex,” said Kajsa Wahlberg, of the human trafficking unit at Sweden’s national police board. Police officials from Netherlands and Great Britain are among interested in this law. Also Norway’s government plans to propose a Swedish-style prostitution law after Easter.

The law doesn’t prosecute the customers only, pimps and brothel keepers are also prosecuted, while the prostitutes are viewed as victims, treated as commodities in the sex trade.

According to Kajsa Wahlberg accurate statistics are hard to obtain, but estimates the number of prostitutes in Sweden dropped 40 percent from 2,500 in 1998 to 1,500 in 2003. “They are calculating profits, costs and marketing and the risk of getting caught,” Wahlberg said. “We’re trying to create a bad market for these activities.”

A 46-year-old escort opposes he law said it had left prostitutes more vulnerable to violence. “If a sex worker seeks to establish contact with a client on the street, and police are waiting around the corner, she’s going to jump into the car without making a security assessment,” she said.

The “Sex Purchase Law” took effect when many European countries were moving in another direction. Most European countries prohibit pimping and running brothels, but tolerate prostitution. Brothels are legal in Holland and Germany provided they have business licenses.

When Marianne Eriksson first proposed the change in 1997 she was ridiculed by fellow lawmakers, but today, she said, she feels the Swedish model has “a very strong response” in other European countries.

At the moment Sweden’s government is planning a thorough review of the effects of the law, expected to be ready next year.

Even though authorities judge this system a success, I have agree with critics question: “Has it really reduced prostitution or merely pushed it off the streets into more isolated and dangerous surroundings?”

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A soccer game was punctuated when an irate priest hurled his shirt at the game referee, resulting in the priest’s ejection from the field.

The surprising show of anger from the holy man occurred at the Vatican City, during a Clericus Cup, an international football tournament participated in by priests and seminarians.

According to BBC Sports, the incident led to Italian sports officials commenting on the proceedings, and expressing concerns about the spreading reputation of Italian football as a sport consistently resulting in violence.

Due to the priest’s angry action, the Paul the Apostle’s College was automatically eliminated from the tournament.

Some are comparing the incident to a similar one involving Sampdoria’s forward Antonio Cassano, who according to the RTE News was given a red card last weekend for throwing his shirt at a referee after being ordered off the field during a game against Torino F.C.

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