For nearly a decade, Robert Burck has been a fixture in Times Square, where he strums a guitar on a street corner while dressed in his skimpy signature costume.

In a lawsuit filed this week in Manhattan federal court, Burck said that two oversized Times Square billboards that promote M&Ms used his look without compensating him.

The billboards feature a scantily clad blue M&M with a guitar alongside views of New York including street scenes and the Statue of Liberty.

Burck is suing privately held Mars Inc., which makes M&Ms, and Chute Gerdeman Inc., an Ohio agency that he said created the ad, for trademark infringement.

Neither company was immediately available for comment.

"Just like The Naked Cowboy does on a daily basis in Times Square, the M&M is not only dressed as "The Naked Cowboy", it is playing the Naked Cowboy's distinctive white guitar in the cartoon," the lawsuit said.

Mars and Chute Gerdeman "decided to exploit and trade upon The Naked Cowboy's well-recognized likeness without a license and without furnishing any compensation," the lawsuit said.

Burck has trademarked his signature look and has made several television and movie appearances in costume, including for a televised audition on the "American Idol" reality TV program, the lawsuit said.

A bank employee reported the deposit to police, who contacted the 18-year-old customer. Officers said she might have mistakenly included the bag when she got money out of her pocket for the deposit.

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has ordered florists and gift shop owners in the capital Riyadh to remove any items colored scarlet, which is widely seen as symbolizing love, newspapers said.

"They visited us last night," the Saudi Gazette quoted an unidentified florist as saying.

It is not unusual for the Saudi vice squad to clamp down ahead of Valentine's Day, which it sees as encouraging relations between men and women outside of wedlock, the newspaper said.

Saudi Arabia imposes an austere form of Sunni Islam which prevents unrelated men and women from mixing, bans women from driving and demands that women wear a headscarf and a cloak.

Relations outside marriage are strictly banned and punishable by law.

The "Love Detector" service from mobile operator KTF uses technology that is supposed to analyse voice patterns to see if a lover is speaking honestly and with affection.

"We created this service because we thought people would want to know what others were feeling about them," said Ahn Hee-jung, a KTF official.

Users who speak by pointing their mobile phones at themselves for video conferences can see a "love meter" bar on the screen of their handset during a conversation.

They later receive an analysis of the conversation delivered through text message that breaks down the amount of affection, surprise, concentration and honesty of the other speaker.

The service costs subscribers a flat fee of 1,500 won (80 pence) a month for unlimited use or can be accessed at 300 won for each call, KTF said.

"The caller is paying the money, so the information is provided only to him or her," said Ahn.

Contrary to its racy reputation, Thailand told police and "student inspectors" to stake out motels, malls and parks to ensure youngsters behaved themselves on the "Day of Love," when polls say many teenagers have sex for the first time.

In the northern city of Chiang Mai, youngsters flocked to give blood in a "I'd rather lose blood than virginity" campaign.

In China, where homosexuality was listed as a mental illness until 2001, 20 gay and lesbian activists in Beijing marked the day by handing out roses to promote awareness and same-sex marriages.

More than 2,000 people signed up for 16 simultaneous speed dating events in eight Australian cities on Thursday, with the proceeds going to charity.

Australian newspapers ran pages of Valentine's Day love messages to people with nicknames like "Boo Bubby," "Pookey," "The Phantom" and "Wicked Wench." "I love 2 Things," wrote a romantic Johnny, adding "cars & u."

Mobile telephone networks were preparing for an onslaught of love over the airwaves. Top phone company Telstra expected picture messages to be up 60 percent and video calls 50 percent higher than normal.

Valentine's Day in the Philippines was celebrated traditionally, with a riot of red and pink roses, heart-shaped cards and syrupy love ballads.

But Manila's Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales warned against "exclusive moments" between unmarried couples.

"We advise everyone to be careful especially when spending time with one's boyfriend or girlfriend," Rosales said in an interview on Church-run Radio Veritas. "Sometimes, celebration of this day -- which is not really bad -- ends up in a sin."

SAY A PRAYER

Although a largely Roman Catholic country, where marriage is heavily emphasized, extramarital affairs are often accepted in the Philippines and teenage pregnancy is not uncommon.

The cardinal said religious pastimes such as attending Mass or saying the rosary were a good way of celebrating special days, such as Valentines. "It's best to look for honest-to-goodness entertainment," he said.

