Can You Hear Me Now?

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) – Cell phones were found inside four prisoners in El Salvador’s maximum-security prison, authorities said Wednesday.

The discovery was made Tuesday at the prison in Zacatecoluca, in central El Salvador, after suspicious officials took X-rays of each of the inmates, federal corrections chief Jaime Villanova said.

The names of the prisoners, all members of the dangerous Mara Salvatrucha gang, were not released in order to avoid jeopardizing an ongoing investigation that began a month ago, he said.

Capt. Juan Ramon Arevalo, director of the prison known as Zacatras, said the gang members had introduced the cell phones, wrapped in plastic bags, into their bodies through their anuses. Authorities also found nine cell phone chips and one charger.

“Each one had a cellular with a number of chips,” Arevalo said, adding that one also had hidden a charger in his anal cavity.

The inmates allegedly used cell phones to direct criminal activities on the street from inside the prison, Arevalo said. The smuggled phones were found during an investigation at prisons throughout the country amid complaints from business owners of extortion by gang members.

Prisoners change phone chips frequently to avoid being traced, Arevalo said.

The police have doubled their security levels to combat the criminals.

Porn Star Parade?

nude porn star pornstarAUCKLAND, New Zealand (AP) – Two dozen bare-breasted porn stars paraded on motorcycles and military vehicles down the main street of New Zealand’s biggest city on Wednesday after beating efforts by Auckland officials to prevent the promotional stunt.

Thousands of people, many of them clicking away with cell phone cameras, lined the street for the parade by male and female porn actors, most semi-clad in black leather, to publicize an erotica show which opens in Auckland later this week.

The crowd – four deep in some places – was reportedly bigger than that for the city’s annual Santa Parade at Christmas time.

Organizer Steve Crow, a local multimillionaire porn movie distributor and producer, earlier had won approval for the parade from the city council, infuriating it’s conservative mayor and several councilors.

Mayor Dick Hubbard said he would review local bylaws in a bid to prevent any more topless parades in Auckland.

“We do want a vibrant city (but) I think the parade does our image harm rather than good,” Hubbard said.

Penis Pump Drama At Airport

CHICAGO (AP) – A Cook County judge has decided there is enough evidence to prosecute a man who says an airport security guard misheard him when she thought he said that a sexual device in his backpack was actually a bomb.

Mardin Amin claims he actually told the guard the small, black object was a “pump” – as in a penis pump.

Amin’s attorney said her client was embarrassed to explain the object in front of his mother, who was traveling with him, so he whispered. The guard misunderstood, and thought he said “bomb,” according to defense attorney Eileen O’Neill-Burke.

“His mother is standing there so, under his breath, he says, ‘It’s a pump. Put it away. Put it away,’” O’Neill-Burke told The Associated Press on Thursday. The guard asked him again and he repeated that the object was a pump, the attorney said.

O’Neill-Burke added that Amin, an Iraqi, has a thick accent and she herself had trouble understanding him until he brought the pump to her office and showed it to her. She said she recently learned that Arabic speakers sometimes have trouble distinguishing the sounds “p” and “b.”

However, Judge Gerald Winiecki decided there was sufficient evidence for the case to move forward after the female security guard testified that she heard Amin “clearly” say the word bomb on Aug. 16 at O’Hare International Airport.

Amin, 29, of Skokie, is charged with felony disorderly conduct and faces up to three years in prison if convicted. He was released on $75,000 bond and is due back in court Sept. 13. O’Neill-Burke said he will plead not guilty then.

Amin told the Chicago Sun-Times after the hearing that security officials did not give him a chance to explain the misunderstanding, that he would never use the word “bomb” while going through a security checkpoint, and does not consider a penis pump an unusual object to own.

“It’s normal,” he said. “Half of America they use it.”

Porn Shown By Mistake

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) – Sweden’s state broadcaster SVT on Monday faced ridicule for mistakenly showing a porn movie in the background of a news broadcast over the weekend.

Viewers of a 5-minute news update at midnight Saturday could see explicit scenes from a Czech porn movie on a TV screen behind news anchor Peter Dahlgren.

The monitor – one of many on the wall of a control room visible behind the studio – normally shows other news channels during broadcasts. But staffers who earlier in the evening had watched a sports event on cable channel Canal Plus – which often shows X-rated films after midnight – had forgotten to switch it back, said news director Per Yng.

“This is highly embarrassing and unfortunate,” Yng said. “It must not happen again.”

A producer quickly spotted the sex scenes and ran into the control room and turned off the monitor, Yng said.

He said there had been no complaints from viewers about the mishap, but “enormous interest from media.”

Swedish tabloids on Monday poked fun at the steamy broadcast, jokingly changing the name of the show – Rapport – to “Rapporn.”

Magnus Akerlund, who oversees the hourly news updates, told tabloid Expressen he was “shocked and dismayed” at the mistake.

“It’s a huge blunder by us,” he said.

Man With Two Penises Unhappy?

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – An Indian businessman born with two penises wants one of them removed surgically as he wants to marry and lead a normal sexual life, a newspaper report said Saturday.

The 24-year-old man from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh admitted himself to a New Delhi hospital this week with an extremely rare medical condition called penile duplication or diphallus, the Times of India said.

“Two fully functional penes is unheard of even in medical literature. In the more common form of diphallus, one organ is rudimentary,” the newspaper quoted a surgeon as saying.

The surgery was expected to be challenging as both organs were well-formed and full blood supply to the retained penis had to be ensured to allow it to function normally, he added.

The newspaper did not disclose the identity of the man or the hospital to protect the patient’s privacy.

There are about 100 such reported cases of diphallus around the world and it is known to occur among one in 5.5 million men, the newspaper said.

It is caused by the failure of the mesodermal bands in the embryo to fuse properly. The mesodermal bands are one of three primary layers of the embryo from which several body parts are formed.