Dozens of Indonesian girls ‘friended’ on Facebook by men who kidnap, use them as sex slaves

DEPOK, Indonesia – When a 14-year-old girl received a Facebook friend request from an older man she didn’t know, she accepted it out of curiosity. It’s a click she will forever regret, leading to a brutal story that has repeated itself as sexual predators find new ways to exploit Indonesia’s growing obsession with social media.

The junior high student was quickly smitten by the man’s smooth online flattery. They exchanged phone numbers, and his attention increased with rapid-fire texts. He convinced her to meet in a mall, and she found him just as charming in person.

They agreed to meet again. After telling her mom she was going to visit a sick girlfriend on her way to church choir practice, she climbed into the man’s minivan near her home in Depok, on the outskirts of Jakarta.

The man, a 24-year-old who called himself Yogi, drove her an hour to the town of Bogor, West Java, she told The Associated Press in an interview.

There, he locked her in a small room inside a house with at least five other girls aged 14 to 17. She was drugged and raped repeatedly — losing her virginity in the first attack.

After one week of torture, her captor told her she was being sold and shipped to the faraway island of Batam, known for its seedy brothels and child sex tourism that caters to men coming by boat from nearby Singapore.

She sobbed hysterically and begged to go home. She was beaten and told to shut up or die.

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So far this year, 27 of the 129 children reported missing to Indonesia’s National Commission for Child Protection are believed to have been abducted after meeting their captors on Facebook, said the group’s chairman, Arist Merdeka Sirait. One of the 27 has been found dead.

In the month since the Depok girl was found near a bus terminal Sept. 30, there have been at least seven reports of young girls in Indonesia being abducted by people they met on Facebook. Although no solid data exists, police and aid groups that work on trafficking issues say it seems to be a particularly big problem in the Southeast Asian archipelago.

“Maybe Indonesia is kind of a unique country so far. Once the reports start coming in, you will know that maybe it’s not one of the countries, maybe it’s one of a hundred countries,” said Anjan Bose, a program officer who works on child online protection issues at ECPAT International, a non-profit global network that helps children in 70 countries. “The Internet is such a global medium. It doesn’t differentiate between poor and rich. It doesn’t differentiate between the economy of the country or the culture.”

Websites that track social media say Indonesia has nearly 50 million people signed up for Facebook, making it one of the world’s top users after the U.S. The capital, Jakarta, was recently named the most active Twitter city by Paris-based social media monitoring company Semiocast. In addition, networking groups such as BlackBerry and Yahoo Messenger are wildly popular on mobile phones.

Many young Indonesians, and their parents, are unaware of the dangers of allowing strangers to see their personal information online. Teenagers frequently post photos and personal details such as their home address, phone number, school and hangouts without using any privacy settings — allowing anyone trolling the net to find them and learn everything about them.

“We are racing against time, and the technology frenzy over Facebook is a trend among teenagers here,” Sirait said. “Police should move faster, or many more girls will become victims.”

The 27 Facebook-related abductions reported to the commission this year in Indonesia have already exceed 18 similar cases it received in all of 2011. Overall, the National Task Force Against Human Trafficking said 435 children were trafficked last year, mostly for sexual exploitation.

Many who fight child sex crimes in Indonesia believe the real numbers are much higher. Missing children are often not reported to authorities. Stigma and shame surround sexual abuse in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, and there’s a widespread belief that police will do nothing to help.

An ECPAT International report estimates that each year, 40,000 to 70,000 children are involved in trafficking, pornography or prostitution in Indonesia, a nation of 240 million where many families remain impoverished.

The U.S. State Department has also warned that more Indonesian girls are being recruited using social media networks. In a report last year, it said traffickers have “resorted to outright kidnapping of girls and young women for sex trafficking within the country and abroad.”

Online child sexual abuse and exploitation are common in much of Asia. In the Philippines, kids are being forced to strip or perform sex acts on live webcams — often by their parents, who are using them as a source of income. Western men typically pay to use the sites.

