Exotic Dancer

Under soft lights and the dazed gazes of a dozen men in darkened booths, Polly (not even close to her real name) undulates wearing a black lace camisole pulled below her breasts, red high heels, a garter belt hooked to black fishnet stockings--and a button from Local 790 of the Service Employees International Union affixed to one garter.

Three men who police say operate one of the largest escort and exotic-dancer businesses in the Southwest were arrested at their Orange County offices Tuesday on suspicion of running a prostitution ring in three states, police said. The arrests of Khaled "Tony" Salah Nammari, 35; his brother, Zeid "Nick" Salah Nammari, 30; and Robert James Johnson Jr., 26, came after a three-month investigation by the Huntington Beach and the Tucson police departments. The men operate Caliber Group Inc.

On one recent spring day, there was nothing out of the ordinary about the three women in business dress knocking on legislators' doors here. Nothing except their lobbying pitch: They wanted to protect the livelihoods of hundreds of exotic dancers like themselves who perform throughout the state. The women walked the halls of the Capitol to oppose legislation that they say would strip exotic dancers of their rights as employees under state law. "We left the G-strings . . .

The owner of an escort service was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing a customer. Jurors found that Daniel Louis Parra, 37, bludgeoned engineer Charles Ray George, 54, in the client's San Clemente apartment. George was angry that an exotic dancer he had hired from Parra refused to have sex with him, as she had promised. The dancer, Elizabeth Nava, 30, was convicted by the same jury and sentenced to life without parole Jan. 7.

A Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy who applied for a disability pension while doubling as a male exotic dancer was sentenced Friday to three years' probation and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service. Deron Michael McBee, who has since resigned from the Sheriff's Department, was also fined $1,000 by Superior Court Judge Clarence Stromwall. McBee pleaded no contest Nov. 20 to attempted grand theft. Deputy Dist. Atty.

Duke University's troubled lacrosse team will play next season but under strict rules and close monitoring after three players were charged with rape, said Richard Brodhead, the school's president. Brodhead canceled the team's season April 5 after an exotic dancer who had been hired to perform at a March 13 team party told police she was raped by three team members at an off-campus house.

CAIRO - Egypt's Islamist-controlled government said this week it is moving to block the country's access to pornography -- one website at a time. Sherif Hashem, deputy head of the national telecom regulatory authority, announced that the mechanism to implement a court-ordered ban on porn websites has been ready since January. Authorities must now list every website to be targeted. “There is no such thing as blocking such sites as a whole, but they must be specified,” Hashem told a Turkish news agency.

Composer Mark-Anthony Turnage's biographical opera of the late Anna Nicole Smith will jiggle its way to the U.S. in September in a production from the New York City Opera. The piece will be staged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which is co-producing.  "Anna Nicole" had its world premiere in 2011 at the Royal Opera House in London. The opera, with a libretto by Richard Thomas, follows Smith's rise to fame and her marriage at the age of 26 to the then-89-year-old oil magnate J. Howard Marshall.  In the London production, Smith was played by Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek.