A British female adult porn director is taking on Parliament at Westminster in the upcoming General Election.

According to Kent News , Anna Arrowsmith, who lives in Tunbridge Wells, will contest the Gravesham seat for the Liberal Democrats at the election expected on May 6.

As Britain's first female hardcore porn director, Arrowsmith has made over 300 adult porn movies under the pornstar alias name of Anna Span and has also won a number of top pornstar awards to boot.

Arrowsmith will take on labour candidate Kathryn Smith and the current Member of Parliament, conservative Adam Holloway, at the General Election.

In a message posted on her Twitter page, Arrowsmith says: "From porn to Parliament, here I come!"

During her porn career, she was named best director in the 2008 and 2009 United Kingdom Adult Film and Television Awards.

"The Liberal Democrats are proud to have candidates throughout the country with a great diversity of backgrounds and life experiences,” a Liberal Democrat spokesman said.

"Anna will be a strong candidate for Gravesham and with her family links to the area, we believe she is the best person to bring fairness to local people."

Britain announced on Tuesday that it would give one million pounds in aid to South Africa for the purchase of 42 million condoms to tackle HIV and AIDS in the world's worst-affected country ahead of the 2010 World Cup.

This was in response to a request by President Jacob Zuma for an extra billion condoms for the expected influx of thousands of soccer fans during the 2010 world cup in South Africa .

He had asked for British help during his recent visit to the UK to meet Queen Elizabeth II.

Britain said the aid, announced shortly after a visit to London by South African President Jacob Zuma, would help the country's aim to buy more than a billion condoms at a time the AIDS fight has been hit by the economic downturn.

An estimated 5.7 million of South Africa's 48 million people have HIV, including 280,000 children, according to the UN AIDS agency.

A top medical officer unveiled plans last month to increase condom supplies ahead of the football tournament, due to start in less than 100 days.

"There's going to be a large number of people who will be descending onto the country," said Victor Ramathesele, general medical officer for South Africa's 2010 organising committee.

"There's going to be a spirit of festivity and... there could be a more than usual demand for measures such as condoms," he said.

Zuma left Britain Friday after a three-day state visit, which was marred by a row over British media coverage of his polygamy and a failure to agree on Zimbabwe.

South Africa will host the countries first World Cup in June and July 2010 .

Rural women in southwest China's Guizhou Province are asked to yell, scream and find a crowd if they ever face abduction by human traffickers, reports Xinhua news agency on Monday.

Human trafficking in China is a serious and long-term issue. The problem is particularly serious in rural areas. In Guizhou, women were abducted and sold as cheap or slave labour.

The province also holding classes in March to teach hundreds of rural women on how to protect themselves from the region's increasing trafficking problem.

According to Xinhua's report on Monday, the courses teach women that when they are abducted, they should try to find a crowd and call for help, and also try to create conversation with the abducters to get more information on locations and prospective buyers.

Wu Kunfeng, chairperson of the provincial Women's Federation also reminded these women not to forego any chances that can lead them to contact the police, and always try to write notes to tell people of their situation.

"We always tell them (rural women) that they should never give up hope of rescue or escape," Wu said.

However, Wu said the classes did not include a self-defence course, as organizers feared that women who put up a physical fight could be injured or killed.

"We've found that many women were abducted, while out looking for jobs. They were not educated and were vulnerable to criminals," said Wu.

"So we've realized that not only should we act to combat the increasing social problem, but also teach more people to better protect themselves," Wu said.

Greater efforts were needed in China to fight trafficking of women and children, as the crime "grossly violates human rights", said China's police chief Meng Jianzhu on March 1. Meng urged local governments to address economic and social problems that could be at the root of rampant human trafficking, such as poverty and unemployment among women, inadequate education of children of migrant workers in cities, and illegal use of child labourers.

The Public Security Ministry launched a crackdown on child abduction and trafficking in April 2009.

As of Oct 12, more than 2,000 children had been rescued from more than 1,700 human trafficking cases.

On Saturday February 20th Epoch and RIVCash hosted a special Speed Painting Art Event and Auction at the Barcelona Summit to raise funds for the ASACP Foundation and the children’s Haiti relief effort.

The event featured one of Barcelona’s most famous painters, David Machuca, painting a large, impressionistic painting of the Barcelona Summit. Attendees of the Barcelona Summit had the opportunity to watch the artist at work on the show floor and were encouraged to add their thumb print to the painting along with a contribution. Master Adult Auctioneer Mr. Thommy Oliver lead the live auction of the painting the following afternoon. Over $10,500 was raised between the auction amount and other contributions.

