Here is a news article: Be that as it may, many consumers might retort that they'll be the judge of how much toilet paper they use. And if you're going to shrink your rolls you might as well be tough enough to acknowledge it openly, rather than wait to be busted. ||||| Kimberly-Clark Corp. recently rolled out new Kleenex tissue that it says is 15% "bulkier."

 It's also stingier. Each box has 13% fewer sheets than before.

 Consumer products makers call this "desheeting"—reducing the number of... ||||| The seed for this crawl was a list of every host in the Wayback Machine

 This crawl was run at a level 1 (URLs including their embeds, plus the URLs of all outbound links including their embeds)

 The WARC files associated with this crawl are not currently available to the general public. ||||| Downsizing has hit the toilet paper aisle as rolls become narrower, cardboard tubes grow in diameter, the number of sheets per roll falls, and the sheets get smaller. With Americans using an average of 46 sheets of toilet paper a day, according to Kimberly-Clark, you want to make sure the kind you buy gets the job done. Consumer Reports tests toilet paper for strength, softness, disintegration, and tearing ease. Two winners top our latest toilet paper tests.

 At 25 cents per 100 sheets, White Cloud 3-Ply Ultra sold at Walmart was named a CR Best Buy. It got excellent marks for strength and softness, and disintegration and tearing ease was very good. While tearing ease for Charmin Ultra Strong was excellent, it did not score as high on the other three attributes and costs 41 cents for 100 sheets. But it too made our list of top toilet paper picks.

 The also-rans include Scott 1000, 8 cents, which is neither soft nor strong; Marcal Small Steps, 25 cents, which is almost as harsh as Scott 1000 and doesn’t tear easily, and Cottonelle CleanCare with Touch of Soft Cotton. Despite its name, it’s less soft than many and at 44 cents per 100 sheets costs more than all but one other tissue in our tests. And don’t buy by brand alone. Various Scott, Cottonelle, and Charmin products scored quite differently. |||||
A summary of this is?

– Does your toilet paper seem smaller to you these days? Well, you're not crazy: It is. As the Washington Post reports, toilet paper squares used to be 4.5 inches by 4.5 inches. Nowadays, they're up to a half-inch narrower, shorter—or both. (Apparently, it's enough of a difference to be noticeable to the naked eye: Last week, a reader wrote in to the Los Angeles Times complaining about a "26% reduction in surface area.") And, as Consumer Reports noted last year, the cardboard tubes are also increasing in diameter as the number of sheets per roll decreases. But the price is not falling: In 2012 and 2013, the unit price rose about 2% per year. (In 2013, the Wall Street Journal explained that the process of selling less paper for the same price is known as "desheeting.") "A standard roll is much smaller than it used to be, so now they're selling double rolls. So, without being scientific, I think a double roll is pretty well equivalent to what a standard roll was perhaps a decade ago," a research analyst tells NPR. One not-as-obvious reason for the TP trend is that companies that make toilet paper also make products like paper towels and napkins. Though toilet paper is essential—Americans are estimated to use an average of 46 sheets per day, and that's probably not set to change any time soon—paper towel and napkin sales are falling. In particular, large companies, like offices and restaurants, are moving toward things like air dryers or, the analyst explains, rationing how many napkins they dole out to customers. But they'll never cut down on their TP orders in an attempt to ration that particular product, so orders will remain steady. (As for those hand dryers, you might not want to use them.)


Here is a news article: Like many California families who choose to home-school their children, the Turpins registered with the state Department of Education. Beginning in 2010, when the family lived in Murrieta, David Turpin filed paperwork to run a private school out of his home, putting himself down as principal of what he called the Sandcastle Day School. For several years, he described it as a full-time, religious school unaffiliated with any denomination, but recently he wrote that it was nonreligious. ||||| The 13 Perris children who authorities say suffered stunted growth because of torture and neglect by their parents likely face a long rehabilitation, both physically and psychologically, an expert suggested.

 Sophia Grant, medical director of the child abuse and neglect unit at Riverside University Health System, has not treated the children. But at a Riverside County sheriff’s news conference Tuesday, Jan. 16, she spoke about similar cases.

 At the half-hour briefing, where media crowded shoulder-to-shoulder into a conference room at the Perris sheriff’s station, the girl who snuck out of the home and alerted authorities was praised for her bravery.

 Also, the CEO of the hospital where the seven adults — initially mistaken for minors because of their malnutrition — are being treated said the patients “feel safe” and are stable.

 And a sheriff’s captain promised a “meticulous investigation” but couldn’t provide any new insights into what motivated David Allen Turpin, 56, and Louise Ann Turpin, 49, to treat their children a way that resulted in the couple’s arrest Sunday.

 The parents remained jailed Tuesday with bail set at $9 million each. Unless they post bail, under state law they must be charged by Thursday or freed from jail.

 Meanwhile, neighbors on Muir Woods Road in the suburban Riverside County city continued to express shock about the case, which has drawn media interest from such far-flung locales as New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom.

 Also Tuesday, the Sheriff’s Department cautioned well-meaning people to donate to fundraising websites for the children with caution. Some may be phony.

 Physical, psychological damage

 Deputies who discovered the six minors and seven adults Sunday inside the dark, smelly home initially believed that all 13 were minors because they appeared so small. Three were chained and padlocked to furniture, authorities said.

 Grant indicated that in cases like this, such poor health would not have occurred in a short time.

 Stunting of growth, in general, would have been caused by malnourishment over “a prolonged period,” Grant said.

 The recovery will be gradual, she said.

 “You can imagine the post-traumatic stress disorder if you’ve been deprived of nutrition, if you’ve been deprived of normal childhood activities, normal interactions and the people who should have been providing for you have failed to do so — that is going to cause some psychological damage,” Grant said.

 “Children who have been malnourished over a prolonged period will have growth stunting, will have nutritional deficiencies, they can suffer complications if you try to feed them, so it requires close monitoring of them when introducing proper nutrition to these kids. … The psychological support is going to be ongoing and longterm.”

 The adults – five women and two men — are being treated at Corona Regional Medical Center and are being kept together and guarded by security.

 Hospital CEO Mark Uffer said he could not describe their conditions other than “stable” because of privacy laws. He described them as friendly and cooperative.

 “I think they feel safe,” he said. “I believe they are hopeful that life will get better for them.”

 Uffer said he had never seen a case like this.

 “It’s hard to think of them as adults when you first see them. They’re small and it’s very clear that they’re (malnourished). … The way my staff has responded, I think they were horrified. I think they are very focused on improving the quality of their existence.”

 The minors are being treated at Riverside University Health System Medical Center in Moreno Valley.

 What’s next?

 Susan von Zabern, director of the Riverside County Department of Public Social Services, said the county plans to go to court to get authorization to oversee and care for the children.

 The minors could be placed with relatives after background checks, she said at the news conference. The adults’ needs will be assessed and they will be offered services.

 Child Protective Services had never visited the home, von Zabern said.

 She urged people to report suspicions of abuse and neglect.

 The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department also had not previously been called to the Turpins’ home, said Capt. Greg Fellows, the commander of the Perris station.

 Investigators plan to dig into their background and want to know when the alleged mistreatment of their children began and what the motive was.

 “We’re going to conduct a meticulous investigation and we’re going to get answers to all these questions,” Fellows said at the news conference.

 He added that sheriff’s officials believe that the couple are the biological parents of all 13 children.

 The Turpins have lived in Perris since about 2014, Fellows said. Before that, they lived in Murrieta, and before that in Texas.

 Media in Texas have reported that the Turpins lived in Tarrant and Johnson counties. There were no records of criminal cases involving the Turpins in those counties. CPS officials in Texas had no contact with the Turpins, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.

 James and Betty Turpin of West Virginia told ABC News that their son David and his wife had so many children because “God called on them.” In a brief statement to the Southern California News Group, they said they knew nothing about any mistreatment.

 Girl’s courage praised

 The secrets being kept inside the four-bedroom, three-bathroom, 2,388-square-foot home were revealed Sunday when a 17-year-old girl escaped through a window carrying a cellphone she snatched. Fellows described it as “deactivated,” but many phones allow someone to call 911 even when they’re locked or not activated.

 When deputies arrived, the girl – who they thought looked about 10 years old – showed them photos that convinced them her 12 siblings were being held captive.

 “We do need to acknowledge the courage of the young girl who escaped from that residence to bring attention so they could get the help they so needed,” said Fellows, who said he did not have any additional details on the escape.

 Not far from the station, Muir Woods Road residents were still in disbelief that such a sensational case could unfold in their neighborhood.

 “It still feels like a dream, it’s not reality,” Perris resident Ricardo Ross said Tuesday, adding: “I woke up this morning and it’s just devastating. Devastating news.”

 Rosemberg Salgado has lived across the street from the Turpins since August 2016.

 “You would have never thought in this kind of neighborhood you could find out that there was some people who can do that to kids,” he said. “That is just insane and crazy.”

 The Turpins apparently lived largely out of sight. For one, they had been teaching six of their children in a private, in-home, state registered school, Sandcastle Day School, of which David Turpin was listed as principal.

 The state Department of Education said in a statement Tuesday that under California law, the agency does not have the authority to monitor or inspect private schools.

 State Assemblymember Jose Medina (D-Riverside), in emailed statement Tuesday, called for more oversight of private and home schools.

 “I am extremely concerned,” he said.

 Staff writers Shane Newell, Craig Shultz, Christopher Haire, Roxana Kopetman, Beatriz E. Valenzuela and Richard K. De Atley contributed to this report.

 Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct David Turpin’s age and Louise Turpin’s middle name. |||||
A summary of this is?

