Sunday, December 13, 2009 BHUBANESWAR: India’s Wildlife officials have seized 96 live fresh water turtles from a town in Orissa and arrested one person on charges of smuggling them, police.Acting on a tip off, a police team caught the man with the reptiles at Pipili town, some 20 km away, here Friday evening, inspector in charge of the Pipili police station Amulya Kumar Champatiray said.‘They were live turtles of different shapes and sizes. They were kept in three bags,’ he said. ‘We caught the man when he was waiting for a bus.’The arrested man, Durgasankar Mana, is a resident of Midnapore area of West Bengal and wanted to take the turtles to his state, Champatiray said.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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