“In the Philippines, this is the tip of the iceberg. It’s not only Facebook and social media, but it’s also through text messages … especially young, vulnerable people are being targeted,” said Leonarda Kling, regional representative for Terre des Hommes Netherlands, a non-profit working on trafficking issues. “It’s all about promises. Better jobs or maybe even a nice telephone or whatever. Young people now, you see all the glamour and glitter around you and they want to have the latest BlackBerry, the latest fashion, and it’s also a way to get these things.”

Facebook says its investigators regularly review content on the site and work with authorities, including Interpol, to combat illegal activity. It also has employees around the world tasked with cracking down on people who attempt to use the site for human trafficking.

“We take human trafficking very seriously and, while this behaviour is not common on Facebook, a number of measures are in place to counter this activity,” spokesman Andrew Noyes said in an email.

He declined to give any details on Facebook’s involvement in trafficking cases reported in Indonesia or elsewhere.

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The Depok girl, wearing a mask to hide her face as she was interviewed, said she is still shocked that the man she knew for nearly a month turned on her.

“He wanted to buy new clothes for me, and help with school payments. He was different … that’s all,” she said. “I have a lot of contacts through Facebook, and I’ve also exchanged phone numbers. But everything has always gone fine. We were just friends.”

She said that after being kidnapped, she was given sleeping pills and was “mostly unconscious” for her ordeal. She said she could not escape because a man and another girl stood guard over her.

The girl said the man did not have the money for a plane ticket to Batam, and also became aware that her parents and others were relentlessly searching for her. He ended up dumping her at a bus station, where she found help.

“I am angry and cannot accept what he did to me. … I was raped and beaten!” said the lanky girl with shoulder-length black hair. The AP generally does not publish the names of sexual abuse victims.

The girl’s case made headlines this month when she was expelled after she tried to return to school. Officials at the school reportedly claimed she had tarnished its image. She has since been reinstated, but she no longer wishes to attend due to the stigma she faces.

Education Minister Mohammad Nuh also came under fire after making remarks that not all girls who report such crimes are victims: “They do it for fun, and then the girl alleges that it’s rape,” he said. His response to the criticism was that it’s difficult to prove whether sexual assault allegations are “real rapes.”

The publicity surrounding the story encouraged the parents of five other missing girls to come forward this month, saying their daughters also were victimized by people they met on Facebook. Two more girls were freed from their captors in October and are now seeking counselling.

A man who posed as a photographer on Facebook was recently arrested and accused of kidnapping and raping three teenage girls. Authorities say he lured them into meeting him with him by promising to make them models, and then locked them in a house. Police found dozens of photos of naked girls on his camera and laptop.

Another case involved a 15-year-old girl from Bogor. She was recently rescued by police after being kidnapped by someone she met on Facebook and held at a restaurant, waiting for someone to move her to another town where she would be forced into prostitution.

In some incidents, the victims themselves ended up recruiting other young girls after being promised money or luxuries such as mobile phones or new clothes.

Police are trying to get a step ahead of the criminals. Detective Lt. Ruth Yeni Qomariah from the Children and Women’s Protection unit in Surabaya said she posed as a teenager online and busted three men who used Facebook to kidnap and rape underage girls. She’s searching for a fourth suspect.

“It has been getting worse as trafficking rings become more sophisticated and underage children are more easily targeted,” she said.

The man who abducted the Depok girl has not been found, and it’s unclear what happened to the five other girls held at the house where she was raped.

“I saw they were offered by my kidnapper to many guys,” she said. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t want to remember it.”

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Associated Press writer Niniek Karmini contributed to this report from Jakarta, Indonesia.

On the Net: https://www.facebook.com/help/179468058793941/?q=trafficking&sid=0o4BpvxlcINe4Y6VV

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Follow Mason on Twitter: twitter.com/MargieMasonAP

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‘Up All Night’ takes a page from ‘Happy Days’

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – “Up All Night” is switching from a single camera to multicam format, making a transition formerly made by the classic sitcom “Happy Days.”