– The 13 siblings rescued from captivity in a California home were so badly treated that mental and physical recovery is likely to take a very long time, experts say. Corona Regional Medical Center CEO Mark Uffer says his staff was horrified by the condition of the seven adults in the group, who were so malnourished that they were mistaken for children. Sophia Grant, medical director of the child abuse unit at Riverside University Health System, tells the Press-Enterprise that such stunting of growth would have required malnourishment over a long period. She says recovery will be a gradual process for the siblings, who have likely suffered psychological damage from being deprived of normal interaction and from being mistreated by the parents who were supposed to provide for them. In other developments: Home-schooling. Father David Turpin, a former engineer at the Northrop Grumman aerospace company registered to run a private school out of his home, was required only to submit a form every year. Advocates for greater oversight of home-schooling in California say the abuse could have been exposed much earlier if the children had been required to have annual checkups from doctors and teachers, the Los Angeles Times reports. "Current law provides nothing to stop families like the Turpins from using home-schooling to isolate and imprison their children," says Rachel Coleman of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education.


Write a summary based on this article:

Expand Afghan Local Police, Gizab village of Uruzgan province, Afghanistan, April 2011. © 2011 AP Photo

 (Kabul) – Militias and some units of the new US-backed Afghan Local Police are committing serious human rights abuses, but the government is not providing proper oversight or holding them accountable, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The Afghan government and the US should sever ties with irregular armed groups and take immediate steps to create properly trained and vetted security forces that are held accountable for their actions.

 The 102-page report, “‘Just Don’t Call It a Militia:’ Impunity, Militias and the ‘Afghan Local Police,’” documents serious abuses, such as killings, rape, arbitrary detention, abductions, forcible land grabs, and illegal raids by irregular armed groups in northern Kunduz province and the Afghan Local Police (ALP) force in Baghlan, Herat, and Uruzgan provinces. The Afghan government has failed to hold these forces to account, fostering future abuses and generating support for the Taliban and other opposition forces, Human Rights Watch found.

 “The Afghan government has responded to the insurgency by reactivating militias that threaten the lives of ordinary Afghans” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Kabul and Washington need to make a clean break from supporting abusive and destabilizing militias to have any hope of a viable, long-term security strategy.”

 As part of its exit strategy, the US military is training and mentoring the year-old village-level ALP force.In March 2011, the commander of the international forces in Afghanistan at the time, Gen. David Petraeus, told the US Senate that the ALP is “arguably the most critical element in our effort to help Afghanistan develop the capability to secure itself.”

 Cases investigated by Human Rights Watch raise serious concerns about Afghan government and international efforts to arm, fund, vet, and hold accountable irregular armed groups. In Kunduz province, militias have spread quickly in recent years. Their increase is a deliberate policy of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, which has reactivated militia networks primarily through the Shura-e-Nazar (“Supervisory Council” of the north) and Jamiat-i-Islami networks, and provided money and weapons without sufficient oversight.

 “Just Don’t Call It a Militia” is based on over 120 interviews with victims of abuses and family members, village elders, witnesses, nongovernmental organization workers, Afghan security, human rights and government officials, foreign military officials and diplomats, journalists, and Afghanistan analysts.

 In most cases of serious abuses documented by Human Rights Watch in Kunduz, no action had been taken against those responsible. For example, in Khanabad district in August 2009, a militia killed four men due to a family dispute. An NDS official confirmed that the police could not arrest anyone involved in the killing because of the militia commander’s connection to the provincial chief of police and a local strongman who is closely involved with abusive armed groups. A prosecutor who is also the father of one of the men killed told Human Rights Watch, “No one has helped me, and I work for the government, so what about the other people? Who will listen to them?”

 “Patronage links to senior officials in the local security forces and the central government allow supposedly pro-government militias to terrorize local communities and operate with impunity,” Adams said.

 At the same time, the rapid build-up of the ALP has contributed to concerns about whether it will be a law-abiding force, Human Rights Watch said. Created in July 2010 at the behest of the US, the force is supposed to supplement the Afghan national army and police at the community and village levels. The Afghan Local Police is seen by the US military as a way to address the pressures of trying to hand over control of security to the Afghan government by 2014.

 Village shuras (councils) are tasked to nominate and vet members of the ALP, whose units report to the district chief of police. Units trained for only 21 days are being armed and deployed in areas where there is limited Afghan national army and police presence. As of August, 7,000 men had been recruited to the force. Plans are under way to arm and train up to 30,000.

 Afghan and US officials told Human Rights Watch that the ALP has improved security in some areas. In some communities, local residents interviewed by Human Rights Watch welcomed the new force and cited improvements in security. But other residents said the new police had not been properly vetted, citing criminal and insurgent elements being absorbed into the force. Many complained that the ALP, like other irregular armed groups, is not held accountable when implicated in abuses.

 Although the force is fairly new, Human Rights Watch documented several serious abuses by its members. In February in Shindand district in Herat province, for example, an ALP unit raided several houses, stealing belongings, beating residents, and illegally detaining six men. In another case, the ALP have been accused of beating teenage boys and hammering nails into the feet of one boy, but have not been arrested.

 In Baghlan province, former fighters with the Islamist Hezb-i-Islami, including a local strongman, Nur-ul Haq, have been recruited into the ALP. Haq and his men have been implicated in killings, land-grabs, and abductions. But the police have refused to investigate the allegations, telling Human Rights Watch that they are unable to question suspected ALP members due to their connections with powerful government officials and US special forces. In April, four armed ALP members in Baghlan abducted a 13-year-old boy on his way home from the bazaar and took him to the house of an ALP sub-commander, where he was gang raped. He escaped the next day. Although the assailants’ identities were well known, no arrests have taken place.

 In Uruzgan province in December 2010, a local strongman, Neda Muhammed, detained six elders after they refused to agree to provide men to the ALP. Some ALP members in Khas Uruzgan have been implicated by local officials and residents in illegal raids, beatings, and forcible collection of ushr (informal tax).

 Afghan and international proponents of the ALP point to safeguards, such as the Afghan Interior Ministry control over the ALP, village shura vetting of members, and training and mentoring by US special operations forces. But the national police lack adequate command and control structures, and the ALP often far outnumber the national police in the districts where they operate, Human Rights Watch said. Interior Ministry officials have also conceded to Human Rights Watch that such safeguards had also been promised for many of the previous community defense initiatives that ended in failure.

 Previous programs to create local defense forces have been hijacked by local strongmen or by ethnic or political factions, spreading fear, fuelling vendettas, and in some areas even playing into the hands of Taliban insurgents, Human Rights Watch said. One example was the Afghan National Auxiliary Police (ANAP), created in 2006, which was barely trained, underwent minimal vetting, had poorly defined rules of engagement, had high levels of infiltration, and was highly corrupt. Another, the Afghan Public Protection Force (AP3) in Wardak province, was hijacked by local strongmen and became involved in beatings and intimidation.

 “While there is a need for more security at the village level, the Afghan and US governments should be very careful not to repeat the mistakes of militias past,” Adams said. “If quick corrections are not made, the ALP could end up being just another militia that causes more problems than it cures.”

 Human Rights Watch called on the US and Afghan governments to avoid the rush to set up new units of the ALP around the country without proper vetting, oversight, and accountability mechanisms, as has occurred with some units.

 Human Rights Watch also urged the Afghan government to investigate all allegations of abuse by militias and the ALP, to allocate adequate resources to investigate complaints, and to create an external complaints body to act on reports of abuses by the ALP and other police forces.

 “Pressure to reduce international troop levels should not be at the expense of the rights of Afghans,” Adams said. “The Afghan government and its supporters need to understand that insecurity does not come only from the insurgency. Poor governance, corruption, human rights abuses, and impunity for government-affiliated forces all are drivers of the insurgency, and these issues need to be addressed if true stability is to come to Afghanistan.” ||||| Updated 2 p.m.

 Ten years of war. Two years of an accelerated effort to train Afghans to take over that fight, at an annual cost of $6 billion. And not a single Afghan army battalion can operate without assistance from U.S. or allied units.

 That was the assessment made by the officer responsible for training those Afghan soldiers, Lt. Gen. William Caldwell. Out of approximately 180 Afghan National Army battalions, only two operate “independently.” Except that “independently,” in Caldwell’s National Training Mission-Afghanistan command, means something different than “independently” does in the States.

 Those two “independent” battalions still require U.S. support for their maintenance, logistics and medical systems,” Caldwell admitted when Pentagon reporters pressed him on Monday morning.

 “Today, we haven’t developed their systems to enable them to do that yet,” Caldwell said.

 Building up foreign armies isn’t easy. During 2008′s battle for Basra, Iraqi forces relied heavily on U.S. and British support — and still saw more than a thousand desertions. That was four years after then Maj. Gen. David Petraeus took over the training of the Iraqi military.

 For the past two years, Caldwell’s overseen a big push to expand, professionalize and train Afghan soldiers and cops. Caldwell has gotten bodies into uniforms: the Afghan army and police total 305,516 today, up from 196,508 last December, and they’re “on track,” Caldwell says, to reach 352,000 by November 2012.

 Caldwell praised Afghan police officers during the Taliban’s audacious attack on Kabul earlier this month. Two separate cops “literally did a bear hug” on separate suicide bombers in different places around the city, sacrificing themselves in the process. “Policemen were doing heroic deeds,” Caldwell said.

 But most of Afghanistan’s men in uniform can’t read at a kindergarten level, much less understand the instrument panels on a helicopter or the serial numbers on their rifles.

 That’s one reason why it’ll be years before the U.S. takes its training wheels off the Afghan soldiers’ bikes. Although the Obama administration plans to turn the war over to forces Caldwell trains by 2014, Caldwell told Danger Room in June that the Afghans will need U.S. training until as late as 2017.

 That is, if attrition doesn’t get in the way. Caldwell expressed alarm that 1.4 percent of Afghan cops and 2.3 percent of Afghan soldiers walk off the job every month, saying that if “left unchecked [attrition] could undo much of the progress made to date.” Yet last week, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta testified that attrition rates are “as much as three percent per month.

 Asked by Danger Room about the increase, Caldwell simply said that the “goal we’ve set” is a 1.4 monthly attrition level across both forces. In the Afghan National Army, attrition “has been steady over the last year. We have not seen the decline,” Caldwell said.

