Since 1989, Prague has become a major destination for gay tourists and for sex tourists of all orientations from Western countries. To date, relatively little attention from policy or social theory perspectives has focused on males involved in sex work in Czech Republic. Based on the author's fieldwork in the gay community in Prague during 1999-2002 with follow-up visits in 2004-2006, this article looks at the experiences of young men (especially gay-identified men) involved in homosexual sex work in Prague, describes their relationship to the mainstream gay scenes in Prague in several phases since the mid-1990s, and discusses problems they face. Findings include the following: 1) Transactional sex exists on a continuum - ranging from one-time explicit exchanges of sex for money, through flirting for drinks, to longer-term relationships strongly motivated by financial considerations. 2) The latter types provide both a potential point of entry to sex work and a point of contact or plausible deniability on the gay mainstream. 3) Young men involved in various forms of sex work provide one of the major encounter points between Western tourists and native Czechs and Slovaks; this has been aggressively marketed in Western Europe and North America since the mid-1990s by por-nographers, both Czech and foreign. 4) Male sex work does not generally provide a long-term career in Czech Republic; many former sex workers appear to end up in jobs such as bartending or as tour guides, where they can use their language skills and customer service experience.
Four new Dactylogyrus species (Dactylogyrus pallicirrus sp. n. from Cyprinion macrostomum and Cyprinion watsoni, D. rohdeianus sp. n. and D. capoetae sp. n. from Capotta damascina, and D. schizocypris sp. n. from Schizocypris hrucei) are described from endemic Iranian freshwater fishes. Comments on the monogenean fauna of Iranian freshwater fishes are presented.
Four species of adult digeneans arc reported from freshwater fishes of two lakes in Neuquén, Patagonia, Argentina. Allocreadium patagonicum sp. n. (Allocreadiidae) is described from the intestine of Percichthys colhuapiensis MacDonagh and Percichthys trucha (Cuvier et Valenciennes) (Percichthyidae) from Lago Aluminé. Three species rcdescribed are: Acanthostomoides apophalliformis Szidat, 1956 (Acanthostomidac) from the intestine of P. colhuapiensis and P. trucha from Lago Aluminé and of Salmo trutta (Linnaeus) (Salmonidae) from Lapo Muechulafquén; Deropegus patagonicus (Szidat, 1956) comb. n. (= Genarches patagonicus Szidat, 1956) (Derogenidae) from the stomach of P. colhuapiensis, P. trucha, Oncorhynchus mykiss (Walbaum) (Salmonidae) and Salvelinus fontinalis (Mitchill) (Salmonidae) from Lago Aluminé and of S. trutta from Lago l luechulafquén; and Austrocreadium papilliferum Szidat, 1956 from the intestine of P. trucha from Lago Aluminé. The genus Polylekithum Arnold, 1934 is considered a synonym of the genus Allocreadium Looss, 1900. The genus Austrocreadium Szidat, 1956 is removed to the family Homalomelridae.
The new post-modern theory of mass media as elaborated by Jean Baudrillard makes the provocative claim that the media representation of social reality is the very mode of its disappearance. In this essay, using Baudrillard's theory, the author analyses the production of news on the war in Bosnia by American TV networks and argues for a local rather than global representation of social reality. While the edited words and images on the television screen produce fake realities, there are specific practical conditions behind their production that can be described and analysed as a locally produced social reality. To prove this point, the author draws on two sets of data. The first contains two news reports by 'ABC News' (American Broadcasting Corporation) about the war in Bosnia, each of which uses the same image of a sniper: in the first report, he is identified as a Bosnian Muslim, in the second, as a Bosnian Serb. The fact that the same image may signify two mutually exclusive identities is an example of fake news created by means of specific editing practices. The second set of data consists of a television news broadcast in which the author appears as a translator for a Bosnian woman. The author compares the edited news footage with the event as he actually experienced it and argues that the falsification of this 'news' occurred, with his complicity, in response to a particular contingency of the moment.