A day before Valentine's Day, more than 500 Japanese women sailed across the Ashino-ko lake at the foot of Mount Fuji, then trekked through a snow-covered forest to pray for love at the small red Kuzuryu shrine, a famous divine match-making site.

The more than 1,000-year-old shrine, whose name means "nine-headed dragon," started to attract singles after some pilgrims reported that their prayers for romance had been heard.

"I prayed for the man I love to fall in love with me," said Ayumi Sakai, a 25-year-old saleswoman who had arrived in one of two love boats ferrying more than 500 women to the shrine.

With both men and women in Japan increasingly putting off marriage to pursue their careers -- often cited as one reason behind the country's low birth rate -- lovelorn Japanese in search of a partner need all the support they can get.

In the Japanese version of Valentine's Day, women buy chocolates for their lovers and even colleagues, while men return the favor a month later, on White Day.

South Korea put a typically modern spin on the traditional festival, with a mobile phone operator promoting a "Love Detector" service that is supposed to analyze voice patterns to see if a lover is speaking honestly and with affection.

Valentine's Day, with roots in both an early Christian martyr and an ancient Roman fertility festival, was first linked to romance by Chaucer in a 1381 poem, according to some references. The exchange of cards was popularized in England not long after.

The kennel owner, 51-year-old Anette Sjoeholm, was guilty of "discrimination in the form of harassment," the court said in its ruling, which echoed a lower-court finding in 2006.

Smila Bergstroem had contacted Sjoeholm to purchase one of the puppies she had advertised for sale, but when she let it slip that she lived with another woman, Sjoeholm had refused to go through with the sale, according to the TT news agency.

The kennel owner reportedly made it clear to Bergstroem that she did not trust homosexuals, telling her she had read that transvestites sexually abused animals.

"The smell of burnt marijuana does not reasonably support the inference that additional marijuana is present," the three-judge panel said in newly-released court filings.

Thus, police "did not have reasonable grounds to search" the truck of Archibald Janvier after his roadside arrest in 2004 for narcotics possession, the judges said in maintaining his acquittal.

Police had originally stopped Janvier's truck in La Loche, Saskatchewan, in western Canada, to ticket him for a busted tail light.

At trial, the arresting officer testified he had smelled the "pungent odor of burnt marijuana" coming from inside Janvier's truck, charged him with illegal drug possession, and then searched his vehicle.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police constable found eight grams of marijuana in Janvier's coat pocket, boot and truck console, but that evidence was thrown out.

Archibald's lawyer Ronald Piche successfully argued the warrant less search and seizure were "unreasonable" because the aroma of burnt marijuana -- as opposed to raw marijuana -- infers that the drug has dissipated.

"How can you say you're in possession of something that doesn't exist," Piche told the daily Saskatoon Star Phoenix.

The man was searched at Lungi international airport near the capital Freetown as he tried to leave the West African country, Chief Superintendent Carow Kamara told Reuters.

"Seven packets of cocaine were found wrapped in a sock which he had placed before his private area," Kamara, head of airport police, said.

"The sock was opened and the packets totaling one kilogram were discovered," he said.

West Africa has become an important staging post for Colombian cocaine on its way to lucrative European markets.

That was followed by a telephone number for a phone sex line, The Saginaw News reported. The phones were working properly by midmorning, Sgt. Alan Renz said.

The mix-up was an "internal issue that has nothing to do with the phone company" and an investigation is underway, he told the newspaper.

V. Sathya, an insurance manager in the northern Malaysian state of Terengganu, said his nine-year old son was startled to find the intruder sleeping in his bed, with a blanket pulled over his head, after the family returned from a shopping trip.

"He shouted and ran out of his room," Sathya told the Star newspaper. "Even then the burglar did not wake up and carried on sleeping while holding on to one of my wife's purses."

The thief also ate up the cookies the family had prepared for Chinese New Year celebrations next weekend.

"My wife had prepared various delicacies over the past few days but the rogue ate everything," said Sathya, who is married to an ethnic Chinese.

The use of some soft drugs is tolerated in the Netherlands and the sale of cannabis in small quantities for recreational use is permitted in government-regulated coffee shops.

"The minister does not want police officials to use soft drugs, such as cannabis, not even during their spare time. It does not fit with the presentation of the police to the public," a spokesman said Thursday.