The series, which stars Christina Applegate and Will Arnett as harried new parents and Maya Rudolph as Applegate‘s self-absorbed boss, will shut down for three months after taping its final single-camera episode next week. It will use that time to convert its stage and set for the show to be recorded in front of a live audience with multiple cameras.

It will go back into production in February on five multi-camera episodes, bringing the total number of episodes for this season to 16.

All of the season’s 11 remaining single-camera episodes will air by December, and the multicam episodes will return in April or May. The show has earned only passable ratings since debuting last season.

There was no word on what will fill the show’s 8:30 Thursday timeslot in the interim, but NBC has “Community” in its bullpen. The planned Friday debut for “Community” was delayed earlier this month.

The series’ creator, Emily Spivey, is a veteran of the three-camera format thanks to her work on “Saturday Night Live.” Showrunner Tucker Cawley worked previously on the multicam “Everybody Loves Raymond.” NBC entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt said the network and executive producer Lorne Michaels agreed the format change would “infuse the show with more energy.”

“We know what the multi-camera audience does for the live episodes of ’30 Rock,’ plus after seeing both Maya and Christina do SNL within the past few months, we knew we had the kind of performers – Will Arnett included – who love the reaction from a live audience,” Greenblatt said. “We think we can make a seamless tradition to the new format. Also, we’re committed to the multi-camera form and this will give us another show to consider for next season in this new format.”

NBC pointed to “Happy Days” as a precedent for the shift. The show’s first two seasons were filmed using a single-camera setup and laugh track, but one episode of Season 2 (“Fonzie Gets Married”) was filmed in front of a studio audience with three cameras as a test run.

From the third season on, the show was shot with three cameras. Tom Bosley or another cast member would usually inform viewers that it was filmed in front of a live audience.

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Singapore firm starts new Alzheimer’s drug trials

LONDON (Reuters) – TauRx Therapeutics, a privately held biotech company based in Singapore, has launched two late-stage clinical studies testing a new kind of experimental drug against Alzheimer’s.

Its LMTX drug aims to attack the memory-robbing disease by blocking the build-up of a protein called tau that forms twisted fibers and tangles inside brain cells.

Many scientists believe tau is an important cause of Alzheimer’s, alongside another protein known as amyloid that has been the main focus of drug development efforts to date.

Several large pharmaceutical companies are looking at tau-targeted drugs, including Switzerland’s Roche, which in June bought the rights to a tau treatment from another private biotech firm, AC Immune of Lausanne.

TauRx said on Tuesday that one Phase III study of LMTX would involve 833 people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease tracked over 12 months, while the second would include 500 people with mild disease studied over 18 months.

The trials have already starting enrolling in the United States. They will also recruit patients in Europe and Asia.

The decision to move into Phase III testing – the last stage before a drug is approved for use – follows encouraging Phase II studies with a related product called rember. LMTX delivers the same active substance into the bloodstream as rember but in a more efficient manner, the company said.

The start of the latest tests was announced at the Clinical Trials Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease in Monaco, where scientists have also been poring over findings with Eli Lilly’s drug solanezumab.

The Lilly medicine, targeting amyloid, failed to significantly arrest progression of Alzheimer’s in two Phase III studies, results of which were reported in August, but further analysis suggests amyloid was removed from the brain as intended.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Helen Massy-Beresford)

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Consumer spending rises, but saving slows

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Consumer spending rose solidly in September as households stepped up purchases on automobiles and a range of other goods, but the increase came at the expense of savings.

The Commerce Department said on Monday consumer spending rose 0.8 percent, the largest increase since February, after an unrevised 0.5 percent gain in August.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of U.S. economic activity to increase 0.6 percent in September.

When adjusted for inflation, consumer spending increased 0.4 percent after edging up 0.1 percent the prior month.

Financial markets showed little reaction to the data. U.S. stock markets will be closed on Monday, and possibly on Tuesday, as a mammoth storm threatens the U.S. East Coast.

