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The U.N. has tapped a former abortionist and advocate for teen prostitution to its top post of expert on health and human rights. According to a report at international human rights watchdog organization C-Fam, South African Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng has risen quickly at the U.N., from “sexual health and rights advocate” to the top post of Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, a role that will give her a global platform to urge the decriminalization of the sex trade. “Mofokeng’s reports advancing sexual rights, including the legalizing of prostitution, will likely be cited as authoritative interpretations of human rights...

TOKYO, Japan (CNN) -- At first glance, the man and woman at the nightclub look like any other couple on a date. He flirts and pours champagne. She looks at him and laughs. Businesswomen in Japan pay up to $50,000 a night for male companionship from "hosts" like Yunosuke. This isn't a date, though. It's business. The woman, a successful executive, has joined a growing number of professional women in Japan in forking out from $1,000 to $50,000 a night for male companionship. They meet their "hosts" in hundreds of clubs that have sprung up around Tokyo - the industry...

FRANCE is taking its taste for erotic literature to new extremes with the publication of a series of novels about women who pay for sex.From the Marquis de Sade to The Story of O, the 1954 novel by Dominique Aury, the French have long enjoyed erotic literature — as has everybody else, judging by the recent international success of The Sexual Life of Catherine M, the memoir of Catherine Millet. This has unleashed a flood of memoirs from prostitutes and pornographers eager to cash in. Recently, however, some of the country’s most respected writers, including Pascal Bruckner, the essayist and...

War is bad for business - any kind of business. In fact with nuclear neighbours India and Pakistan engaged in a public slugfest, even the world's oldest profession is proving to be no guarantee against insolvency. As if the September 11 strikes and subsequent American military romp in Afghanistan were not bad enough, looming war clouds over the subcontinent have virtually dealt a body blow to male prostitutes in India. With well-endowed foreign clients disappearing overnight, this nascent community has been pretty much left to fend for itself. The return to the relative penury of a few thousand rupees a...