Zumba prostitution case back in court

Zumba prostitution case back in court

portland, maine

Working on an expedited schedule, the state Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday on whether prostitution clients who are videotaped without their knowledge during sex acts have a right to privacy under state law.

A prosecutor urged the Supreme Judicial Court to reinstate 46 invasion-of-privacy counts against Mark Strong Sr., who’s accused of helping a Zumba instructor run a prostitution business in the town of Kennebunk.

Defense lawyer Dan Lilley said lawmakers never intended to protect prostitution clients or other criminals from surveillance.

Morning-after pill use is increasing

new york

About 1 in 9 younger women have used the morning-after pill after sex, according to the first government report to focus on emergency contraception since its approval 15 years ago.

The results come from a survey of females age 15 to 44. Eleven percent of those who’d had sex reported using a morning-after pill. That’s up from 4 percent in 2002, only a few years after the pills went on the market and adults still needed a prescription.

Deadly fighting rages as rebels close in

beirut

Syrian rebels knocked down army defenses and moved in on the country’s second largest airport Wednesday, reportedly killing more than 40 soldiers and bringing them closer to what could be their biggest conquest since the beginning of the civil war.

Control of Aleppo international airport and a military air base next to it would be a huge strategic shift for Syria’s northeastern region, giving the opposition a potential air hub enabling aid and other flights.

3 facing charges in rhino-horn smuggling

washington

Three people have been charged with participating in an international smuggling ring that traffics in the horns of endangered black rhinos.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Justice Department have launched “Operation Crash” using undercover agents and electronic surveillance to stop the black-market trade in rhino horns, which has led to poaching and has reduced the world’s rhino population by more than 90 percent since 1970. The operation is named after the term for a rhino herd.

This week, federal grand juries in Newark, N.J., and Miami indicted Zhifei Li, a 28-year-old Chinese national, for alleged smuggling.Shusen Wei was charged with offering to bribe a federal agent in the Li case. In New York, a third man, Qing Wang, was charged Wednesday for allegedly smuggling libation cups carved from rhinoceros horns from New York to Li via Hong Kong.

New species of owl

jakarta, indonesia

Researchers looking for a nocturnal bird in Indonesia accidentally identified a new species of owl — one that has a distinct whistling song and is believed to exist nowhere else in the world.

The Rinjani Scops owl was first identified in 2003 and has since been spotted only on Lombok island, about 15 miles from the popular resort island of Bali. The findings were published Wednesday in the online journal PLOS ONE.

The small owl, with brown and white feathers and big golden eyes, had been confused with a similar-looking species for more than a century. But visiting scientists from Sweden and the U.S., who were doing separate research on another nocturnal bird, both recorded the Rinjani Scops owl’s vocalizations.

Associated Press