Reuters photographer Tim Wimborne documents the tattoos of members of the U.S. military serving in Afghanistan in the audio slideshow above.

View full coverage of the War in Afghanistan here.

A Swiss mountain, Swiss flags thrown into the air and about 120 alphorn players in traditional clothes: Each summer the alp Tracouet in Nendaz, southern Switzerland, is the stage of an alphorn contest and festival -  Swiss folklore the way you might have pictured it.

This year was no exception as the mountains echoed the International alphorn festival once again.

International? For sure! Joseph and Virginia Anderer tell us why in this audio slideshow.

As the U.S. Senate approves a $2 billion boost for the “Cash for Clunkers” program, photographer Brian Snyder speaks with Tom Barenboim, owner of Clark Chrysler Jeep Dodge dealership in Methuen, Massachusetts, and parts manager Fred Coco about their experience with the program, and what happens to the clunkers once they are traded in.

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• “Clunkers” gets $2 billion extension
• Video: AutoNation’s clunkers win
• Killer app for Clunkers breathes fresh life into ‘liquid glass’ (WSJ)
• Sodium Silicate (Wikipedia)
• How to use Sodium Silicate to kill clunker cars

The first time I met Angelica I didn’t know how to address him, as a man or a woman. To call him Angelica and then hear his man’s voice was very strange. The first thing I asked was how he wanted to be treated. He said that it depended on how I felt more comfortable. For me she was Angelica.

Angelica is an extraordinary person through whose story I began my own in my new country, Mexico. Mexico is enormous and full of contrasts, color, smells and flavors.

Angelica has a very unique family. Her daughter Shadra has a pet Egyptian rat. I thought, how can a girl have a pet rat and love it as any child loves a dog. She proudly wanted to show it to me and put it in my hands, but I screamed and told her I was sorry but I just couldn’t hold a rat. I was ashamed to be such a coward. Luckily she understood; she’s an 8-year-old girl with incredible maturity that allows her to accept her father as a man and as a woman at the same time. She respects and doesn’t show shame.

Angelica’s wife, Chatall, a lesbian, has always worked to give the best education to their children, Shadra and her other child from a previous marriage, with an open mind that also teaches values and principals. When Chatall realized that she also liked other women, she managed to overcome the barriers and live openly.

Throughout the years Angelica has learned to handle well the matter of her double personality. She has even helped others come out of the closet to show their real selves to society. This is her battle.

When I first arrived in Mexico four months ago I was alarmed by how much homophobia was on the minds of the people. Gay Pride day was close and I contacted the organizer of the event, who gave me Angelica’s name. I met her family one night and she told me her long story as I tried to understand the differences between the different labels – transgender, transvestite, transsexual. I put together a story plan, starting with visits in which I took no photos and we just spent time together to get them comfortable with my presence.

I’ve been a photographer for nearly 16 years, and one of the many marvels that this job offers is the chance to meet people like this, strange for some but wonderful for me, that give me the possibility of experiencing another world.

My last stint was three difficult years in Israel. There one sees conflict every day, even in daily life. One of the sayings there is, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” And that’s what the Israel experience gave me, strength.

What I found in Mexico is a place where there is also conflict, often much bloodier, that shows no sign of ending. As long as drugs are illegal and poverty exists the War will continue. But as a Colombian the subject of drug trafficking, jungle laboratories, coca and land wars is pretty commonplace. That’s why I wanted to begin my life in Mexico with a human story. I wanted to report on something different. The world is not all war, religion or drugs. I wanted to show in some way that in other realities there are happy people, people willing to open their door to show the world how an atypical family lives with mature, respectful and loving children.

Reuters Boston Photographer Brian Snyder spent a very long and claustrophobic day in the tiny dark hotel suite where a homeless nurse, Tarya Seagraves-Quee, and three of her four children have been living in Massachusetts for nearly two months.

A record number of families are now being put up in motels due to high unemployment and the rising number of homes going into foreclosure, costing taxpayers $2 million per month but providing a lifeline for desperate families.

Seagraves-Quee has found refuge in a motel after losing her job in Georgia more than a year ago and going without health-care for about 10 months. She suffers from multiple sclerosis, Aspergers syndrome, anemia and lupus, and now is scared she may have cancer. Two of her children, aged 16 and 6, are autistic. After losing her job, and facing repeated physical abuse from a boyfriend, she spent $700 - almost all her savings — on airline tickets for her family to stay with relatives in Boston.

Being homeless has actually helped Seagraves-Quee get the healthcare she needs.  Everyday she makes phone calls for and fills out applications for public housing in an effort to get out of the shelter/motel.  Some of the towns in the area she contacted are simply not taking any new applicants; in others, the ”wait list” for housing is 10 or even 40 years.

Brian’s audio slideshow on the life of the Tarya Seagraves-Quee and her family follows. It is narrated by Seagraves-Quee, who is also a gospel singer:

Audio slideshow produced by Toru Hanai and Kim Kyung-hoon. A full story is listed below.

ICHIKAWA, Japan - He is a typical man of age — a few white hairs cover his round head and he wears dentures.

But 75-year-old Shigeo Tokuda sat on a movie set on Monday wearing just a silk kimono and loin cloth about to have sex on film with a woman who is younger than his daughter.