The figures were incorporated in last Friday’s third-quarter gross domestic product report. Consumer spending increased at a 2 percent annual pace in the third quarter after rising at a 1.5 percent pace the prior period.

That helped to lift economic growth at a 2 percent rate during the quarter, an acceleration from the April-June period’s 1.3 percent pace.

The spurt in spending as the quarter ended, which was concentrated in long-lasting goods such as autos and Apple Inc’s iPhone 5, suggests some of the momentum could carry through the remainder of the year. However, challenges remain.

While overall income last month grew 0.4 percent, the most since March and a step-up from August’s 0.1 percent, the amount of money at the disposal of households after accounting for inflation and taxes was flat.

That meant households cut back on saving to fund purchases. This and sluggish job growth could hamper spending over the long-term. The saving rate slipped to 3.3 percent last month, the lowest since November 2011, from 3.7 percent the prior month.

“Households were only able to boost consumption in the third quarter by dipping into their savings,” said Paul Dales, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics. “Faced with the prospect of major tax hikes in the New Year, however, they will soon become more cautious.”

(Reporting By Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

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More than ever, Barca more than club for Catalans

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Nearly 20 minutes into the latest clash between Spain’s most popular football teams, Barcelona‘s 98,000-seat Camp Nou stadium erupted into a deafening roar. Tens of thousands of Catalans in the city at the heart of their separatist movement chanted in unison: “Independence!”

More than ever, FC Barcelona, known affectionately as Barca, is living up to its motto of being “more than a club” for this wealthy northeastern region where Spain’s economic crisis is fueling separatist sentiment.

Lifelong Barca club member Enric Pujol was at Camp Nou for this month’s game against Real Madrid, the team of Spain’s capital. Wearing his burgundy-and-blue Barca jersey, Pujol also held one of the hundreds of pro-independence “estelada” flags, featuring a white star in a blue triangle, which bristled throughout the stands.

“It was a beautiful emotion to see Camp Nou like that,” said Pujol. “Barca is more than a club because of the values it transmits. It is linked to Catalan culture. In this sense it is a club and a social institution that acts like our flag.”

Barca has been seen as a bastion of Catalan identity dating back to the three decades of dictatorship when Catalans could not openly speak, teach or publish in their native Catalan language. Barcelona writer Manuel Vazquez Montalban famously called the football team “Catalonia‘s unarmed symbolic army.”

Barca-Real Madrid matches have a nickname: “el clasico” — the classic — and they are one of the world’s most-watched sporting events, seen by 400 million people in 30 countries. But local passions run high. In Spain, where football has deep political and cultural connotations, many see the clashes of Spain’s most successful teams as a proxy battle between wealthy Catalonia and the central government in Madrid. If Barca is a symbol of Catalan nationalism, Real Madrid is an emblem of a unified Spain.

“Look, the truth is that ever since the Civil War there has always been tension in Spain,” said Pujol. “Having traveled in Spain, they always look at us as Catalans.”

Ahead of kickoff before any “clasico,” Camp Nou traditionally greets Real Madrid players with a huge mosaic of Barcelona’s burgundy-and-blue made up of colored cards. This year, for the first time, they held up cards forming the red-and-yellow striped Catalan “senyera” flag — an explicit nationalist message. (Barca says it can neither confirm nor deny reports that its away uniform next season will be modeled on the senyera.)

Then came the crowd’s collective shout for independence at 1714 hours — in reference to the year 1714 when Barcelona fell to the troops of Philip V in the War of Spanish Succession. It was organized by a pro-independence group through social media.

Barca fan David Fort sees his team as a vehicle to show the world that Catalonia has its own language and culture, which is distinct from what he called the “bulls and flamenco” associated with Spain.

“We have this love for Barca because we have the chance to be represented around the world,” said Fort, a 38-year-old architect from the southern Catalan town of Tarragona. “When we travel and they ask me if I am Spanish, I say not exactly, but when I mention Barca they say ‘Ah! The Catalan team’, and of course since they are champions you feel proud.”