 Then there’s the nagging issue of human rights. “U.S. officials have for years been aware of credible allegations that newly-installed Kandahar police chief [Brigadier General Abdul] Raziq and his men participated in a cold-blooded massacre of civilians,” writes Matthieu Aikins, in a gut-wrenching new expose for The Atlantic. Yet Raziq has been showered with cash and official praises from the highest level of the American-led coalition in Afghanistan.

 Caldwell has instituted an additional 18 hours of training on respecting Afghans’ rights into the eight-week course that the typical would-be Afghan cop takes. But Caldwell doesn’t train every Afghan cop. Members of a program called the Afghan Local Police — founded in 2010 by Petraeus to recruit auxiliaries against the Taliban — has been implicated in “killings, rape, arbitrary detention, abductions, forcible land grabs, and illegal raids by irregular armed groups,” according to a Human Rights Watch report issued this month.

 Special Operations Forces are responsible for turning these groups into respectable units. When Danger Room asked if it was time for Caldwell to take over that training, Caldwell said, “We’ve not been asked to at this point… If there is a request for us to help and become engaged in that, we obviously would. But at this point, I think the special forces element that has the responsibility for that clearly sees and understands what that report says. We all take that very seriously.”

 With insurgents assassinating the man in charge of negotiating a peace deal, the Afghan security forces are the backbone of the U.S.’ long-term plan for Afghan security. During his Senate testimony on Thursday, Panetta called their development “one of the most notable successes” of the war.

 Yet not only can no Afghan army battalion operate without U.S. aid, the U.S. has been purchasing them a lot of creature comforts. Caldwell said that his command recently stopped buying air conditioning units for Afghan barracks, replacing them with fans instead — part of an effort to pare down the $6 billion that it costs to keep the Afghan security forces going. Caldwell said he expects that number to drop — in part because someday Afghanistan won’t be ravaged by insurgency (maybe, hopefully) — but he doesn’t know how much it’ll drop by, or by when.

 “I’m still very realistic about the challenges out there,” Caldwell said.

 Update: I misheard Caldwell during today’s Pentagon briefing when he discussed the goal he’s set for monthly attrition rates. Thanks to his public-affairs officer, Lt. Col. Shawn Stroud, for alerting me to my mistake.

 Photo: Flickr/DVIDSHUB ||||| Abdul Raziq and his men have received millions of dollars’ worth of U.S. training and equipment to help in the fight against the Taliban. But is our ally—long alleged to be involved in corruption and drug smuggling—also guilty of mass murder?

 Above: Afghan General Abdul Raziq, seen here with American forces during a joint 2009 patrol near the Pakistan border (Emilio Morenatti/AP)

 Shyly, at times smiling with weak adolescent bravado, the two young men recounted to me how they were beaten and tortured. It was July, and we were sitting at a table in the cavernous restaurant where they both work, in the stupefying summer heat. They slouched forward with their arms on their knees, frequently glancing down toward their open sandals, at toes where livid burns from the electrical wires were still visible.

 I will call them Najib and Ahmad, though their names, like others in this article, have been changed to protect their safety. Both 23 years old, they looked like gangly young men who should be playing basketball on the street outside their house, or perhaps video games inside. But here in Kandahar City, the linchpin of the U.S. military’s campaign against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, they had found themselves the victims of America’s Afghan allies.

 One afternoon in June, two younger boys who worked at the restaurant, ages 12 and 14, had been stopped by the Afghan National Police while carrying home leftovers from an afternoon wedding. The boys, who were each paid about $60 a month, explained that they always took home leftover meals for their families. But this time they were arrested and accused of bringing food to insurgent fighters hiding outside the city.

 Around 11 o’clock that night, police showed up at the restaurant and arrested Najib and Ahmad as well, accusing them of having sent the younger boys out to feed the Taliban. They were taken to police headquarters, where they were handed over to men wearing the mottled gray-green uniforms of the Border Police.

 “They said, ‘We are going to beat you,’” Ahmad recalled.

 The Border Police were a new sight in the city: rough-looking types with wraparound shades and bandoliers of grenades, who could be seen lounging at checkpoints throughout the city and guarding installations such as the governor’s palace. Though restricted by Afghan law to operate only in international airports or within 50 kilometers of the border, they’d entered the city on May 29 when their boss, Brigadier General Abdul Raziq, was appointed acting chief of police in Kandahar province, following the assassination of his predecessor. Raziq was well known as a warlord and suspected drug trafficker who had waged a brutal campaign against the Taliban. He was also a close ally of both President Hamid Karzai and the U.S. military.

 Inside the station, the policemen tied a scarf to Najib’s handcuffs and hung him from the ceiling until he felt as if his arms were being pulled from their sockets. Then two men—one in uniform and holding a black metal baton, the other in plain clothes and wielding a length of cable—began beating him across his hips and thighs. A third man, also in plain clothes, questioned Najib: “What was the name of the commander you were bringing food to? How often do you bring food to the enemy?” Sobbing, Najib pleaded his innocence. In a nearby room, Ahmad could hear his friend’s screams, though he was spared for the time being.

 When the beating was over, Najib and Ahmad were taken outside and thrown into the back of an armored Humvee, where they lay all night with their wrists still tightly cuffed, suffocating in the stiflingly hot, enclosed interior.

 Early the next morning, they were taken to the governor’s palace, a long, low white compound fronted by a series of arches, jointly guarded by American soldiers and Border Police, where U.S. and Afghan officials meet on a daily basis. The police brought them around the back, to a filthy room that smelled of human waste, where they were shackled to the wall next to two other prisoners. Then, one at a time, they were taken to a second room, empty except for a gas-powered generator.

 Najib went first. He was forced to lie on his back, and wires leading to the generator were attached to toes on both his feet. A group of Border Police crowded around him, jeering and spitting snuff on his face. “Tell us the truth,” they commanded. Then they switched on the power. “It felt,” Najib told me, “like my whole body was filled with moving knives.”

 After he passed out from the pain, it was Ahmad’s turn to be tortured. When the two awoke from the ordeal, they were placed in separate rooms. In the evening, they were taken to police headquarters to see Abdul Raziq himself.

 Raziq is just 33 years old, slender and boyish-looking, with a square jaw and a widow’s peak that tufts up beneath the embroidered pillbox cap he favors when he’s not in uniform. Uneducated but clever and charismatic, he is, despite his youth, one of the most powerful warlords in southern Afghanistan. He controls a militia of several thousand men, as well as the lucrative drug-smuggling routes that pass through his territory, which includes a key trading town called Spin Boldak, near the border with Pakistan.

 That June evening, Najib and Ahmad were seated facing Raziq, who asked them to explain why they had been arrested. They told him about the younger boys who would take leftover food home to their families, and whether it was because they had not confessed, or because their stories had checked out, Raziq ordered them released.

 Najib and Ahmad complained to me of suffering nerve damage in their wrists from being cuffed for two days, and both said they’d had problems with their kidneys since the electrocutions: Ahmad, who had the more-severe burns, urinated blood for three days afterward. I examined the wounds on Ahmad’s and Najib’s toes—distinct circular burn marks that were still raw and unhealed—and I spoke with a number of their co-workers, who corroborated their claims. I was also given photos of their injuries taken immediately after they were released, and was told their story independently by a source inside the Kandahar police department unhappy with the abuses taking place under Raziq. “That’s what happened to them, when they were innocent,” this official said. “Think of what they do to the guilty.”

 What happened to Ahmad and Najib is not an isolated incident, but part of a larger pattern of abuse that has occurred wherever Raziq has been in power, first in his outpost of Spin Boldak and now in Kandahar City. Raziq has long been publicly suspected of drug trafficking and corruption; allegations that he and his men have been involved in extrajudicial killings, torture, and illegal imprisonment have been trickling out for years. Raziq categorically denies all such charges, telling The Atlantic, “When someone works well, then he finds a lot of enemies who try to ruin his name.”

 Last fall, Raziq and his militia were given a starring role in the U.S.-led military offensive into Taliban-controlled areas west of Kandahar City, a campaign that boosted his prestige immensely. Mentored by an American Special Forces team, Raziq’s fighters won public praise from U.S. officers for their combat prowess. After the offensive, Raziq was promoted to brigadier general—a rank requiring a direct order from President Karzai—in a January ceremony at the governor’s mansion. As Ben Moeling, who was until July the State Department’s senior official in Kandahar province, explained to me at the time, the promotion was “an explicit recognition of his importance.”

 Nor was that promotion the only evidence of Raziq’s continuing ascent. In May, when Karzai appointed him chief of police for Kandahar province, Raziq accepted only on the condition that he also remain in charge of Spin Boldak, the seat of his economic and tribal power. So, in a move that enabled him to retain both jobs, Raziq was appointed “acting” police chief in Kandahar.

 While beatings in police custody have been common in Kandahar for as long as there have been police, a number of Afghan and international officials familiar with the situation there told me that Raziq has brought with him a new level of brutality. Since his arrival, Raziq has launched a wave of arrests across the city in coordination with the government intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security. One human-rights official who has conducted prison visits in Kandahar told me that the number of prisoners is up more than 50 percent since Raziq’s arrival. In July, even the U.S. military seemed to have realized that the situation was out of hand, when American and NATO forces quietly halted the transfer of detainees to Afghan authorities in southern Afghanistan, because of credible allegations that prisoners had been severely abused while in police and NDS custody.

 Though Raziq has risen in large part through his own skills and ambition, he is also, to a considerable degree, a creation of the American military intervention in Afghanistan. (Prior to 2001, he had worked in a shop in Pakistan.) As part of a countrywide initiative, his men have been trained by two controversial private military firms, DynCorp and Xe, formerly known as Blackwater, at a U.S.-funded center in Spin Boldak, where they are also provided with weapons, vehicles, and communications equipment. Their salaries are subsequently paid through the Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan, a UN-administered international fund, to which the U.S. is the largest contributor. Raziq himself has enjoyed visits in Spin Boldak from such senior U.S. officials as Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and Generals Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus.

