At A Glance

Acting on suspicions of crematorium managers, ICAC officers recovered a range of stolen items which were allegedly removed from coffins prior to cremation, a spokesman for the anti-graft body said. The recovered items included gold, silver and jade ornaments, wartime medals, coins, two pairs of shoes, 10 watches and a Chinese musical instrument, he said.

In traditional Chinese culture, the dead are given valuables and favourite possessions to take with them into the afterlife. One of the eight arrested men was a foreman who was alleged to have accepted bribes from his subordinates for turning a blind eye to the thefts. ICAC officers had also recovered tickets from pawnshops near the crematorium given for some of the stolen items, the spokesman said. Some datedback to 1994. The alleged coffin-robbing came to a halt after managers at the crematorium installed closed-circuit television cameras earlier this month, according to reports.

Dutch show green signal to red-light district

AMSTERDAM: A near century-long ban on brothels in the Netherlands was lifted on Tuesday when the upper house of parliament approved a legislation that aims to bring the country8217;s sex industry out of the shadows.

Proponents of the law, which got the green light from the lower house in February, argue it will reduce trafficking in women, cut down on child prostitution and crowd out criminal elements. Prostitution is legal in the Netherlands but brothels were banned in 1911 by Calvinist campaigners who sought to punish those exploiting women. The prostitutes were considered victims.

An estimated 2,000 brothels in the country will have to register with local governments, meet safety standards and confirm they do not hire illegal workers. Some 60 percent of the country8217;s estimated25,000 prostitutes are illegal immigrants, experts say. Brothel owners will also have to submit themselves to background checks.

Politicians have been wrangling over whether to legalise brothels and sex clubs for a decade and in the meantime enforcement authorities have looked the other way. Landlords renting rooms to prostitutes who display themselves in windows in Amsterdam8217;s red light district will also fall under the new law. Under the law, the prison sentence for exploiting minors will be raised to six years from one. Only the opposition Christian Democrats and other small religious parties opposed the law, a parliamentary spokeswoman said.