Barca, like every institution in Spain, was marked by the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s and resulting right-wing dictatorship that ended after Franco’s death in 1975.

Franco’s soldiers killed Barca’s club president in 1936, and the club was forced to change its name from a Catalan to a Spanish version. And while Real Madrid was identified with the regime, Barca, for many, came to represent Catalan anti-fascist resistance.

“Under Franco, people could not shout ‘Long Live Catalonia!,’ but they could shout ‘Long Live Barca!’ (¡Visca Barca!)” in Catalan, said Ernest Folch, a newspaper columnist who writes about Barca for El Periodico. The chant became a kind of code for expressing Catalan pride.

“Barca is an anomaly. There is no other club with its particular history,” said Folch. “It survived the Franco dictatorship, and has always been a focal point for protest and ferment where sport has mixed with politics.”

And politics is a very hot topic these days in Catalonia.

Voters will go to the polls on Nov. 25 in regional elections sure to be judged as a litmus test of the strength of the pro-independence movement that brought 1.5 million people to the streets of Barcelona on Sept. 11 in the largest rally since the 1970s.

Catalonia is heavily in debt and has in fact asked Spain for a euros 5.9 billion ($ 75 billion) bailout. Even so, regional lawmakers voted on Sept. 27 to hold a referendum on self-determination at a date still to be determined. And although it is still unclear that a “Yes” vote would win, Spain’s central government has called such a referendum unconstitutional and will surely try to stop it from taking place.

That all puts Catalonia, and therefore Barca, in the midst of Spain’s struggles to deal with consequences of back-to-back recessions, 25 percent unemployment, and high public debt that has drawn it into the euro crisis along with already bailed-out Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

Barca’s appeal, of course, transcends its regional identity. The team is beloved throughout the world, and a poll last year found that it had displaced Real Madrid as Spain’s most popular team. Barca has 546 fan clubs in Catalonia, and 841 in the rest of Spain. Some of these fans— even in Catalonia — disagree with what they perceive as the political turn the club has taken in recent years.

“It’s surreal to talk to talk about these ideas related to independence,” said fan Jamie Easton, 27, a Spaniard born in Barcelona to a British father and a mother of Catalan descent. “Barca is a Catalan and Spanish club because Barcelona is part of Spain, and fans can feel however they want.”

The upswing in separatist sentiment in Catalonia has forced both the club and its players— many of whom form the backbone of Spain’s world champion national side — to try a difficult balancing act between supporting their most fervent pro-independence fans without alienating the millions of others who are not.

“We are Barca. We represent Catalonia and we will support whatever Catalans want,” said Barca and Spain midfielder Xavi Hernandez. But he added: “We try to isolate ourselves from everything outside the game. We know the political issue is there, and the people have the right to express themselves however they wish, but we are here to play football and make sure people have fun.”

The glaring exception to the moderate tone is former coach Pep Guardiola, a hugely popular figure in Catalonia, who appeared in a video during the Sept. 11 march saying: “Here you have my vote for independence.”

Two weeks after the politically charged “clasico,” Barca president Sandro Rosell made his first official visit to southern Spain to cool tensions at a meeting of Barca fan clubs.

“I don’t know what information you are receiving here, but I preferred to come here and say on behalf of the club that Barca will never get mixed up in political issues,” Rosell told the 1,000 Spanish fans, promising that Barca would never display a mosaic of the separatist “estelada” flag at Camp Nou.

“This doesn’t mean that this isn’t a Catalan club and that of course we will defend our roots and origins, but one thing shouldn’t be mixed with the other. One thing is politics and the other is identity. Barca unites us all.”

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AP Writer Jorge Sainz contributed to this report from Madrid.

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Ahead of the Bell: Windows Phone event

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Coming on the heels of its launch of Windows 8 and the Surface tablet, Microsoft has scheduled an event in San Francisco to kick off its new software for mobile phones.

On Friday, Microsoft started selling the Windows 8 operating system for desktops, laptops and tablet computers. Machines with Windows 8 started going on sale as well.