 In public, American officials had until recently been careful to downplay Raziq’s alleged abuses. When I met with the State Department’s Moeling at his Kandahar City office in January, he told me, “I think there is certainly a mythology about Abdul Raziq, where there’s a degree of assumption on some of those things. But I have never seen evidence of private prisons or of extrajudicial killings directly attributable to him.”

 Yet, as a 2006 State Department report shows, U.S. officials have for years been aware of credible allegations that Raziq and his men participated in a cold-blooded massacre of civilians, the details of which have, until now, been successfully buried. And this, in turn, raises questions regarding whether U.S. officials may have knowingly violated a 1997 law that forbids assistance to foreign military units involved in human-rights violations.

 Among a certain group of Kandaharis, the rough outlines of the massacre in question are well known. But nailing down a consistent, detailed version of what took place required two years of cross-checking with a diverse set of sources, including tribal elders, human-rights workers, police officers, and government officials. Most important, I was eventually given direct access to information and photos from a suppressed police investigation into the episode.

 On March 20, 2006, Shin Noorzai, a burly smuggler in his mid-30s, arrived with 15 companions at the guesthouse of an acquaintance, Zulmay Tufon, in Kabul. It was the eve of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, occasion for Afghanistan’s biggest festivities, and the capital city’s bedraggled trees were strung with fallen kites and the first buds of spring.

 Shin had grown up in southern Afghanistan during the violent, turbulent times of the anti-Soviet and civil wars, and had once been jailed in Pakistan for kidnapping a man. His companions, though, were a mixed group. Some were smugglers, but others were simply friends from the vicinity of the Afghan-Pakistani border, farmers or traders accompanying him on a trip to Mazar-e Sharif, a northern city famous for its new-year celebrations.

 According to an acquaintance of Shin’s who was also present at the gathering, he and his friends had arrived at the invitation of another man, Mohammed Naeem Lalai, an old friend of Shin’s who was then working as an officer in the Border Police. It was Lalai who had persuaded Shin and his friends to stop in Kabul on their way to Mazar. As the group sat down to dinner, Shin’s acquaintance, a fellow tribesman, watched uneasily, nervous about the company Shin was keeping. He offered to make the trip with Shin instead. “Come with me to Mazar,” he said to him.

 Shin replied that he was going to travel up to Mazar with Lalai. But first, he said, Lalai was taking him to another house where music and entertainment were promised. That night, as darkness fell over Kabul, Shin and his 15 companions left the house with Lalai. Their friends and families would never see them alive again.

 At the second house, Shin and his friends were apparently drugged. Unconscious, they were bound and gagged, then loaded into vehicles with official plates, one of them a green Ford Ranger with the seal of the Border Police on its doors.

 Driving along back roads, the cars made their way 500 kilometers south to Kandahar province, and by the next morning arrived at Spin Boldak, where Abdul Raziq, then a Border Police colonel in his mid-20s, was waiting for them.

 Raziq and Lalai had together lured Shin and his associates to Kabul. The tribes to which Raziq and Shin belonged had been feuding over smuggling routes, and Raziq held Shin responsible for the 2004 killing of his brother. Shin had been a marked man ever since. His 15 companions were just going to be collateral damage.

 Raziq and his men loaded their captives into a convoy of Land Cruisers and headed out to a parched, desolate stretch of the Afghan-Pakistani border. About 10 kilometers outside of town, they came to a halt. Shin and the others were hauled out of the trucks and into a dry river gully. There, at close range, Raziq’s forces let loose with automatic weapons, their bullets tearing through the helpless men, smashing their faces apart and soaking their robes with blood. After finishing the job, they unbound the corpses and left them there.

 Arriving back in Spin Boldak, Raziq reported to his superiors and to the press that he had intercepted “at least 15” Taliban fighters infiltrating from Pakistan, led by the “mid-level Taliban commander Mullah Shin,” and had killed them in a gun battle. “We got a tip-off about them coming across the border. We went down there and fought them,” Raziq told the Associated Press the next day. It was the beginning of a cover-up that would go all the way up to President Karzai in Kabul. |||||

– Ten years and $66 billion later, not one Afghan battalion is operating on its own. That was the conclusion of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell today as he set new benchmarks for training Afghan soldiers and expressed alarm over the attrition rates of Afghanistan's men in uniform. In charge of the training, Caldwell admitted that even the two so-called "independent" military units still require US backing for "maintenance, logistics, and medical systems." Most Afghan soldiers read below the kindergarten level, Wired reports, preventing them from using complex equipment. Afghan police are also dogged by corruption allegations that include mass murder as well as rape, arbitrary detention, and abductions. Meanwhile 2.3% of Afghan cops and 1.4% of Afghan soldiers are quitting every day. Caldwell said the US must continue training until 2017 and aim to reduce attrition rates to 1.4% across the board. “I’m still very realistic about the challenges out there,” he said.


Write an article based on this summary:

– Neither Serbia nor Croatia committed genocide in the wake of Yugoslavia's collapse, the International Court of Justice says in a verdict this morning from the Hague, per Reuters. In a case filed in 1999, Croatia had claimed Serbia committed genocide, including during a three-month occupation in Vukovar, during the Balkan Wars from 1991 to 1995. Serbia countered in 2010, alleging that Croatia expelled 200,000 Serbs, the BBC reports. Judge Peter Tomka said both countries were guilty of many crimes, but ruled the intent to commit genocide was not proven in the Serbian case, while the charge against Croatia was "dismissed in its entirety." Tens of thousands of ethnic Croats were displaced when the Croatian town of Vukovar was occupied by Serbs in 1991. Some 260 men were detained and killed. The Croatian military then bombarded ethnic Serbs in Krajina in 1995, displacing 200,000, the BBC notes. The decision "will put an end to both sides' fight to prove who the worst criminal is," Serbia's foreign minister said ahead of the decision. Both sides said they would accept the verdict. If either side had been found guilty of genocide, financial compensation may have been awarded, Reuters reports. (Serbia and Croatia recently teamed up to solve a massacre during the conflict.)

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Some 20,000 people died during Croatia's war of independence

 The International Court of Justice has rejected claims of genocide by Serbia and Croatia against each other during the Croatian war of secession from Yugoslavia.

 The Croatian government had alleged that Serbia committed genocide in the town of Vukovar and elsewhere in 1991.

 Serbia later filed a counter-claim over the expulsion of more than 200,000 Serbs from Croatia.

 About 20,000 people died during the 1991-1995 war, mostly Croatians.

 The Croatian town of Vukovar was devastated when it was occupied by Serbs for three months in 1991. Tens of thousands of ethnic Croats were displaced, and about 260 Croat men were detained and killed.

 Four years later, the Croatian military's Operation Storm bombarded the majority ethnic-Serb Krajina area, forcing about 200,000 people from their homes.

 Speaking in court on Tuesday, Judge Peter Tomka dismissed both the Croatian claim and the Serbian counter-claim.

 Forces on both sides had carried out violent acts during the war, Judge Tomka said. However, neither side had provided sufficient evidence to demonstrate the "specific intent required for acts of genocide".

 The court's ruling was posted online.

 Analysis: Guy Delauney, BBC Belgrade

 The International Court of Justice has delivered the result that most people here were expecting, with both genocide suits dismissed in their entirety. The only mystery is why the cases ever progressed this far.

 It is hard to see what either side was hoping to achieve - other than to have unflattering details from the conflict of the 1990s highlighted once more.

 Both Croatia and Serbia may have been cleared of genocide, but the ICJ said that both sides had deliberately forced minority ethnic groups out of areas they controlled.

 So there is little cause for celebration in Belgrade or Zagreb. But at least a toxic saga which has been rumbling for 16 years has finally drawn to a close.

 Serbian Justice Minister Nikola Selkovic said the ruling would "start a new and blank page in our relationship with Croatia" and Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic said he hoped it would lead to "a period of lasting peace and prosperity" in the region.

 Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said: "We are not satisfied with the court's ruling but we accept it in a civilised manner."

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Judge Peter Tomka delivers his verdict

 Croatia filed its initial case with the International Court of Justice - the top UN court - in 1999, accusing Serbs, led by President Slobodan Milosevic, of targeting ethnic Croats during the conflict.

 It wanted Serbia to pay compensation for damages "to persons and properties as well as to the Croatian economy and environment".

 In 2010, Serbia responded to Croatia's case with a countersuit, saying that ethnics Serbs were expelled when Croatia launched its 1995 operation to retake territory captured by Serbs.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Anna Holligan explains the background to the cases heard at the ICJ

 "What is generally called ethnic cleansing does not constitute genocide," Judge Tomka said in his ruling against Serbia's claim.

 "Acts of ethnic cleansing may be part of a genocidal plan but only if there is an intention to physically destroy the target group."

 The BBC's Anna Holligan in The Hague says although genocide is the most serious of international crimes, it is also the hardest to prove.

 'End of a process'

 Relations between the two countries have improved in recent years but in 2012 Serbia was outraged when Operation Storm commander Ante Gotovina was cleared on appeal by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

 Image copyright EPA Image caption The verdict delivered by Judge Peter Tomka (centre) is final

 Image copyright AFP Image caption Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Serbs were forced from their homes by the Croatian military's Operation Storm

 Last week, ahead of the verdict, Vukovar resident Kata Lozancic told Reuters news agency she believed genocide had taken place in her town.

 "Everything from cultural and natural sites, to people, everything was destroyed," she said.

 A refugee in Serbia, identified only as Dragica, expressed unhappiness at the Croatian government's claims. "They expelled us Serbs, and now they [claim they] are not criminals, and we are," she told Reuters.

 UN 1948 Genocide Convention

 Act committed with intent to destroy in whole or part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group

 Killing members of the group

 Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

 Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring physical destruction

 Imposing measures intended to prevent births

 Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

 Yugoslavia became a Socialist state after World War Two. It consisted of six republics: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia.