Tokuda is Japan’s oldest pornographic movie star and was shooting his latest film in which he portrayed a master of sex.

The director said the films showed people that their sex lives did not have to end with old age, and in 16 years of making such movies Tokuda has acted up with women ranging from their 20s to as old as himself.

“I debuted at 59, and have played in more than 200 porno movies since then,” he said, using his screen name, not his real one in an interview on the set.

“I wanted to challenge what ordinary people did not, so I decided to be a porno actor.”

In Monday’s film he used vibrators, whips and candle lights to show the master satisfying a 36-year-old actress. The film was not scripted.

Tokuda turned to the pornographic industry late. He lived a typical Japanese office worker’s life as a travel agent after graduating from one of Tokyo’s elite colleges.

The career sideline came about because he was unsatisfied with a lack of story lines in sex movies he’d seen, which led to a discussion with a film producer about whether he could do better.

It took a couple of years of thinking about it but Tokuda eventually took his pants off for the camera.

Since then, he has became a popular figure in porn movies for rent in Japan, with its rapidly ageing population and long life expectancy. One in five Japanese is over 65 years old.

“Other old men think they can do it because he can. The elderly can feel secure and encouragement when they see his films,” said Gaichi Kono, the director of Tokuda’s latest film.

Japan’s elderly are rejecting the idea that growing old means slowing down, said Chineko Araki, a professor of social welfare from Den-en Chofu University.

“More than 50 percent of men over 65 are eager to have a sexual relationship with their partners,” she said in an email interview.

Tokuda’s films will soon be offered to Japanese retirement homes, exports beckon and they may be shown on the Internet.

Tokuda says his wife and daughter pretend not to know and his friends will never guess.

“But my job makes me keep alive,” he says, adding he plans to keep going at least till he hits 80 years old.

Click here or on any of the pictures below to launch an audio slideshow.

A Florida tent city for hundreds of homeless people lies at the end of a dead-end street, but residents say they have not given up hope of a better life despite the U.S. economic downturn.

The Pinellas Hope camp, 250 single-person tents in neat rows on land owned by the Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg in a wooded area north of the city, has room for about 270 and has been filled to capacity since it opened two years ago.

“I could open the gates and have over 500 people,” said Sheila Lopez, the chief operating officer for Catholic Charities at the St. Petersburg diocese.

The camp has a food hall, bathrooms and showers, a laundry room and a few computers for residents to look for jobs and prepare resumes.

“This is a great place to be. It gives us a great opportunity,” said Alex, a resident who declined to give his last name. “We have a safe place to live. It sure beats sleeping on the street.”

The number of homeless people in the United States, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, is difficult to pin down, advocacy groups say, because most people are homeless for only a short period of time.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates about 675,000 people are homeless on any given night during a one-month period. Between 2.5 million and 3.5 million Americans experience homelessness for at least one night in a year.

The alliance said it expects more than 1 million people to become homeless as a result of the current recession.

SAPPORO, Japan - Retirement can be a death knell for guide dogs, creatures who spend their lives caring for others, but a home in Japan is giving these canines a new lease on life in their twilight years. The Sapporo Retirement Home for Dogs, in the northern island of Hokkaido, has sheltered more than 200 animals since it opened in 1978, giving them the best possible care until they are either adopted by sighted humans or die.

“This is the last gift we can give these dogs who worked for people all their life,” said the home’s director Keiko Tsuji as she caressed the coat of Rick, a dog who is now paralyzed due to old age and can only feed from a tube. “Most of these dogs only live for 2 or 3 years after their retirement, and I want them to live comfortably for the rest of their lives,” she added.

Japan’s guide dogs must retire at the age of 11 or 12, because that is when their abilities, and physical strength, start to fail, according to the home’s staff. These aged dogs are then taken away from their masters because, after years of guiding, they will continue to perform their duties, putting themselves and their owners at risk.

The separation is difficult for both human and animal, and Tsuji, who has cared for dogs for more than 20 years, said that easing the transition from working dog to retiree is what the facility aims to do.

“What they need most is affection. They have lived very closely with people for a long time, so it’s very hard for them to feel isolated suddenly. It is essential for them to keep interacting with people,” she explained.

Only a few dogs live at the center permanently. Some are sent back to the home that raised them as puppies, and others are adopted, usually by workers at the center. Rick, whose emaciated body lies beneath a child’s blanket all day, is set to remain at the center, as is Yell, another guide dog who enjoys the facility’s sun room and all the affection he gets from the 12 caretakers.

The dogs are groomed, bathed, fed and exercised every day. The facility, which was refurbished recently, also has an on-site veterinarian and rehabilitation center for dogs who develop physical disabilities due to age.

While the center hopes to prolong the lives of the dogs and make them more comfortable, it also has a cemetery nearby for the canines who have passed on. A tomb stone commemorates the 250 guide dogs who died in Hokkaido and a memorial service is held in August of each year.

In this audio slideshow, fighting cow owner Jean-François Rossat talks with Reuters photographer Denis Balibouse about traditional cow fights in the Alpine region of Valais, Switzerland.

Click here or on the image above to view an audio slideshow from the Namo Monastery.