That operating system borrowed its look from Windows Phone, meaning Microsoft now has a unified look across PCs and phones — at least if people take to Windows 8. The company has also made it easy for developers to create software that runs on both systems with minor modifications.

Monday’s event, at an arena in San Francisco, is devoted to Windows Phone 8.

The first phones from Nokia, Samsung and HTC are expected to hit store shelves next month, though many details on prices, carriers and exact dates aren’t available yet. Microsoft may announce some of that Monday. CEO Steve Ballmer hinted at Monday’s event when he spoke at a Windows 8 kick-off event Thursday.

“I can’t wait to show you how we’ve really reinvented the smartphone around you,” Ballmer said.

Windows Phone 8 will face heavy competition from the iPhone and devices running Google’s Android software. People who already have Windows phones won’t be able to upgrade to the new version.

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European fashion buyers look to Nigeria

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — A model struts the runway wearing a flowing newspaper print gown in this African megacity where international high-end fashion buyers are looking beyond the country’s bleak headlines to uncover the next new thing.

There have been steady efforts to turn Lagos, a city with a fearsome reputation, into a fashion destination. They reached new heights at the MTN Lagos Fashion & Design Week that ran from Oct. 24 to 27 and drew European high-fashion brands such as the United Kingdom’s Selfridges & Co. and Munich-based MyTheresa.com to Nigeria for the first time.

Ituen Basi’s newspaper inspired Spring/Summer 2013 collection was among 39 collections spotlighted at the city’s latest major fashion week. The Nigerian’s collection evoked fun and glamour through its use of print and color — characteristics which have come to define the vibrant local fashion scene.

With local brands seeking wider platforms and international retailers hungry for novelty, designers and buyers see opportunities for collaboration.

“There’s something about the fresh, the unknown, the possibility of seeing a new brand springing forth into the limelight. … These are becoming interesting to people outside Nigeria,” said Omoyemi Akerele, the fashion week’s founder and creative director.

An encouraging response to African-inspired designs by top Western labels gives buyers confidence that designs straight from the continent will also sell.

“Over the past few seasons, there’s been a strong trend for print,” said Bruno Barba, the brand public relations manager at Selfridges. “If you look at the collection of Burberry inspired by Africa last year; there was also Vivienne Westwood, Paul Smith. … They’ve made that inspiration quite mainstream now. So, for us, it was interesting to take that trend and take it from its roots in Africa.”

Online retailer MyTheresa.com, which ships top designers’ clothes including Miu Miu, Givenchy, Lanvin and Isabel Meron to clients in 120 different countries, is also looking for products in Nigeria that will sell well. The company hopes that will set it apart from the competition in a fast-paced industry.

“For me, Nigeria represents a fun individualism,” the company’s buying director Justin O’Shea said. He also said that MyTheresa.com was looking to work closely with designers and adapt products for their clientele if needed.

Previously, several Nigerian designers have helped put the West African nation on the global fashion map.

Deola Sagoe has gained recognition from U.S. Vogue editor Andre Leon Talley and Oprah Winfrey. London-based Duro Olowu is considered one of Michelle Obama’s favorite designers. Maki Oh has dressed American singer Solange Knowles and Hollywood actress Leelee Sobieski from her Lagos workshop. Jewel By Lisa, who has also dressed celebrities, designed limited edition BlackBerry mobile phone skins and jeweled cases for Canadian manufacturer Research In Motion Ltd.

While looking to Nigeria could bring much-needed novelty to clothes targeted to Western audiences, it could also endear a Nigerian clientele. Though the majority of the nation lives on less than $ 2 a day, the nation’s wealthy elite — including upstart business owners, oil industry executives and corrupt politicians — have a growing appetite for top-shelf brands. Luxury goods stores are increasingly opening in a country where seemingly gratuitous displays of wealth are the norm.

