When 20-year old criminology student Marisol Valles was sworn in as a police chief in the embattled Mexican state of Chihuahua in October, she became an instant celebrity as the bravest woman in Mexico. Pundits and media commentators cheered the slight, bespectacled, innocent-looking young mother who had the guts to stand up to the drug cartels. What made her especially valiant was the fact that her predecessor as police chief of the small farming town of Praxedis ...

The five sport-utility vehicles sat abandoned in the darkness. A faint beeping sound signaled that their doors were open. Some of the Iraqi police who arrived at the scene initially feared going near the cars, thinking the sound meant they were rigged to explode. Finally a few ventured closer. In the back of two of the vehicles were the four Americans. One of them was alive, though barely. Handcuffed, he had been shot in the back of the head, but ...

Updated: March 20, 2011 Has the wave of popular revolts rocking the Arab world finally reached Syria, one of the region's most policed states, a country its young president boasted was "immune" from calls for freedom, democracy and accountable government? Or were the unprecedentedly large protests on Friday just a one-off? Syria was always going to be a tough nut for pro-democracy activists to crack. It is a country where NGOs and political parties other than the ruling Baath ...

Much of the world was shocked and titillated by news of alleged fat-stealing murderers in the Peruvian jungle. But the story may have a much more sinister underbelly. Could the allegation of homicidal liposuction possibly be a smokescreen to distract attention from other crimes, including, some local journalists say, the existence of a death squad that may be operating within the country's national police? The existence of marauding fat stealers was made public mid-November by General Felix Murga, head ...

"Things have gotten a bit hairy," admitted British Lieut. Colonel Graeme Armour as we sat in a dusty, bunkered NATO fortress just outside the city of Lashkar Gah in Helmand province, a deadly piece of turf along Afghanistan's southern border with Pakistan. A day earlier, two Danish soldiers had been killed and two Brits seriously wounded by roadside bombs. The casualties were coming almost daily now. And then there were the daily frustrations of Armour's job: training Afghan police ...

There's something especially loathsome about torturing helpless creatures for fun and profit. And evidence of torture is what investigators found on July 8, when federal and local authorities working in teams across eight states staged the largest raid in history against the underground dogfighting racket. Twenty-six people were arrested , and more than 500 dogs were rescued, most of them pit bull terriers. The cruelty visited on the canines is harrowing. Some had been pulled behind cars to ...

Public antipathy toward the police runs so deep in Russia that it would seem impossible for the reputation of those paid to protect and serve to get any worse. Reports of graft, assault, fraud and even murder committed by Russian police creep across the news wires almost daily, and according to a recent survey by the Moscow-based Levada Center polling agency, 40% of Russians say they do not trust police, while 28% say they actually fear the cops. But ...

While more police officers patrol Tokyo's subway and train stations in preparation for U.S. President Barack Obama's two-day trip to Japan this week, people in other parts of the country have already sent the American President a message. On Sunday, thousands of Japanese — with estimates ranging from 6,000 to 21,000 — gathered in the Okinawan city of Nago to demand that U.S. military personnel, who have been continuously stationed on the island since 1945, find a new ...

The west side of Killeen, Texas is like countless other places in America's heartland, freshly carved out of prairie pastures with wide streets in bucolic neighborhoods like "Sunflower Estates" and "Bridgewood." But on a glorious cloudless fall day, the flags at the home sales center nearby are at half mast in honor of the 13 fallen at Ft. Hood, victims of a gunman whose deadly attack was stopped thanks to a petite, long-haired blonde mom from the neigborhood. ...

A crew member aboard a U.S. Navy ship accidentally fired a machine gun into the Polish port city of Gdynia on Wednesday while cleaning the weapon, Navy officials said Friday.