 The federation began falling apart in the early 1990s. Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia declared independence, sparking conflicts with the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army. All four countries were eventually recognised as independent by the UN.

 In 2006, Montenegro also emerged as a sovereign state after a referendum for independence, ending the former Union of Serbia and Montenegro. ||||| The Peace Palace, which houses The International Court of Justice, is seen in The Hague July 22, 2010. EUTERS/Jerry Lampen

 THE HAGUE The United Nations' highest court will rule on Tuesday on genocide cases filed by Serbia and Croatia over atrocities allegedly committed during the violent breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

 The countries filed complaints against each other at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which could award financial compensation if it finds either side violated the 1948 Genocide Convention.

 The cases, filed 16 years ago, are part of the long legal fall-out from the break-up of Yugoslavia into seven states in wars that lasted eight years and left more than 100,000 dead in Europe's worst conflagration since World War Two.

 The ruling, which is due to start at 0900 GMT (4:00 a.m. ET), could stoke political tensions in both countries.

 "What's really at stake is both states trying to justify their wars," said Eric Gordy, a professor at London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies.

 "The strongest arguments they have to say they are justifying their wars is that they were defending their citizens against genocide," he added.

 The U.N. tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which is also in The Hague, has long since ruled that genocide was committed in Bosnia, where more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed when the U.N. 'safe haven' of Srebrenica fell to Bosnian Serb forces in 1995.

 Despite widespread atrocities against all sides, no court has ruled that ethnic Croats or Serbs were victims of genocide. Recent acquittals of suspects at the Yugoslav tribunal stoked anger in the two countries.

 Many experts believe Tuesday's ruling is unlikely to find Croatia or Serbia liable for genocide if no individuals from either country have been convicted of the crime.

 Croatia alleges that Serbia's destruction of towns and expulsion of ethnic Croats in Slavonia amounted to genocide. In turn, Serbia accuses Croatia of genocide over the expulsion of Serbs from Krajina.

 In an earlier ruling from 2007 in a case brought by Bosnia, the same court found that Serbia was not responsible for genocide, but that it had breached the genocide convention by failing to prevent the massacre in Srebrenica.

 (Editing by Anthony Deutsch and Andrew Heavens) |||||


Two photographs of a "dead alien" were unveiled at a big money event last night - and immediately dismissed as fake.

 A series of 'UFOlogists' appeared at the Be Witness meeting last night to reveal images of an extraterrestrial who supposedly crashed to Earth during the infamous Roswell incident in 1947.

 The images were found by former journalist Adam Dew, who has taken steps to verify the pair of alien snaps and said Kodak experts had dated the film to 1947.

 Alien or mummy? A screenshot of the slide, which has not been released

 The rest of the world has not had the chance to test the rigour of his methods, because high resolution images of the alien are not yet available.

 They are likely to be sold through his production company Dew Media alongside a documentary about the discovery of the slides.

 The photos were supposedly found in Arizona, hidden in a collection of snaps owned by oil geologist Bernard Ray and his wife Hilda Ray, who have both died.

 Nick Pope, a researcher who headed up a UFO investigation wing at the UK Ministry of Defence, told Mirror Online he was "underwhelmed".

 "It could be a model, or it could simply be a fake image, dressed up to look like a Forties slide," he said.

 "The motivations for hoaxing are complex. Some hoaxes are money-making scams, but sometimes it's just a desire to say 'we fooled the world'.

 "I can understand why the UFO community is disappointed and conspiracy theorists are probably already claiming the whole thing was a government plot, designed to discredit the subject and

 make it look ridiculous."

 After the photographs were revealed, UFO spotters immediately took to Twitter to share screenshots of the snaps using the hashtag "#BeDisappointed".

 #UFOLOGY we should all pay penance and wear tinfoil hats for the day...#Roswellslides WTF!!!....haven't we learnt anything yet? — Puxley (@Holographic_Me) May 6, 2015

 #roswellslides well it's certainly succeeded in making me want to move on from all the ufo ET stuff! I'm now a nonbeliever! Nice one! — philf (@TheDubPunk) May 6, 2015

 Some compared the images to previous photos of Egyptian mummies from the Smithsonian.

 #roswellslides A photo a of a child mummy, an #epicfail NOT a smoking gun. Shame on ufologists that was on THIS. pic.twitter.com/ygVi49zDtP — cristian contini (@cristiancontini) May 6, 2015

 Critics have pointed out a film showing an 'autopsy' of an alien found at Roswell was released exactly 20 years before the Be Witness event yesterday.

 This older film (pictured below) was discovered by British music producer Ray Santilly. Although it was dismissed as fake, it reportedly earned him a sizeable amount of money.

 There are several other connections between the Santilly film and the release of the Roswell photos, leading some to claim the new slides are a "carefully prepared" stunt.

 For instance, the alien in the Santilly video was nicknamed Hilda - the same name as the woman who supposedly owned the new Roswell Slides.

 This image of an alien autopsy didn't fool many people

 The big reveal took place in a massive auditorium packed with thousands of eager UFO fans.

 Although there was a live stream available, viewers had to fork out $20 if they wanted to watch it.

 British skygazers were at a particular disadvantage, because the event started at 11.30pm and went on until dawn, with many speakers talking in Spanish.

 Mirror Online spoke to the former astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to land on the moon and an outspoken believer in extraterrestrial visitations.

 The 84-year-old appeared at Be Witness via a Skype link and insisted the images showed the remains of an alien being.

 "These images show a type of alien known as a little grey," he told us.

 "However, we have no way of knowing if it was the creature which creatures from the Roswell incident."

 Getty Major Jesse Marcel with debris found 75 miles north west of Roswell, NM, in June 1947

 Gary Heseltine, a former policeman who is now editor of UFO Truth Magazine, also insisted the photos were real.

 "I know many of the people who were involved," he told Mirror Online.

 "They wouldn't risk their reputation by appearing at this event if the photos weren't genuine.

 "From my background as a policeman, I know what evidence is. These were compelling images of a being which was not human."

 We asked organisers if the event was a money-making venture rather than a genuine revelation proving the existence of alien life.

 Jaime Maussan, the journalist who organised the unveiling, replied: "The forensics experts explained in full yesterday why this is [an alien].

 "We also presented the analysis from photography experts stating that the picture is real and from the late 1940s.

 "I lost about $100 thousand in the event, even though we had six thousand people in the auditorium and a few thousand watching on the Internet.

 "I never did it for money, I knew I was going to lose cash even before started the organisation of the event, but I didn't care.

 "They are wrong all the way." ||||| Of course, these are only some of the ways we've envisioned Martians over the years. But how do we look to the Martians? Um, pretty small. This first-ever image of the Earth taken from Mars was snapped by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit in 2004.

 As is its eternal wont, pop culture is constantly recycling its own ideas -- Martians included. In 1999, Christopher Lloyd starred as the titular alien in director Donald Petrie's reboot of the 1960s TV show "My Favorite Martian," which was itself inspired by earlier pulp sci-fi stories.

 Director Tim Burton played around with B-movie tropes and pop art notions of Martians in his 1996 film "Mars Attacks!" Brian De Palma followed up a few years later with "Mission to Mars," a huge critical and commercial bomb. (Although the French critics liked it -- really.)

 Legendary Looney Tunes animator Chuck Jones created the character of Marvin the Martian in 1948 as a foil for Bugs Bunny. As devotees of Saturday morning cartoons know, Marvin is forever plotting to destroy the Earth by way of his Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. Apparently, we obstruct his view of Venus.

 On July 25, 1976, NASA's Viking 1 orbiter captured the above image on the surface of Mars' Cydonia region. The infamous "Face on Mars" prompted decades of speculation, although scientists have long dismissed the image as an example of pareidolia; e.g. seeing shapes in the clouds, or Jesus in your toast.

 The so-called Grey Alien is a kind of archetype image of an extraterrestrial -- not necessarily from Mars -- that has arisen from fictional depictions, alleged alien abduction stories and conjecture on what an advanced race of beings would look like.

 Space explorer stories were a regular staple in the pulp fiction magazines of the early 1900s, and Edgar Rice Burroughs was another author to speculate at length on Mars' inhabitants. His Martians included the six-limbed, green-skinned Tharks and humanoid Red Martians.

 Science fiction writers often depicted Martians as an advanced humanoid race intent on conquering Earth. In "Flash Gordon's Trip To Mars" (1938), Azura Queen of Mars subjugates her own Martian people. Ray Bradbury would later conceive of a kinder, gentler race in "The Martian Chronicles."

 Telescopic observations of Mars in the late 19th and early 20th centuries appeared to show long surface lines that some believed were man-made (well, Martian-made) irrigation canals. Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli made this map of Mars from his notes on the telescope images.

 We've been conjecturing about life on Mars for centuries. In popular culture, the concept of intelligent life on Mars was championed by astronomer Percival Lowell in the late 1800s and his theories on the Martian canals. Science fiction writers -- always game for some reckless conjecture -- took up the banner from there. Perhaps the most famous Martians in the history of sci-fi and popular culture, the invaders in H.G. Wells' 1898 novel "War of the Worlds," have since spawned dozens of films, TV shows, comic books and one very famous radio drama.

 The discovery of deformed skulls in southern Peru has one researcher speculating that it may be evidence of "a new human-like creature" unknown to science.

 There is nothing unusual about finding deformed skulls in the Americas; archaeologists have found them for years. Cranial deformation is a widely known practice, and in 2012 archaeologists in Mexico found a burial ground of twenty-five skeletons; of those, more than half showed intentional skull deformation.

 However, according to a widely discussed blog on the AncientOrigins web site, the skulls found near Paracas, Peru, appear to be unusually --and possibly genetically -- deformed: "A DNA analysis has now been conducted on one of the skulls and expert Brien Foerster ... reports on the geneticist's findings: 'It had mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) with mutations unknown in any human, primate, or animal known so far. But a few fragments I was able to sequence from this sample indicate that if these mutations will hold we are dealing with a new human-like creature... ."