There are 25 regional police forces in the Netherlands, some of which have implemented a no-drugs policy for off-duty officers while others have not, he said. "We should have one rule for the whole force," he said.

Researchers from Newcastle University presented their findings at a medical conference at the weekend, a university spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

The IVF, or test-tube, embryos were created using DNA from one man and two women.

The idea is to prevent women with faults in their mitochondrial DNA passing diseases on to their children. Around one in 5,000 children suffer from mitochondrial diseases, which can include fatal liver, heart and brain disorders, deafness, muscular problems and forms of epilepsy.

If all goes well, researchers believe they may be able to start offering the technique as a treatment in three to five years.

Mitochondria are tiny power packs inside cells that provide their energy. Faulty genetics can mean mitochondria do not completely burn food and oxygen, leading to the build-up of poisons responsible for more than 40 different diseases.

The Newcastle team believe these diseases could be avoided if embryos at risk were given an effective mitochondrial transplant. The process involves in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and the subsequent removal of the egg's nucleus. The nucleus is then placed into a donor egg whose DNA has been removed.

The resulting foetus inherits nuclear DNA, or genes, from both parents but mitochondrial DNA from a third party.

"The idea is simply to swap the bad diseased mitochondria -- give a transplant, if you like -- for good healthy ones from a donor," Patrick Chinnery, a member of the Newcastle team, said in a telephone interview.

"We're trying to prevent kids being born with fatal diseases." Mitochondrial DNA is passed down only through the female line.

The technique has so far been tried only in the laboratory, using abnormal embryos left over from IVF therapy, and the handful of three-parent embryos created were destroyed after six days.

Stiff opposition to the technique is likely from critics of embryo research who fear the creation of designer babies.

The research was presented to the Medical Research Council Centre for Neuromuscular Diseases conference in London on February 1-2.

Travel agency OssiUrlaub.de said it would start taking bookings from Friday for a trial nudist day trip from the eastern German town of Erfurt to the popular Baltic Sea resort of Usedom, planned for July 5 and costing 499 euros (370 pounds).

"It's expensive, I know," managing director Enrico Hess told Reuters by phone. "It's because the plane's very small. There's no real reason why a flight in which one flies naked should be more expensive than any other."

The 55 passengers will have to remain clothed until they board, and dress before disembarking, said Hess. The crew will remain clothed throughout the flight for safety reasons.

"I wish I could say we thought of it ourselves but the idea came from a customer," Hess told Reuters by phone. "It's an unusual gap in the market."

Naturism, or "free body culture" (FKK) as it is known in Germany, was banned by the Nazis but blossomed again after the Second World War, particularly in eastern Germany.

"There are FKK hotels where you can go into the restaurants and shops naked, for example," Hess said. "For FKK fans -- not that I'm one of them -- it's nothing unusual."

"I don't want people to get the wrong idea. It's not that we're starting a swinger club in mid-air or something like that," he added. "We're a perfectly normal holiday company."

Aalandsbanken and Tapiola banks jointly launched "Top Women," an option invested in a bouquet of 15 multi-national companies "selected for their strong profitability and large number of women in high-level positions."

"Companies with both women and men in leading positions are more profitable than those led solely by men," the banks said in a statement, referring to several recent studies.

One of the studies, conducted by international consultancy McKinsey last year and titled "Women Matter", found that companies with more gender-balanced boardrooms are on average 10 percent more profitable than their peers in the same sector.

"Women making most of the household purchasing decisions and women-led companies are good at picking up on customer needs," the banks explained, adding that women leaders also offer alternative and fresh approaches to business deals.

Among the companies included in the Top Women option are cereal maker Kellogg's and cosmetics firm Avon from the United States, British energy company Centrica, Swedish banks SEB and Swedbank and Norwegian oil giant StatoilHydro.

The option is open between January 28 and February 15 and requires a minimum investment guarantee of 1,000 euros (1,460 dollars).

McMinn County Sheriff's Deputy Rick Shadrick pulled into the church parking lot early Saturday morning after he spotted a car parked near the building.

He found Jennifer Hunt, 35, walking from behind the building, where she said she was going to bathroom. When she was walking to her car to get her ID, a crowbar dropped from her pants

The officer also found Hunt had a screwdriver and observed pry marks on church doors. Hunt was being held on $2,000 bond pending a Tuesday arraignment.