Riyadh - Because of the increase in public executions this year, the Saudi Arabian government is in need of an additional eight "religious functionaries" to carry out the beheadings of people condemned to death by public execution.

The job description states there are no special qualifications needed, but besides beheading an individual, the applicant will also be required to do the occasional limb amputation for those convicted of lesser crimes.

The position is a Civil Service job and a downloadable PDF application is available on the website that carries today's date. The job is classified as a "religious Functionary," and is at the lower end of the Civil Service pay scale.

Saudi Arabia is just one of the top five countries in the world in putting people to death. The Islamic country, with 90 deaths, was ranked number three in 2014, after China and Iran, with 289 executions, but ahead of Iraq, with 81 deaths, and the United States with 35 executions. China carries out more executions that any other country in the world, but the actual numbers are a closely guarded state secret.

According to the official Saudi Press Agency, a man beheaded on Sunday was the 85th execution this year, compared to 90 for all of 2014. While most of those executed this year were convicted of murder, there were 38 people executed because of drug offenses. Half were from Saudi Arabia and the rest were from Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, India, Indonesia, Burma, Chad, Eritrea the Philippines and Sudan, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Although government officials are not saying, there is speculation about the reason for the increase in executions this year. Diplomatic sources say it may be because more judges have been appointed recently to handle a backlog of appeals cases. Political analysts think the increase in executions is more likely a tougher response to increasing turbulence in the region.

What happens to a citizen when hundreds of images of child pornography are found on their computer and phone? Well, if you are a law enforcement officer, the answer is, nothing. An investigation into the New Orleans Police Department has revealed a disturbing lack of discipline for individuals who've been caught and accused of despicable acts.

The residents of a Mandeville neighborhood felt safe knowing that a 16-year veteran of the NOPD, Sgt Bradley Wax lived down their street. However, that would quickly change after Wax was arrested and charged with 38 counts of possessing child pornography. The Louisiana Attorney General's office conducted a search on Wax's personal computer and other electronic devices and found them to be full of explicit photos of young children.

He was obviously fired immediately and not allowed to be a cop any longer, right? Or at the very least he was suspended until the trial, right? Wrong. WDSU, who carried out the independent investigation, found that Wax was initially suspended but has since returned to work as normal, working in fleet management at the NOPD headquarters.

"It's incredibly hard to imagine anyone in that capacity would be back working and being paid for it at taxpayer expense," said Dr. John Penny, criminologist at Southern University at New Orleans.

It is indeed hard to imagine how any morally sound establishment would continue to allow a man, who was found in possession of so much child pornography that he faces more than 500 years behind bars if convicted, to continue to draw a salary as a cop.

But to the NOPD, it's business as usual.

Police in Hesse killed a 74-year-old pensioner on Sunday in a gun battle which erupted after the man refused to be admitted to a clinic.

A special response team (SEK) had arrived at the man's home in Rodgau, near Frankfurt, just before 7am after beat officers were unable to defuse the situation.

The pensioner, who had a valid firearms license, threatened to use violence if anyone tried to force him to leave against his will, investigators said.

After the SEK arrived, he opened fire and refused to lay down his weapon after the initial shots.

Officers returned fire after he resumed shooting, fatally wounding him and leaving him dead on the ground outside the house.

The floor was left strewn with cartridge casings and there were several bullet holes in the garage door.

Police forensics teams locked down the area through the afternoon as they gathered evidence. It is not yet clear why the man was to be admitted to the clinic.

Five people have been arrested for attempting to buy the organ from a penniless immigrant for €6,000. It was to transplant into the son of a criminal gang boss suffering from kidney disease.

Spanish police said Monday they had arrested five people accused of trying to buy a kidney from an impoverished immigrant for €6,000 ($6,835).

Officers in Spain made the arrests working in collaboration with others in Germany and Belgium, a brief police statement said. It did not say exactly when the arrests were made.

"The immigrant tried to pull out of the deal while he was undergoing clinical tests, so he was kidnapped, beaten and threatened with death to make him go ahead," the statement said. The person wanting to buy the organ was the leader of a criminal gang specialized in robberies, who wanted it for a son suffering from kidney disease.

Police chiefs and the head of Spain's National Transplant Organisation were due to give more details at a press conference later on Monday. In March, 14 European nations in Spain signed the first ever international treaty to fight human organ trafficking.

The business generates $1.2 billion (1.1 billion euros) in illegal profits worldwide every year, according to the Council of Europe, which drew up the treaty. In January 2014, Spanish police arrested a rich 62-year-old Lebanese man suspected of trying to buy the healthy liver of a Romanian.

Last year Spain carried out more organ transplants per capita than any other nation in the world.

Tuesday's derailment of an Amtrak train on America's busiest rail route has exposed before the whole world the crumbling state of infrastructure in the United States.

Eight people were killed, over two hundred injured and rail traffic snarled for a week for the simple reason that the publicly funded Amtrak commuter railway had not implemented a basic automated train control system.

