(02-04) 02:27 PST Virginia Beach, Va. (AP) —

Police confiscated two display photos of scantily clad men and a woman from an Abercrombie & Fitch store and cited the manager on a misdemeanor obscenity charge, authorities said.

The police issued the summons Saturday after Abercrombie management did not heed warnings to remove the images from the Lynnhaven Mall store after some customers complained, police spokesman Adam Bernstein said.

One photograph showed three shirtless young men, with one man’s upper buttocks showing. The other image was of a woman whose breast was mostly exposed, authorities said.

City code makes it a crime to display “obscene materials in a business that is open to juveniles,” Bernstein said.

Bernstein said police charged the manager because there is no legal way to issue a summons to a corporate entity in such circumstances. If convicted, the manager faces a fine of up to $2,000 and as much as a year in jail.

The manager declined to comment, saying that he was waiting for guidance from corporate officials at the New Albany, Ohio-based retailer. A telephone message left for an Abercrombie spokeswoman Sunday night was not immediately returned.

Abercrombie & Fitch has earned a reputation for its risque catalogues and promotional photography featuring scantily clothed models. In 2003, the company halted publication of its 7-year-old A&F Quarterly catalog because of complaints about sexually suggestive photographs.

In 2004, it agreed to pay $50 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the company of promoting whites over minorities and cultivating a virtually all-white image.

In a shipyard in Germany, Blohm Voss workers are building a mammoth yacht called the Eclipse.

Like many things in the secretive world of superyachts, its exact length is hard to pin down. So is the name of its owner, and the cost of building it.

But according to the Web site of The Yacht Report, one of several publications that track yachting with the same intensity that gossip magazines cover Hollywood hunks, the Eclipse is 531.5 feet, or 162 meters, long.

That is six and a half feet longer than the Dubai, an 11,600-ton behemoth that holds the record as the worlds largest yacht. Its owner is the ruler of Dubai, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum.

The extra length on the Eclipse is not an accident. Supersized yachts are the latest examples of one-upmanship among billionaires, many of whom already own a private jet, a Rolls-Royce or two and multiple mansions.

Despite fear of an economic recession and unrelenting job pressures among those who remain yachtless, there is still a lot of money floating around the world. And as the superrich get richer, the size of yachts grows bigger and bigger, too.

“When a yacht is over 328 feet, its so big that you lose the intimacy,” said Tork Buckley, editor of The Yacht Report. “On the other hand, youve got bragging rights. No question, thats a very strong part of the motivation.”

Who will be the one to wrest bragging rights from the sheik? Blohm Voss, a leading shipbuilder, is not saying. According to an executive at a different yacht company, who requested anonymity because he was concerned about losing clients, it is being built for Roman Abramovich, a Russian tycoon.

Abramovich already owns the 282-foot Ecstasea and the 377-foot Pelorus, and Web sites that track yachts speculate that he may be the owner of a new 394-foot yacht called Sigma that resembles a battleship. A spokesman for Abramovich declined to comment.

Just four years ago, when Lawrence Ellison, the chief executive of the Oracle, took possession of the 454-foot Rising Sun, he gained crowing rights over Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder.

Allens yacht, the Octopus, is relatively minuscule at 417 feet.

(Since then, David Geffen, the Hollywood executive, has bought a 50 percent share of the Rising Sun from Ellison.)

Many yacht owners are entrepreneurs or industrialists, rather than royalty or bold-faced names from Silicon Valley, according to yacht designers and builders. “One of my clients is a woman who started her own business and ended up making cocktail-type quiches sold through Costco and Wal-Mart,” said Douglas Sharp, who owns a yacht design company in San Diego.

Like Abramovich, a growing number of yacht buyers are from emerging markets. “Theres an incredible amount of disposable money in the world at the moment, and a lot of money is coming out of new markets like Russia and Ukraine, as well as India,” said Jonathan Beckett, chief executive of Burgess, a company that helps owners build and charter yachts. “These people have made a lot of money very quickly and have an appetite.”

According to ShowBoats International, a luxury yacht magazine, 916 yachts measuring 80 feet or longer - the traditional definition of a superyacht - were on order or under construction as of last Sept. 1, four times the number in 1997. The biggest gains were among the biggest yachts: 47 yachts were 200 to 249 feet long, up 68 percent from a year earlier, while 23 were 250 feet or longer, an increase of 28 percent.

“When I started in the early 1970s, a 60-foot boat was considered pretty large,” Sharp said. “A 150-foot boat was queen of the show in Monaco in 1982. In 2008, you wouldnt be able to find that boat in the marina.”

Some new megayachts are so big that they have to dock in commercial ports. The growth in the number and size of yachts is also making it hard to find qualified crew members.

Still, many yacht owners trade in their boats every few years for bigger models.

“People want more toys to play with. Thats something that drives it,” said Wim Koersvelt, director of Icon Yachts in the Netherlands. “Gyms were unusual 20 years ago, and no yacht is being built now without a gym. Theyre buying two- to four-person submarines, have four Jet Skis and little sailboats stored on board, as well as helicopter landing pads.”

It takes two to four years to build a yacht, and prices are rising so quickly that some owners are selling their boats before theyre even finished - for a tidy profit. Beckett of Burgess says prices rose 10 percent to 20 percent in the past two years alone. He estimates that a yacht 328 feet long would cost about $230 million today, with prices rising to $650 million for a 500-foot yacht.

A BID to persuade smokers to keep the country’s beaches ‘butt-free’ started yesterday.

The Marine Conservation Society, Surfers Against Sewage and British Naturism have teamed up to promote the ‘no butts on the beach’ message.

The MCS said it has seen a general increase in smoking-related litter on the UK’s beaches. With England today joining Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by bringing in a smoking ban, there are fears that this trend will continue.

During the MCS Beachwatch 2006, 15,782 cigarette ends were found on 358 beaches around the UK. They were the eighth most common item found and made up 4.2% of the total litter. That’s an average of 84.1 cigarette ends found for each kilometre of beach surveyed.

In an annual global survey, cigarette butts have been the number one item found for 17 years running. In September 2006, over 1.9 million butts were recorded from beaches around the world.

Emma Snowden, MCS litter projects co-ordinator, said: “Trillions of cigarette butts enter the water environment every year with potentially devastating effects on marine wildlife.

“They are not biodegradable as the filters are made of a type of plastic and so persist for many years. They have been found in the guts of whales, dolphins, sea birds, fish and turtles where they can leach toxic chemicals.”

Richard Hardy, SAS campaigns director, said: “With more smokers having to smoke outside, it’s vitally important that cigarette butts are disposed of properly or we can expect more of them finding their way on to beaches throughout the UK.”

Cigarettes found on the beach and in the marine environment do not all come from people dropping them on the beach.

Instead, those discarded in car parks, along pavements and in street gutters miles from the coast are washed into storm drains, streams and rivers, and can eventually end up on beaches and in the seas.

Cigarette filters, designed to absorb tar and chemicals such as cadmium, lead and arsenic, leach these chemicals into the water when the filter reaches the sea.

Experiments have shown that just one cigarette filter is toxic enough to kill water fleas in eight litres of water.

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