 Foerster states that his (as-yet anonymous) scientist found DNA with unknown mutations in a single sample. If it's true -- a big assumption given that Foerster's geneticist is unknown and no one has seen the study or any other information -- it's not clear what exactly that means. It could simply mean that the results are inconclusive, which would not be unusual, given the age and condition of the bone. Or it could mean a "new human-like creature." Or it could mean nothing at all. For now, it's nothing more than an attention-grabbing headline with nothing behind it except bold bluster.

 A comparison of models of a human skull and the Starchild Skull, on display in Roswell, NM, in 2007. Courtesy of Benjamin Radford

 The Starchild Skull

 This is not the first time that deformed skulls have been offered as evidence for extraordinary claims about new, unknown species of humans. One skull -- dubbed the "Starchild skull" -- was found in Mexico and later obtained by a UFO researcher named Lloyd Pye, who exhibited it at UFO and paranormal-themed conferences for years. I interviewed Pye and examined his famous Starchild skull while it was on tour in Roswell, N.M. The presence of a deformed skull at a UFO conference -- instead of, say, a medical conference -- reveals less about the skull than what its owner believes about its origin.

 Pye, who died last year, was adamant that his research proved (he used that word, "proved," several times) that the skull must have been the result of humans having sex with aliens. The title of Pye's 2007 book, "The Starchild Skull: Genetic Enigma or ... Human-Alien Hybrid?" offers two choices for the origin of his skull.

 But this is a textbook example of a "false choice" logical fallacy. In fact, the Starchild skull, like hundreds of other skulls deformed to a greater or lesser degree found in the Americas, is neither a "genetic enigma" nor a "human-alien hybrid." Two sets of DNA tests (one in 1999 and another in 2003) confirmed that the skull was human: a male child from North America or Mesoamerica who likely suffered a condition which leads to skull elongation and deformation called hydrocephalus.

 Pye disagreed, claiming that the deformation is too extreme to be human, a curious position, given that human physical deformities appear in a spectacularly wide variety. Most normal humans have approximately the same features and dimensions; we don't see healthy adults with skulls the size of an orange, for example, or hands growing from ears.

 The vagaries of nature and genetic disorders can and do create very rare, but perfectly natural, non-extraterrestrial, humans, ranging from primordial dwarfs to conjoined twins. There's even a famous two-headed woman, Abigail and Brittany Hensel, whose lives have been documented on various television shows. It's possible that, hundreds of years from now, a future version of Lloyd Pye or Brien Foerster will locate the Hensels' nearly unique skeleton and issue a sensational press release proclaiming it a new human species or even the result of alien breeding.

 The mystery of Foerster's Peruvian skulls has been embraced by many, though skeptics abound. Sharon Hill, a researcher specializing in the public understanding of science and editor of the Doubtful News website, told Discovery News that the way the skulls' DNA results were released smacks of pseudoscience.

 "This is an unconventional way of making 'groundbreaking' claims," Hill noted. "It's not supported by a university, but by private funding. The initial findings were released in this unprofessional way (via Facebook, websites and an Internet radio interview) obviously because Foerster and the other researchers think this is very exciting news," she said.

 "But science doesn't work by social media. Peer review is a critical part of science and the Paracas skulls proponents have taken a shortcut that completely undermines their credibility. Appealing to the public's interest in this cultural practice we see as bizarre -- skull deformation --instead of publishing the data for peer-review examination is not going to be acceptable to the scientific community."

 While it may be tempting and entertaining to look for extraterrestrial, or even supernatural, reasons for strange human deformations, there is no need to do so. Those who have mystery-mongering books and DVDs to sell (and documentary films to promote) will always find an audience. For anthropologists and anatomists, however, there's little mystery about their origins.

 Writer Benjamin Radford examining a model of the Starchild Skull, claimed to be of an alien-human hybrid, in 2007.

 Image Courtesy of Benjamin Radford ||||| Close

 It's the conspiracy theory that just won't go away: that the U.S. government is, deep in some secret location, keeping the bodies of alien astronauts recovered from the crash of a flying saucer in New Mexico in 1947.

 The "Roswell Incident," named for the small town near where some wreckage was found - a weather balloon, the U.S. military says; a UFO, say those who, well, believe it was a UFO - was back in the news this week when two photographs, claimed to be of preserved alien remains, were presented at a UFO conference in Mexico City.

 The photos, taken on Kodachrome color slide film, have been confirmed as being on film stock from the late 1940s - but that doesn't mean the alien claim is true, experts say.

 What is much more likely, they say, is that the photo is in fact a 1940s image - but of a human child's mummified body.

 As evidence that the alien claim is either a publicity stunt - a documentary film Roswell Slides is in production - or a hoax, scientists noted that attendees at the Mexico City conference who wanted to view the color slides had to cough up $350 for the privilege.

 The skeleton in the photos does have a large head in relation to the rest of the body, but that's a characteristic of any child's body, experts say.

 Mummified children's bodies have been mistaken for aliens before, but even those with strange, deformed skulls have a simple explanation; cranial deformation was widely practiced by many ancient human civilizations.

 Still, many UFO adherents are standing by the claims made in Mexico City.

 "(These photos) show the human race, beyond any doubt, that extra-terrestrial visits are a reality," said Jaime Maussan, a Mexican UFO researcher who hosted the conference.

 "That is why the presentation of two slides, two transparencies, where a being with nonhuman features can be seen, is very important."

 Despite years of research by the U.S. Air Force and other agencies that have found to evidence of aliens - or UFOs - many still hold to their conviction that the government is covering up the existence of a flying saucer or its occupants - or both - in a secret hangar at Area 51 in Nevada.

 The newly released photos are unlikely to change anyone's mind one way or the other, of course. That's just the nature of conspiracies. They're hard to prove; the problem is they're also hard to disprove.

 The photos were said to have been taken by geologist Bernard Ray between 1947 and 1949, and the images were found inside a box that also contained images of Bing Crosby, Clarke Gable and Dwight Eisenhower from before his term as president. The box was located in the attic of a house in Sedona, Ariz. A team of UFO specialists says they are authentic.

 Artwork by Frank Kovalchek | Flickr

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 TAG UFO, Roswell

 ⓒ 2018 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. ||||| Of course, these are only some of the ways we've envisioned Martians over the years. But how do we look to the Martians? Um, pretty small. This first-ever image of the Earth taken from Mars was snapped by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit in 2004.

 As is its eternal wont, pop culture is constantly recycling its own ideas -- Martians included. In 1999, Christopher Lloyd starred as the titular alien in director Donald Petrie's reboot of the 1960s TV show "My Favorite Martian," which was itself inspired by earlier pulp sci-fi stories.

 Director Tim Burton played around with B-movie tropes and pop art notions of Martians in his 1996 film "Mars Attacks!" Brian De Palma followed up a few years later with "Mission to Mars," a huge critical and commercial bomb. (Although the French critics liked it -- really.)

 Legendary Looney Tunes animator Chuck Jones created the character of Marvin the Martian in 1948 as a foil for Bugs Bunny. As devotees of Saturday morning cartoons know, Marvin is forever plotting to destroy the Earth by way of his Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. Apparently, we obstruct his view of Venus.

 On July 25, 1976, NASA's Viking 1 orbiter captured the above image on the surface of Mars' Cydonia region. The infamous "Face on Mars" prompted decades of speculation, although scientists have long dismissed the image as an example of pareidolia; e.g. seeing shapes in the clouds, or Jesus in your toast.

 The so-called Grey Alien is a kind of archetype image of an extraterrestrial -- not necessarily from Mars -- that has arisen from fictional depictions, alleged alien abduction stories and conjecture on what an advanced race of beings would look like.

 Space explorer stories were a regular staple in the pulp fiction magazines of the early 1900s, and Edgar Rice Burroughs was another author to speculate at length on Mars' inhabitants. His Martians included the six-limbed, green-skinned Tharks and humanoid Red Martians.

 Science fiction writers often depicted Martians as an advanced humanoid race intent on conquering Earth. In "Flash Gordon's Trip To Mars" (1938), Azura Queen of Mars subjugates her own Martian people. Ray Bradbury would later conceive of a kinder, gentler race in "The Martian Chronicles."

 Telescopic observations of Mars in the late 19th and early 20th centuries appeared to show long surface lines that some believed were man-made (well, Martian-made) irrigation canals. Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli made this map of Mars from his notes on the telescope images.

 We've been conjecturing about life on Mars for centuries. In popular culture, the concept of intelligent life on Mars was championed by astronomer Percival Lowell in the late 1800s and his theories on the Martian canals. Science fiction writers -- always game for some reckless conjecture -- took up the banner from there. Perhaps the most famous Martians in the history of sci-fi and popular culture, the invaders in H.G. Wells' 1898 novel "War of the Worlds," have since spawned dozens of films, TV shows, comic books and one very famous radio drama.

 Earlier this week at a UFO conference in Mexico City two photographs claimed to have been found in a trunk in Sedona, Ariz., and depicting an alien body that crashed in Roswell in 1947 were revealed. It has created quite a buzz among UFO believers and others, but there are good reasons to question the claim.

 According to the Daily Mirror, the photos “were found by former journalist Adam Dew, who has taken steps to verify the pair of alien snaps and said Kodak experts had dated the film to 1947….The photos were supposedly found in Arizona, hidden in a collection of snaps owned by oil geologist Bernard Ray and his wife Hilda Ray, who have both died.”

 The Discovernator serves up amazing facts, piping hot. Get more here! DCI

 Assuming that a representative from Kodak authenticated the film as old stock dating back to the 1940s doesn’t mean that Kodak “authenticated” the subject of the photo; all it means is that it’s a genuine old photo, and not, for example, on film produced in the 1980s.