The event was sponsored by Epoch and RIVCash and received additional support from MojoHost, Euro Payment Group GmbH, and PlayaMedia.com. Organizers of the Barcelona Summit created the exciting fundraising event.

“ASACP is thrilled with the outpouring of support that occurred during this event,” stated ASACP CEO Joan Irvine. “The Barcelona Summit did an incredible job creating and organizing the fundraiser, Epoch and RIVCash generously stepped up to sponsor it, and the attendees embraced it with such enthusiasm. Of course, with Mr. Thommy Oliver as the persuasive and lively auctioneer everyone had a good time! During this difficult economic time, we greatly appreciate everyone who helped us raise these much needed funds to continue our mission to protect children and the industry.”

“Epoch was proud to support this event and ASACP,” stated Harmik Gharapetian of Epoch. “We have been a long time supporter and ask everyone else to participate by donating and helping their cause. They do a great job protecting our kids and their exposure to age-restricted content.”

Mo, Director of Business Development of RIVCash, stated, ¨RIVCash is a staunch supporter of the ASACP and with sponsoring the speed painting auction we gladly endorse the goals and good work of this organization. We were truly thrilled with the fantastic outcome of the auction and hope that these types of fundraisers become regular items on more show agendas. It will surely have our support in the future.¨

Andreas Bischoff of The Barcelona Summit added, “The Barcelona Summit was more than happy to host such a great event for truly worthy causes. With the more than generous outcome of the auction (and additional donations) we hope that the funds raised provide some necessary support for those that truly need it.¨

The Barcelona Summit is a major international conference for the adult online industry in Europe offering its participants an exciting learning experience, top-class facilities and a spectacular venue to achieve their business goals. For more info visit: thebarcelonasummit.com.

Founded in 1996, ASACP is a non-profit organization dedicated to online child protection. ASACP battles child pornography through its CP Reporting Hotline and helps parents prevent children from viewing age-restricted material online with its Restricted To Adults – RTA Website Label . ASACP is the only association in the world that coordinates the adult entertainment industry’s efforts to protect children online. It has spent over 13 years creating progressive programs to protect children. ASACP’s relationship in assisting the adult industry’s child protection efforts is unparalleled. Companies and individuals interested in supporting ASACP may go to www.asacp.org for more information on how to get involved.

The worldwide adult entertainment industry is currently taking a downturn as the once recession-proof industry is losing millions of pounds a month due to Free adult content on tube websites .

The adult industry has always been at the forefront of cutting edge technology which has helped the adult entertainment industry make in excess of three hundred millions pounds a month worldwide, but it now seems that some of this technology including video streaming may lead to the industries financial downturn .

There are now in excess of 1000 tube websites that offer Free adult content to anyone that happens to find them, search engines are also indexing the footage which is largely considered to be pirated or linking to adult websites that do not have the copyright to upload the videos .

Google`s YouTube is currently the largest online tube website, but the company have a virtual zero tolerancy on adult themed content being uploaded which has been a relief to the adult industry.

Adult entertainment studios are now fighting back with a stampede of copyright infringement lawsuits against the adult tube websites .

"We're dealing with the perfect storm: declining DVD sales, rampant piracy, free content and a weak economy," says Steven Hirsch, founder of porn heavyweight Vivid Entertainment. He says its DVD sales plunged 20% last year. "This is the worst I've seen in this industry in 25 years."

The wide range of free content available — be it pirated video content or amateur-shot footage — will "continue to have a negative impact on premium providers' ability to attract and retain paying customers," says a recent report by market researcher XBIZ. It says initial orders of DVD titles by distributors have sunk, on average, to 1,500 to 2,000 now, vs. 5,000 to 6,000 in 2005.

Vivid fires off more than several hundred takedown notices a month to sites that illegally show its content.

Last month, Ventura Content, which owns Pink Visual studio, filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit against Mansef, which operates some of the top-visited tube sites, for more than $6.5 million in damages.

At least eight of the 100 top sites in the U.S. are adult-entertainment sites, according to Internet traffic-ranking service Alexa.com.

Muddying matters, the "safe harbor" provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act puts the onus on content providers to legally protect their content when it is filched by smaller sites, industry experts says.

Vivid's Hirsch likens the exercise to a digital version of Whac-A-Mole. His company must troll the Internet, looking for offenders. It issues a letter, asking the offending site to take down its content within the law's 72-hour deadline. But the pirated content often is resurrected on someone else's site after being taken down hours later .

"The tubes are making money off the studios' investment of time and money, while the studios are forced to spend ever larger chunks of change to police the tubes and send endless takedown notices," says Kathee Brewer, an editor at AVN, which covers the adult-entertainment industry.