“Nigerians are part of our Top 10 highest-spending foreign customers,” Barba said. “It felt right for us to try and find a response that would appeal to them, excite them and be over and above what they already buy, almost as a recognition that they’re an important part of our consumer base.”

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Online:

Lagos Fashion & Design Week: www.lagosfashionanddesignweek.com

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Women hoist kettlebells for strength and shapeliness

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Kettlebells, classically a training tool of Russian strongmen, has become a go-to group fitness workout for women in pursuit of strong and sexy bodies, according to fitness experts.

Lorna Kleidman, a world champion in kettlebell competition, said a modern kettlebell workout effectively combines cardiovascular, resistance and range-of-motion training, all in one hour.

“It’s all in the swing,” said Kleidman, who teaches kettlebell classes at the Fitness Cell Collective in New York City, where women constitute up to 70 percent of her students.

“You can lift the kettlebell as if it were a dumbbell,” she added. “But to get the most out of it you need to use it in circular, swinging movement.”

Essentially cast-iron, handled balls, the modern kettlebell became a fitness tool when Russian weight lifters took to lifting market counterweights for strength training.

Kleidman said the idea dates back to ancient Greece, where athletes trained by lifting stones with holes in them.

She believes the appeal for women is obvious.

“Kettlebell training keeps lean muscle, burns fat, and gives you a nice round butt you’re not going to get with yoga.”

Classes typically start with 15-pound (6.8-kg) kettlebells, and can go up to 25 (11.3). Men start with 20-pound kettlebells (9 kg), progressing to 35 pounds (15.8) and above.

Kleidman said it takes about an hour for most people to learn the proper technique of driving, or initiating movement, from the leg and hip while keeping the spine straight.

“There are hundreds of movements,” said Kleidman. “Swing it, bring it to hold, rest it in the crook of your elbow.”

There are also presses, pushes, and figures-eight, side-to-side twists.

“You’re limited only by your imagination,” she said.

Paul Katami, group fitness center director at the Equinox fitness center in West Hollywood, California, said more women are overcoming their initial fear of the kettlebell.

He said by lowering the weight of the bells used in classes, people are able to do more complex moves.

“We’re keeping the essence of kettlebell training while moving it from personal training to group fitness,” said Katami, creator of the upcoming DVD “Ultimate Kettlebell Workouts for Beginners.”

He added the swing is the cornerstone kettlebell exercise and that the power of the workout lies in its ability to displace the center of gravity, creating more core involvement.

“If you’re holding a dumbbell your center of gravity is fixed in the middle of the palm,” he explained. “But with a kettlebell you’re dynamically fluctuating the resistance: your center of gravity is off.”

Even simple moves, such as squats and bicep curls, are enhanced.

Pete McCall, an exercise physiologist with the American Council on Exercise (ACE), describes the kettlebell advantage as a matter of the position of the mass, the use of momentum and the need to control that momentum.

“We found that the energy expenditure of the kettlebell for one workout was similar to cross country skiing, which is seen as one of strongest physical activities you can do,” he said.

McCall is pleased that more women are getting comfortable with weight lifting in general.

“It’s a misconception that in order to weight train, women want to stay lighter,” he said, “because then they’re not really activating the muscles responsible for the definition and tone they want.”

He urges would-be kettlebellers to find a certified trainer to teach the technique.

“It’s all in the technique,” he said. “People look at it say it’s dangerous. If you have good technique it’s not dangerous at all.”

(Editing by Patricia Reaney)

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Paul Ceglia’s Quest to Own Half of Facebook Ends in an Arrest for Fraud

Oh how the tables have turned: The feds have arrested Paul Ceglia, the man who sued Facebook for 50 percent stake in the social network, charging him with attempting to defraud Mark Zuckerberg. Ceglia‘s assertion that Zuck had promised him half of his company lost total credibility about a year ago when the social network presented the original contract signed by him and Zuckerberg and it had no mention of Facebook. “This smoking-gun evidence confirms what defendants have said all along: the purported contract attached to the complaint is an outright fabrication,” Facebook said in the filling. But that didn’t stop Ceglia, who continued to push the suit, lawyering up with what Business Insider’s Henry Blodget called a “boatload of new evidence.”

