SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) – Brazil’s case of the pink mini-dress that went viral on the Internet has left many scratching their heads: How could it be that an outfit, no matter how short, would cause such an uproar in a tropical nation where skimpy clothing and tiny bikinis barely raise an eyebrow?

The answer, a Bandeirante University official said, is not in the pink dress, but in how Geisy Arruda, a 20-year-old tourism student, chose to wear it. In expelling her from the university – where she has since been reinstated – officials said she paraded provocatively and raised the dress.

“There are hundreds of girls wearing miniskirts on this campus every day, and nothing has ever happened,” Vice-Dean Ellis Brown said at a news conference yesterday. “The size of the dress was never discussed – her behaviour was.”

Arruda has vehemently denied acting provocatively, telling the private Agencia Estado news agency. “It’s a big lie that I raised the dress.”

In reversing the decision to expel Arruda, Brown said the school was opting for educational rather than disciplinary action.

The media attention has made the case a hot topic in Brazil. But Maisa dos Santos, 38, a maid in Rio de Janeiro, called the dust-up absurd. She guessed it was the result of different attitudes in Sao Paulo, known in normally carefree Brazil as a city that is all work, no play.

“The people in Sao Paulo, they’re just squares. There was nothing wrong with that girl’s dress,” Santos said. “If I had a body like hers, I’d show it off too. Besides, here in Rio, it’s too hot to wear much clothing.”

Sen Eduardo Suplicy, who represents Sao Paulo state and had called on the university to reinstate Arruda, will hold a series of seminars to discuss the broader implications of the case, including behaviour in academic settings and attitudes toward women, Brown said.

Brown didn’t say if or when Arruda would return to the university. She has not made any public statements since being reinstated.

Arruda said previously she would be afraid to go back. Her lawyer, Nehemias Domingos de Melo, said there must be safety guarantees for Arruda to return, adding that she has been contacted by two other colleges offering her a full scholarship.

Brown said that if she came back, the school’s security guards would monitor the situation to make sure she could safely study, but he provided no details.

Videos of students ridiculing and cursing Arruda turned up on the Web, quickly made headlines across Brazil and drew attention around the world to the October 22 incident.

Arruda was forced to put on a professor’s white lab coat to cover her short, pink dress and was escorted away by police amid a hail of insults by students, some chanting “whore, whore”.

Switzerland could ban burqas – minister

GENEVA, Switzerland (AP) – Switzerland’s justice minister said yesterday that her country could ban full-body Muslim veils in the future, as neighbouring France is currently debating.

Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said seeing a woman in a burqa makes her uncomfortable, even though the head-to-toe outfits are rarely worn in Switzerland.

“If the number of women wearing a burqa increases, we could study a possible ban,” said Widmer-Schlumpf, 53, at a news conference to which she wore a short skirt and black leather boots.

But she said the veils weren’t currently on the government’s agenda.

In neighbouring France, President Nicolas Sarkozy has spoken out against the burqa, and a parliamentary commission is holding six months of hearings that could lay the groundwork for banning the veils in public.

A number of French politicians believe the garb is an affront to women’s rights and the French commitment to equality. It is worn by a minority of the five million Muslims in France.

Switzerland is holding a national referendum November 29 on whether to ban the construction of minarets. Widmer-Schlumpf opposes the proposal, along with the rest of Switzerland’s seven-member Cabinet.

A ban on the minarets, sometimes used for calling Muslims to prayer, would be discriminatory and violate Swiss laws on freedom of religion, Widmer-Schlumpf said.

Spanish city starts fining prostitutes, clients

MADRID, Spain (AP) – A city in southern Spain has started imposing fines on street prostitutes and their clients in a rare crackdown on a multibillion-dollar industry that lies in legal limbo.

The new municipal order, which went into effect yesterday in Granada, imposes sanctions of up to euro3,000 ($4,500) for soliciting or offering sex within 200 metres (660 feet) of a school, residential area, shopping centre or business complex, Granada city councillor Eduardo Moral told The Associated Press.

Outside that limit, the fine can be as much as euro750 ($1,100).

“It is perhaps one of the strictest (in Spain) because most cities do not even have one,” Moral said of the ordinance.

Madrid, for instance, does not have such a policy. Nor do the other provincial capitals in Andalusia, Spain’s largest and most populated region, where Granada is located.

Barcelona does impose fines for street prostitution but police have to give sex workers a warning first, and the practice is prohibited only within 200 metres of a school or if it disrupts traffic.

The Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces said Granada’s new policy is uncommon in this country.

Sex sells very well in Spain. Every day most national newspapers have pages and pages of ads from people offering it, and bordellos that advertise themselves as ‘clubs’ are common sites along Spanish highways and even elegant avenues in Madrid, Barcelona and elsewhere.

However, the world’s oldest profession falls between the cracks of Spain’s legal system. The penal code outlaws forcing someone into prostitution, but the act of selling sex – either on the street or in a brothel – is not mentioned as being illegal.

So hundreds of thousands of women – mainly immigrants from Latin America, eastern Europe and Africa, often without residency papers – who work in the sex industry cannot be arrested for selling their bodies. But they are not recognised by the government as full-fledged workers and thus cannot pay into the social security system.

Moral said Granada and other towns cannot ban prostitution outright. But they can restrict it under their jurisdiction for overseeing city streets and public health issues, and that is what Granada is trying to do, he said.

Mexico’s clergy take action against drug war

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) – Gunmen shoot a priest and two seminary students in the back. Federal police storm a Mass to capture a suspected drug kingpin. Priests pray with the families of murdered men, then face killers in the confessional.

Mexico’s Roman Catholic clergy, increasingly caught in the middle of the nation’s drug war, are meeting this week to draft a strategy for coping with the violence, aided by advice from colleagues who faced similar threats in Colombia and Italy.

“We have become hostages in these violent confrontations between the drug cartels living among us,” said Archbishop Felipe Aguirre, who works in Acapulco, located in Guerrero state where the priest and seminary students were killed in June.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev Federico Lombardi, lauded the Mexican bishops for taking action.

“It’s good that the Catholic Church is involved with the major social issues in a country,” he said. “That’s particularly so when the issue is as critical as drug-related violence.”

Mexico trails only Colombia as the most dangerous place for priests in Latin America, with two out of every 10 priests facing serious risks, according to an August study by the Mexican Council of Bishops.

The council, which began its strategy conference Monday outside the capital, plans to release a report tomorrow with recommendations for priests and parishioners in drug hotspots.

Church officials say threats received by clergy have included notes and telephone calls following sermons against drug use and trafficking. Others fear for their safety because of information received from parishioners. Many priests have reported extortion attempts by gangs.

“Speaking has consequences. Keeping quiet also has consequences,” said the Rev Manuel Corral, the council’s public relations secretary.

Archbishop Hector Gonzalez of drug-plagued Durango state knows that all too well.

Gonzalez told reporters at a news conference in April that Mexico’s most wanted drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, lived in a small town nearby, and that “everybody knows it except the authorities.”.

Days later, investigators found the bodies of two slain army lieutenants in Durango’s mountains, accompanied by a note: “Neither the government nor priests can handle El Chapo.”

After the killings, government officials said they stepped up surveillance of the area. Guzman, the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, remains at large.

Gonzalez – on advice from church leaders – clammed up, telling reporters who asked for comment: “I am deaf and dumb.”

Mexico’s struggle with drug traffickers has long posed a dilemma, sometimes deadly, for priests whose congregations may include impoverished marijuana farmers or cartel hitmen.