The number of Monarch butterflies wintering in Mexico dropped 28 percent this year, according to a report released Thursday, a decline some experts attribute to droughts in parts of the United States and Canada where the butterflies breed and begin their long migration south.

Others say damage to wintering grounds in central Mexico's mountains remains a factor in the decline, citing deforestation of the fir and pine forests they favor.

National Zoo officials say two rare Guam rail chicks have hatched there. The birds are extinct in the wild.

The small, flightless birds hatched March 3 and 4. The total population of the birds is now 162.

U.S. police have ticketed a man who is accused of tying his cat to a rock after the feline refused to go jogging.

Sgt. Fred Palmer says 19-year-old Seth Franco brought his cat on a leash to the path at a local park on Wednesday, but the cat was unable to keep up.

Police in Ogden, Utah, say an 8-year-old boy took his 5-year-old sister on a drive in the middle of the night and crashed the family minivan.

Nobody was hurt.

"Pink slime" just went from a simmer to a boil.

In less than a week earlier this month, the stomach-turning epithet for ammonia-treated ground beef filler suddenly became a potent rallying cry by activists fighting to ban the product from supermarket shelves and school lunch trays.

State-employed archaeologists in crisis-hit Greece say government spending cuts pose a severe threat to the country's rich cultural heritage.

The Association of Greek Archaeologists warns that as Greeks are pummeled by income losses and record unemployment, looting of ancient sites by amateur treasure hunters is growing. They say cutbacks have also led to severe security guard shortages.

Researchers say they have discovered the fossils of a small camel with a long snout that roamed the tropical rainforests of the isthmus of Panama some 20 million years ago.

The ancient camel had no hump, and one of the two species found appeared to stand only about two feet (.6 meters) tall, scientists reported in a recently published article in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

When police in suburban Washington raided the home of a suspected drug dealer last fall, they found the cocaine, all right, but also something unusual on the man's shelves: nearly 20 large bottles of liquid Tide laundry detergent.

It turns out his customers were paying for drugs not with cash but with stolen Tide, police said.

Sometimes, giving two weeks' notice just isn't enough.

The Goldman Sachs muppet manifesto — a departing executive's lengthy and very public screed against the company's blind pursuit of profits — is only the latest example of taking bridge-burning to an art form.

Actress Charlize Theron is a mother: The actress has adopted a child.

In a statement to The Associated Press on Wednesday, Theron's publicist said the actress is a "proud mom of a healthy baby boy named Jackson."