While the precise circumstances that led up to the catastrophe are still being investigated, it is clear that the train accelerated to twice the speed limit around a sharp turn on an dangerous and antiquated portion of the track. Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board are considering the possibility that before this happened, the cabin may have been struck by a rock or a bullet, based on a radio discussion overheard by the assistant conductor. The windshield of a nearby regional train had also been hit by a projectile shortly before the Amtrak train derailed.

Whatever caused the train to speed up sharply before it derailed, it could have been easily prevented by a safety system known as "positive train control." As a result of chronic underfunding, the system had not been installed on that section of the rail line, leaving no backup in the event of human or mechanical error.

Engineer Brandon Bostian, who was driving the train at the time that of the accident, had previously been a vocal critic of the woefully inadequate safety systems on US rail lines, declaring on an online forum that "they have had nearly a hundred years of opportunity to implement SOME sort of system to mitigate human error."

Five Mexican teenagers aged 11-15 have been accused of the brutal torture and murder of a six-year old boy during a "kidnap game."

According to the Chihuahua state prosecutors' office, the adolescents admitted to the killing.

The boy, Christopher Raymundo Marquez, was invited by a group of adolescents that were his neighbors and friends to play and collect firewood in a wasteland not far from his home in Chihuahua on Thursday, says a statement from the prosecutor's office.

Once they reached a stream in the wasteland, the children told Christopher they were going to feign a kidnapping. They then turned on him, tied his hands and feet together and beat him with a spiked stick. They followed this by stoning Christopher and finally choked him to death.

The eldest of the teenagers was only 15. Among the others were another 15-year-old boy, two 13-year-old girls and a boy aged 11.

The youngsters decided to bury the body in order to conceal their crime. They covered the hand-dug grave with weeds and a dead animal so as "not to attract attention to it."

A Chicago man has come forward about his experience with the Chicago Police Department which turned into a living nightmare. The incident happened on October 21, 2012 at the now infamous Homan Square facility. Angel Perez was targeted by police because they believed he knew an alleged drug dealer.

Video obtained by the Guardian and the subsequent interview detail the horrifying events as the incident the unfolded. The Guardian reports:

So the next day, October 21 2012, he agreed to meet at Al's Beef. Camera footage shows Perez walking over to their car with his hand extended for a handshake, unarmed and unassuming. The officers turn him around, push him against the car, cuff him and take him to Homan Square - where, he alleges, they sexually assaulted him.

The footage that follows, which the Guardian is publishing, is rare video showing the Homan Square detention operations that the Chicago police have downplayed. They have instead pointed to the evidence lockers at the warehouse and the press conferences they hold there for drug busts to insist that the Guardian's expose of their incommunicado detentions are overblown.

But the footage, taken from surveillance cameras inside and on the perimeter of Homan Square, shows two officers walking a handcuffed Perez through a blue door inside the warehouse marked "prisoner entrance" at 3.49pm. He was taken to a second-floor room, he said, where he contends police inserted a metal object, believed to be a handgun barrel, into his rectum.

Perez said the cops shackled him, taunted him and then began to force the gun barrel into his rectum.

A mayor of a French town has been suspended from former president Nikolas Sarkozy's UMP party after urging a ban on Islam in the country and the immediate "escorting to the border" of those practicing the religion.

"The Muslim religion must be banned in France," Robert Chardon, mayor of the southern town of Venelles, wrote on Twitter earlier this week.

All followers of Islam should be "immediately escorted to the border," the mayor added, forecasting that the Muslim faith will be banned in France by 2027.

The controversial tweet was made by Chardon as part of an online public discussion initiated by French ex-president and UMP (Union for a Popular Movement) leader, Nicolas Sarkozy, under the #NSDirect hashtag.

Sarkozy, who is likely to run for president once again in 2027, was quick to distance himself from the comments.

"I condemn this proposal even if secularism also means fixing limits. Rights and limits go together," he wrote.

Joseph Rivers was a 22-year-old aspiring music video producer from outside of Detroit who managed to painstakingly save $16,000 for a music venture.

He was on an Amtrak train moving to Los Angeles to pursue his dream when his life's savings were stolen from him.

According to the Albuquerque Journal, "A DEA agent boarded the train at the Albuquerque Amtrak station and began asking various passengers, including Rivers, where they were going and why. When Rivers replied that he was headed to LA to make a music video, the agent asked to search his bags. Rivers complied."

His $16,000 was in a bank envelope found by DEA agents. He tried to explain that he had problems withdrawing money from out of state banks in the past and that he was moving to Los Angeles. The feds did not believe him.

At least nine people have been killed and 17 injured in a shootout between rival biker gangs outside the Twin Peaks Restaurant in Waco, Texas. The brawl quickly escalated from fists to gunfire despite police, aware of possible trouble, being at the scene.

Eight bikers have been killed as a result of the violence that broke out between the rival gangs in Waco, while one more died in hospital, local media reported citing police. At least 17 more people suffered gunshot and stab wounds and were brought to a local hospital.

Police said no officers were wounded or killed in the shootout, but it was unclear whether any bystanders were injured.