RELATED: Facebook’s Biographer Pours Cold Water on Email Evidence

Not only did that boatload not do it, but it ended up hurting him, as now the Feds have charged Ceglia with falsifying records and destroying evidence. Prosecutors have now accused Ceglia of making up that contract after they found margin, spacing, and font inconsistencies between the two documents. Ceglia is also accused of fabricating email exchanges (part of that “boatload of new evidence”). “Ceglia’s alleged conduct not only constitutes a massive fraud attempt, but also an attempted corruption of our legal system through the manufacture of false evidence. That is always intolerable. Dressing up a fraud as a lawsuit does not immunize you from prosecution,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement, via CBS News’s Daniel Carty. 

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Reports: UK police arrest Gary Glitter

LONDON (AP) — The sex abuse scandal surrounding the late BBC children’s television host Jimmy Savile widened on Sunday as police arrested former glam rock star and convicted sex offender Gary Glitter in connection with the case, British media said.

Police would not directly identify the suspect arrested Sunday, but media including the BBC and Press Association reported he was the 68-year-old Glitter.

The musician made it big with the crowd-pleasing hit “Rock & Roll (Part 2),” a mostly instrumental anthem that has been a staple at American sporting events thanks to its catchy “hey” chorus. But he fell into disgrace after being convicted on child abuse charges in Britain and Vietnam.

On Sunday, the BBC and Sky News showed footage of Glitter, who wore a hat, a dark coat and sunglasses, being taken from his home by officers and driven away.

British police do not generally identify suspects under arrest by name until they are charged. When asked about Glitter, a spokesman said only that the force arrested a man in his 60s early Sunday morning in London on suspicion of sexual offenses in connection with the Savile probe. He remains in custody in a London police station, police said.

Hundreds of potential victims have come forward since police began their investigation into sex abuse allegations against Savile, the longtime host of popular shows “Top of the Pops” and “Jim’ll Fix It” who died at age 84 last year. Most allege abuse by Savile, but some said they were abused by Savile and others.

Glitter is the first suspect to be arrested in the scandal, which has raised questions about whether the BBC turned a blind eye to the alleged sexual crimes. It was not immediately clear if Glitter, whose real name is Paul Gadd, and Savile knew each other.

Glitter rose to fame in the 1970s with a string of U.K. hits and his look of shiny jumpsuits, silver platform shoes and bouffant wigs, but his music has often been shunned since his abuse convictions. In 2006, the NFL advised its football teams not to use the Glitter version of “Rock and Roll (Part 2)” at games.

Glitter was jailed in Britain in 1999 for possessing child pornography, and convicted in 2006 in Vietnam of committing “obscene acts with children” — offenses involving girls aged 10 and 11. He was deported back to Britain in 2008.

Police have said that though the majority of cases it is investigating related to Savile alone, some involved the entertainer and other, unidentified suspects. In addition, some potential victims who reported abuse by Savile also told police about separate allegations against unidentified men that did not involve the BBC host.

The scandal has horrified Britain with revelations that Savile cajoled and coerced vulnerable teens into having sex with him in his car, in his camper van, and even in dingy dressing rooms on BBC premises.

One witness told the BBC that she once saw Glitter having sex with a schoolgirl in Savile’s dressing room at the broadcaster’s TV center in the 1970s. Glitter has denied the allegations.

On Sunday, the chairman of the BBC Trust said he was committed to finding out the true scale of the scandal to save the broadcaster’s reputation.

“Can it really be the case that no one knew what he was doing? Did some turn a blind eye to criminality? Did some prefer not to follow up their suspicions because of this criminal’s popularity and place in the schedules?” Chris Patten wrote in The Mail on Sunday.

The BBC has set up an independent inquiry into the corporation’s culture and practices in the years Savile worked there. It also launched a separate inquiry into whether its journalists dropped an investigation into the allegations.

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