 If it’s a genuine old photo, what could it be? An important clue about the real explanation can be seen in the photos, since the small figure appears to have been photographed in a display case (it even has what appears to be a sign explaining what it is, though the image is washed out and the quality is not good enough to read it).

 It doesn’t look alien so much as a skeletal human with a large head, which is characteristic of a child’s body. And that’s likely what it is: a child’s mummified body. In fact, it is not the first time that a mummified child’s body has been mistaken for an alien. Long-dead bodies with deformed skulls have previously been mistaken for extraterrestrials, but there is nothing unusual about finding deformed skulls in the Americas; archaeologists have found them for years.

 Cranial deformation is a widely known practice, and in 2012 archaeologists in Mexico found a burial ground of twenty-five skeletons; of those, more than half showed intentional skull deformation. Mummified fetuses and babies have been on display in museums around the world for decades, including in South America.

 Mummified Mysteries

 If it is indeed a mummified baby corpse, it would be only the latest of many to have been reinterpreted as something unknown or mysterious. Earlier this year a pair of mummified cats found in Chile was mistaken for the mysterious vampire creature called the chupacabra. The felines had disproportionately large heads compared to the rest of their bodies and were likely kittens.

 Part of the reason that these objects seem so bizarre and mysterious is that very few people outside of the fields of archaeology and anthropology are familiar with the process and appearance of mummification.

 For most people the word “mummy” evokes bandaged, slow-moving monsters from ancient Egypt. We typically think of bodies being reduced to a skeleton not long after death, but in fact bodies may be preserved for centuries or millennia, either through intentional preservation (such as mummification) or because the environment where a person died helps preserve the bodies (for example high in the cold Andes mountains, or in deserts where the lack of moisture inhibits decay-causing bacteria).

 Adult mummies are strange enough, but baby mummies are even rarer and stranger looking. Because babies have disproportionally large heads as compared to the rest of their bodies, their dessicated remains seem all the more inhuman. A Reuters news story featured video of UFO proponent Richard Dolan at the conference claiming, without providing any evidence or documentation, that unnamed experts somehow ruled out the mummy explanation.

 Of course extraterrestrials have never been proven to exist, and no photographs of alien bodies have ever been authenticated, and thus the belief or assumption that aliens would have disproportionately large craniums is sci-fi pop culture speculation promoted in entertainment media ranging from “The X-Files” to Steven Spielberg’s seminal 1977 film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

 If the “standard” alien depicted decades ago -- and since embraced by UFO buffs -- had an unusually small head and three legs, for example, this and other mummified babies would not be associated with anything extraterrestrial.

 Even if it is a genuine extraterrestrial, there’s reason to doubt that the carcass was recovered in Roswell in 1947: None of the original eyewitnesses to the debris found on the New Mexico ranch described any alien bodies or even spacecraft. In fact the first person to find the wreckage described it as “made up of rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and sticks.”

 This very closely matches the top-secret Project Mogul weather balloons and radar reflectors that the Air Force identified in 1994 as having crashed in Roswell. The wild stories of recovered alien bodies didn’t appear until 30 years after the supposed crash.

 It seems very likely that the new Roswell alien slide is not new, not from Roswell, and not an alien. Just because the images aren’t really of an alien body doesn’t mean that they are fake. It seems plausible that Dew or someone else found them and jumped to the conclusion that they were of an alien. And of course the most famous story of aliens occurred in Roswell.

 Because the original photographer had died -- and the photo presumably had no captions identifying its subject or any other information about when or where it was taken -- the gap in information was filled with whatever wild speculation or meaning anyone wanted to give it.

 “New” information about the now 68-year-old crash still surfaces now and then, and this surely won’t be the last claimed photo or video about the incident. ||||| UFO hunters may have found the evidence they're seeking. At a conference in Mexico City, UFO specialist Jamie Maussan presented never before seen photos of a purported alien body from the 1947 Roswell crash. The crash has long been a mystery, with some suspecting that authorities kept the discovery of an alien a secret from the public. The images, reportedly snapped by Geologist Bernard A. Ray on Kodachrome film, show the remains of an alleged alien found dead in New Mexico. SOUNDBITE: UFO Specialist Jaime Maussan, saying (Spanish) : "These photos show the human race that beyond any doubt, extraterrestrial visits are a reality. That is why the presentation of two slides, two transparencies, where a being with non-human features can be seen, is very important. These photos were dated by experts to a period where the model of the archetype extraterrestrial we know today didn't exist." And that they say, is proof positive that the images couldn't have been doctored. The topic is of course controversial - NASA and the U.S. government have never formally recognized extra terrestrial life on planet Earth. It has taken researchers five years to verify the photos' authenticity. After studying the images, leading UFO specialist Richard Dolan says these are the proof people have been looking for. SOUNDBITE: Richard Dolan, leading researcher and author on UFOs, saying (English): "The analysis of the body or creature that is presented in the image, suggested that this is not a mummy, not a human, not a mammal and not a model, which would require a highly sophisticated detailed understanding of comparative anatomy among various species." Real, not real ... you to decide. And if you do find yourself looking over your shoulder ... we can't say we blame you. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– UFO enthusiasts last week got a gander of an alien allegedly recovered from Roswell—oversized head and all—but experts say the evidence likely originated on planet Earth, Tech Times reports. Attendees at a UFO conference in Mexico City paid $350 for the chance to see an old Kodachrome color slide said to capture an alien that crashed in New Mexico in 1947 (UFO lovers call it the "Roswell Incident"). A journalist apparently dated the film stock to the 1940s, Discovery reports, saying it was recovered in Arizona from an oil geologist's photo collection. The slide shows a small figure with a big head in a display case; Discovery argues that the skeleton belonged to a child (with typically oversized head) or the body of a mummified child with a deformed head. Such bodies have been turning up for years in the Americas and identified as extraterrestrials, Discovery reported last year. What's more, no eyewitness at Roswell in 1947 described aliens or even a flying saucer; the first one there talked about something "made up of rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and sticks" (the US Air Force put it down to air balloons and radar detectors that crashed there). Yet UFO proponents at the Mexico City event stood firm: "Analysis of the body ... suggested this is not a mummy and not a human, not a mammal and not a model," says enthusiast Richard Dolan, Reuters reports. A British defense official was less enthused, telling the Mirror that "it could be a model, or it could simply be a fake image, dressed up to look like a Forties slide." (Read about Air Force UFO files now available online.)


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– A massive child-porn bust has led to 245 arrests and the identification of 123 exploited children, some as young as two, reports the Contra Costa Times. The crackdown, dubbed Operation Sunflower, began Nov. 1 and ran for five weeks, and extended to 46 states and six countries, officials revealed yesterday. Of the 123 children, 44 were living with their alleged abusers. Five of the children were three or younger, and 41 were between the ages of four and 12. California led the way with 37 arrests, and all but 23 of those arrested were in the United States, reports CNN. "Whenever our investigations reveal the production and distribution of new child pornography online, we will do everything we can to rescue the victim and prosecute the abuser, even if takes us years or (going) around the world to do it," said ICE's director. Investigators say the are continuing to make arrests and attempting to identify further victims. The operation's name is a nod to the impressive 2011 rescue of an 11-year-old in Kansas; click for the fascinating story of how ICE agents tracked her down.

Story highlights Immigration agency's "Operation Sunflower" identified 123 child victims of pornography, abuse

 Some victims were as young as 3; others were abused as children and are now adults

 Law enforcement officials in six other countries also made arrests in the operation

 An international operation led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement aimed at child pornography and sexual abuse has resulted in the arrest of 245 suspects, officials announced Thursday. All but 23 of the suspects were apprehended in the United States.

 The agency said that during the course of Operation Sunflower, law enforcement officers identified 123 victims of child exploitation and removed 44 of those children from their alleged abusers with whom they were living. The other cases involved victims who were exploited by people outside their homes or children who were harmed years ago and are now adults.

 Several of the children were shockingly young. Five were under age 3. Nine were between the ages of 4 and 6. Of the 123 victims, 110 lived in the United States in 19 different states. ICE officials did not identify the six other countries where victims were identified or where some of the arrests were made, citing the need to work discreetly with international law enforcement partners.

 According to ICE, some of those arrested during Operation Sunflower were registered sex offenders.

 Operation Sunflower was conducted in November and December, but efforts are continuing on other cases. During a news conference, ICE Director John Morton said the agency was calling on the public to provide tips and mentioned several open investigations. One of those cases involves the sexual molestation of an unidentified girl thought to be around 13.

 Investigators believe the abuse took place about 11 years ago, but the pornographic images were widely circulated. ICE has posted pictures of an unidentified woman and man suspected of abusing the girl on its website. The woman has some distinctive tattoos that investigators hope will lead to tips about her identity.

 Based on a forensic analysis of the pornographic images in that case, investigators think the abuse occurred in the Los Angeles or San Fernando Valley area of California. Although the girl may now be an adult, ICE officials want to identify and prosecute the suspects and prevent them from harming new victims.

 "Forensic analysis technology has become critical in the fight against child exploitation," Morton said. "We are coming across these images on the Internet. They are being produced in one country but shared literally around the world, often in real time."

 Morton said ICE works with other law enforcement agencies and with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to look for clues in the pictures of abuse to identify where the acts occurred and track down the victims and perpetrators.

 The name Operation Sunflower was chosen to commemorate a case from 2011 in which Danish law enforcement officials shared images and chat board information about a 16-year-old boy who allegedly planned to rape an 11-year-old girl. One image taken from a moving car showed a road sign with a sunflower on it. ICE's Homeland Security Investigations determined that the road sign was unique to Kansas. Agents were then able to find the exact stretch of road where the picture was taken and to locate the girl. ||||| Federal agents identified 123 sexually exploited children -- some as young as 2 -- and arrested 245 suspected child porn producers in a five-week operation that spanned 46 states and six countries and includes the Bay Area, a federal official announced Thursday.

