A Stockholm nightclub has been asked to pay 30,000 kronor in compensation to two lesbian women who were requested by a security guard to refrain from kissing.

HomO, the Ombudsman against Discrimination on grounds of Sexual Orientation, contacted the nightclub after receiving a complaint from the two women in question. The ombudsman dismissed as implausible the security guard’s claim that similar requests were also made to heterosexual couples.

After a failed attempt to reach a settlement, HomO has now decided to sue the nightclub for damages.

A similar incident occurred at a Stockholm restaurant in the summer of 2003. Two women were first issued a warning and then thrown out of a restaurant for kissing in the queue to the toilets.

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Although international concern is growing about Iran’s nuclear program and its regional ambitions, diplomats here say most U.S. intelligence shared with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency has proved inaccurate and none has led to significant discoveries inside Iran.

The officials said the CIA and other Western spy services had provided sensitive information to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency at least since 2002, when Iran’s long-secret nuclear program was exposed. But none of the tips about supposed secret weapons sites provided clear evidence that the Islamic Republic was developing illicit weapons.

“Since 2002, pretty much all the intelligence that’s come to us has proved to be wrong,” a senior diplomat at the IAEA said. Another official here described the agency’s intelligence stream as “very cold now” because “so little panned out.”

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The leader of a Dutch anti-immigration party will call for a vote of no-confidence in two Muslim government ministers next week, citing their dual nationality as the issue, a newspaper reported on Saturday.

Geert Wilders said in an interview with the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad the appointment of Moroccan-born Ahmed Aboutaleb and Turkish-born Nebahat Albayrak as junior ministers was wrong because both could have loyalties toward countries other than the Netherlands.

Wilders, whose Party for Freedom (PVV) party won 9 seats out of 150 in the November election, said he will call for a no-confidence vote when the cabinet discusses its policy plans in parliament.

The new cabinet, formed by Christian Democrats, Labour and the Christian Union and sworn in on Thursday by the Dutch queen, is expected to soften immigration policy, which had been tightened under the previous coalition in response to the rise of the populist Pim Fortuyn in 2002.

Maverick politician Fortuyn broke taboos with his criticism of Muslim immigrants before he was murdered by an animal rights activist.

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Eurotunnel, which runs the undersea rail link between Britain and France, has won a historic arbitration decision against both countries’ governments over the security breach that saw thousands of asylum seekers invade the tunnel crossing the English Channel.

The decision, which heralds the company’s first injection of public money, could be worth millions of pounds in damages to the tunnel’s operator, which had claimed £30m (€45m, $59m) in damages from Paris and London.

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Male spectators, except family members, will be banned when Pakistan hosts the eight-team International Cricket Council (ICC) Women’s World Cup qualifiers in November, officials said Wednesday.

However, officials have hailed the decision to stage the matches in the conservative Islamic republic as a sign that the country is becoming more moderate and is making efforts to allow women to play sport.

“The decision proves that women’s cricket is progressing in our country and through this event we would promote a softer and moderate image of Pakistan,” said Shamsa Hashmi, secretary of the Pakistan Cricket Board women’s wing.

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Immigration to Sweden in 2006 reached its highest level since records began. At the same time emigration also soared to a level not seen in over 100 years, according to official figures published by Statistics Sweden.

Swedish citizenship was granted to more people than ever before in 2006, a year in which the country’s population increased by 65,505. The total population recorded on 31st December was 9,113,257.

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A woman erroneously detained in a male cell at Volksrust police station was raped repeatedly by her fellow cellmates, said Mpumalanga police Captain Leonard Hlathi on Saturday.

He said police would investigate why she was placed in the cell after her arrest for being drunk in public on Friday.

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f gullibility was a crime, then 2 500 people who handed over money for a “magic pen” in a bid to win the Lotto would have been guilty without a shred of doubt.

The “magic-pen” scam emerged in court papers in the Durban High Court recently during an application to seize the assets of the four men who devised it and ultimately pleaded guilty to fraud charges.

Sipho Shange, Lungisani Shange, Vusimuzi Kheswa and Bongani Kheswa, all from the Pinetown area, admitted receiving thousands of rands after placing advertisements in the local press for the pens and special herbs “which would enable persons to become wealthy by winning competitions such as the Lotto”.

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A paid FBI informant was the man behind a neo-Nazi march through the streets of Parramore that stirred up anxiety in Orlando’s black community and fears of racial unrest that triggered a major police mobilization.

That revelation came Wednesday in an unrelated federal court hearing and has prompted outrage from black leaders, some of whom demanded an investigation into whether the February 2006 march was, itself, an event staged by law-enforcement agencies.

The FBI would not comment on what it knew about the involvement of its informant, 39-year-old David Gletty of Orlando, in the neo-Nazi event. In court Wednesday, an FBI agent said the bureau has paid its informant at least $20,000 during the past two years.

Gletty’s secret life became public Wednesday in a federal court hearing resulting from the arrest last week of two suspected white supremacists on charges of conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine.

Last Thursday, the FBI arrested Tom Martin, 23, and John Rock, 35, after Gletty wore a wire to a meeting and agreed to help them rob a drug dealer in Casselberry, according to testimony.

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A German Holocaust denier who regularly lavished praise on Adolf Hitler has been sentenced to five years in jail by a German court.

Ernst Zuendel was convicted of 14 counts of inciting racial hatred and for denying that the Nazis killed six million Jews during World War II.

He received the maximum sentence under German law which bans Holocaust denial.

Zuendel moved to Canada in 1958 but was judged a national security threat and deported back to Germany in 2005.

The 67-year-old once published a book called The Hitler We Loved and Why, and described the former Nazi leader as “a decent and very peaceful man”.

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