 Of the more than 100 abused children identified in Operation Sunflower, 44 were directly rescued from their abusers and 79 were identified as being exploited by others outside their homes or are now adults who were victimized as children. The arrests -- 37 in California, the most of any state -- were mostly executed during the first week of December, but agents are still working on rescuing and identifying victims.

 In the Bay Area, agents procured five indictments for individuals from their early 20s to early 50s. The four arrested were from San Jose, San Leandro, San Francisco and Sonoma County, and one remains on the lam.

 Fourteen Fresno-area residents were also arrested and three children from that region rescued, including a 7-year-old girl with disabilities.

 "Whenever our investigations reveal the production and distribution of new child pornography online, we will do everything we can to rescue the victim and prosecute the abuser even if takes us years or (going) around the world to do it," said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton at a Washington D.C. news conference Thursday.

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 One of the suspects is Michael Lindsay, 53, of San Jose, arrested Nov. 8 at San Francisco International Airport on suspicion of engaging in child sex tourism. He was boarding a flight to Manila, Philippines. Two months earlier, Lindsay returned from a trip to the Philippines and that country issued a criminal complaint alleging he had sexual contact with a 13-year-old girl.

 Agents continue to search for additional victims, as evidence suggests Lindsay had sexual contact with additional children, according to ICE.

 Of the 123 victims (70 female, 53 male) identified in the operation, five were under the age of 3; nine were 4 to 6; 21 were 7 to 9; 11 were ages 10 to 12; 38 were 13 to 15; and 15 were ages 16 to 17. Twenty-four victims were found to be adults now.

 ICE's Homeland Security Investigations agents dubbed the worldwide investigation "Operation Sunflower" to commemorate the anniversary of a successful operation that rescued an 11-year-old Kansas girl from rape. It was the agency's first case in their new Victim Identification Program.

 In the 2011 case, Danish police alerted American authorities to a 16-year-old boy soliciting advice on a pedophile chat room and posting images of the 11-year-old girl, saying he planned to rape her. Agents had no idea where the suspect and victim were.

 Working with high-tech video equipment, law enforcement was able to extrapolate a sunflower-shaped road sign in a video from a moving car that the suspect posted. The yellow freeway sign was determined to be unique to Kansas.

 For days, pairs of ICE agents drove the Kansas freeways before finding the sign on a rural freeway. From there, with the help of local police, they identified a swimming pool featured in another video and then tracked down the victim before any crime was committed. Last fiscal year, 292 victims were identified or rescued from ICE investigations and 1,655 child predators were arrested.

 "We are defending the defenseless," Morton said.

 Morton asked for the public's help in identifying three men and a woman in three unsolved Operation Sunflower cases. In the first case, investigators believe the photographs were taken about 11 years ago with an adult man and woman sexually molesting a girl who looks to be about 13 years old. Agents believe the images may have been taken in Los Angeles, or possibly the San Fernando Valley area.

 The other two cases involve white male adult suspects abusing pre-pubescent toddlers. Their whereabouts are unknown.

 Anyone with information or tips that can assist in these investigations can call 1-866-DHS-2-ICE or visit www.ICE.gov/tips. Tips may be reported anonymously.

 Contact Matthias Gafni at 925-952-5026. Follow him at Twitter.com/mgafni. |||||


Summarize this article:

Story highlights Wildlife officials moved in after complaints from tourists and concerns for their welfare

 The tigers are being moved to a compound in another province

 Bangkok (CNN) Authorities armed with tranquilizer guns are still trying to capture dozens of tigers at a controversial Buddhist temple in Thailand after temple staff allegedly set some free to delay the process.

 "Yesterday was mayhem," Wildlife Conservation Office (WCO) director Teunjai Noochdumrong told CNN Tuesday.

 "When our vet team arrived, there were tigers roaming around everywhere," Noochdumrong said. "Looks like the temple intentionally let these tigers out, trying to obstruct our work."

 The "Tiger Temple," in Kanchanaburi Province west of Bangkok, has long been popular with tourists , who could walk among the tigers and pose for photos. Thailand's Wildlife Conservation Office (WCO) said the temple's 137 tigers posed a danger to visitors and that they were being mistreated.

 A tourist poses for a photo with a tiger at the Thai temple in 2012.

 However, when staff from the WCO arrived Monday morning to remove the tigers, temple officials refused to let them in. After a half-day stand off, wildlife officers finally entered and were able to sedate eight tigers.

 Read More ||||| In this photo provided by the Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand, a tiger looks out of a cage at the "Tiger Temple" in Saiyok district in Kanchanaburi province, west of Bangkok, Thailand, Monday, May... (Associated Press)

 BANGKOK (AP) — Wildlife officials in Thailand have begun removing some of the 137 tigers held at a Buddhist temple following accusations that the monks were involved in illegal breeding and trafficking of the animals.

 The director of Thailand's Wildlife Conservation Office, Teunjai Noochdumrong, said three tigers were tranquilized and transported Monday in an operation involving about 1,000 state personnel that is expected to continue for a week.

 The animals will be taken to three government animal refuges elsewhere in Thailand.

 The temple, a popular money-earning tourist attraction in the western province of Kanchanaburi, has been criticized by animal rights activists because of allegations it is not properly set up to care for the animals and flouted regulations restricting their trade.

 The monks resisted previous efforts to take away the tigers, and impeded the effort again on Monday morning despite the massive show of force by the authorities. They relented after police obtained a court order. More than 300 officials remained at the temple overnight to ensure the tigers remained safe.

 The temple recently made arrangements to operate as a zoo, but the plan fell through when the government determined that the operators failed to secure sufficient resources.

 ___

 This story has been corrected to show that the tigers will be taken to three animal refuges, not two. |||||

– Wildlife officials in Thailand have begun removing some of the 137 tigers held at a Buddhist temple following accusations that the monks were involved in illegal breeding and trafficking of the animals. The director of Thailand's Wildlife Conservation Office, Teunjai Noochdumrong, says three tigers were tranquilized and transported Monday in an operation involving about 1,000 state personnel that's expected to continue for a week. The animals will be taken to three government animal refuges elsewhere in Thailand. The temple, a popular money-earning tourist attraction in the western province of Kanchanaburi, has been criticized by animal rights activists because of allegations it's not properly set up to care for the animals and flouted regulations, the AP reports The monks resisted previous efforts to take away the tigers, and they impeded the effort again on Monday morning despite the massive show of force by the authorities. It was "mayhem," Noochdumrong tells CNN. "When our vet team arrived, there were tigers roaming around everywhere," he says. "Looks like the temple intentionally let these tigers out, trying to obstruct our work." The monks relented after police obtained a court order. More than 300 officials remained at the temple overnight to ensure the tigers remained safe. (This tiger was found roaming a residential neighborhood in Texas.)


– Seattle police officers who pulled a vehicle over for speeding and running a red light ended up delivering a bundle of joy instead of a handful of tickets. Officer Anthony Reynolds pulled the vehicle over at around 3:45am Sunday and called for an ambulance when the driver shouted that his wife was in labor, according to the police department. The couple's baby, however, "was determined to beat medics to the scene," police say, and the woman gave birth to a baby girl as three more officers arrived. "After first giving a full-throated cry," police say, the girl "began struggling to breathe," but "with the help of the child's mother, Officer Reynolds cleared the baby's airway and got her breathing again." The couple, who wrote a note thanking the officers for helping deliver "a precious gift," named the girl Hadaya, which is Arabic for "gift," reports KOMO News. (These Canadian cops said they had to go by instinct when they delivered a baby Christmas morning.)

Expand this summary.

A routine traffic stop on a South Seattle street early Sunday put officers right in the midst of the miracle of childbirth.

 Around 3:45 AM, Officer Anthony Reynolds saw a car running red lights and speeding down Martin Luther King Jr. Way S. When he pulled the car over at MLK and S. Graham Street, the driver jumped out of his car and shouted that his wife was in labor.

 Officer Reynolds called for an ambulance, but the couple’s baby was determined to beat medics to the scene. Officers Lorissa Johnson, Nicholas Kartes and Jason Alvord joined Officer Reynolds at the scene, just as the couple’s baby girl was born. After first giving a full-throated cry as she burst into the world, the young girl began struggling to breathe. With the help of the child’s mother, Officer Reynolds cleared the baby’s airway and got her breathing again.

 Medics arrived and transported the mother and child to a nearby hospital in stable condition. They’re doing well, according to the family, who took the time to send along a nice note thanking officers for their work. “You have helped deliver a precious gift,” they wrote. “we are so grateful.”

 Update: Here’s the letter the family sent to the department: ||||| Police experience 'miracle of childbirth' during traffic stop

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 SEATTLE -- A routine Sunday morning traffic stop in Seattle turned out to be anything but routine when officers helped an expectant mother give birth in her car.

 Officer Anthony Reynolds was patrolling Martin Luther King Jr. Way South early Sunday morning when he spotted a speeding car blowing through numerous red lights.

 Reynolds hit his lights and stopped the car at MLK and Graham Street. Before he could even approach the car, the driver, Abdul Abdashiek, opened his door and screamed that his wife was in labor, according to police.

 Reynolds immediately got on the radio and called for an ambulance, "but the couple's baby was determined to beat medics to the scene," according to police.

 The mother, Maly Yusuf, can be heard on Reynolds' dashcam video screaming in pain.

 "Oh my God! The baby's coming out," she said.

 With Reynolds, Abdashiek and several other officers looking on, Yusuf, gave birth to a baby girl inside the car.

 "After first giving a full-throated cry as she burst into the world, the young girl began struggling to breathe. With the help of the child's mother, Officer Reynolds cleared the baby's airway and got her breathing again," the police department's Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote in a Monday blotter post.

 An ambulance arrived moments later and transported mother and child to a nearby hospital. As the ambulance leaves, video shows the relieved father hugging Reynolds and his fellow officer.

 Yusuf and Abdashiek named the baby Hadaya, which they said is Arabic for "gift." The family left a note for the officers who helped them, writing,"You have helped deliver a precious gift. We are so grateful," according to police. |||||