The moment of the arrest was captured on camera: Men with PFA (Policia Federal Argentina) emblazoned in yellow on the backs of their flak jackets ran from a van and surrounded a single-storey villa in a rural a suburb south of Buenos Aires.
Om or Ominous? The maverick film director David Lynch wants to bring Transcendental Meditation to our classrooms, and believes in yogic flying. Can he get it off the ground?
Despite an uncertain welcome in Texas, these Syrian families are trying to rebuild their lives after fleeing civil unrest and violence half a world away. The tapestry that hangs on the wall above the sofa in Iyad and Lina Al Afandi’s modest home just north of Dallas is the only physical reminder of the country they’ve left behind: a stitching that depicts a traditional Syrian house with tiled courtyard and fountain, and rugs draped from the balcony.
The 'Phyllis cormack', an old fishing trawler that has seen better days, slows as it approaches an object somewhere in the lonely Pacific, a few hundred miles off the coast of California. On board, the crew realise they've come across a baby sperm whale, blood staining the sea around its lifeless body.
As gun violence continues to plague the US, a new law allowing students in Texas to carry concealed firearms on campus has divided students and staff – and sparked debate on whether attempting to protect yourself could put innocent people at risk. The scenario is terrifying, but unfortunately all too easy to imagine: calls begin to come in to the police about a ‘shooter on campus’, but the reports are somewhat vague and contradictory.
The number of migrants making the perilous, illegal journey from Central America to the US is soaring. Alex Hannaford reports from the border (Pictures: Jez Coulson)
Does James Franco's film True Story give a man who murdered his own wife and children the attention he desperately craves? His victims' family think so. One winter night in 2001, Penny Baker-Dupuie sat on the sofa in the living room of her Michigan home. Her two children, a newborn and a three-year-old, were asleep in their beds upstairs, and Penny watched in silence as her husband, John, sitting opposite, showed her how to load, empty, then re-load their shotgun; slowly, meticulously.
In 1996, journalist Gary Webb began looking into links between Nicaragua's drug-running Contra rebels and the CIA. As a recent film shows, what he found killed him. Gary Webb knew his story would cause a stir. The newspaper report he'd written suggested that a US-backed rebel army in Latin America was supplying the drugs responsible for blighting some of Los Angeles's poorest neighbourhoods – and, crucially, that the CIA must have known about it.
The fracking boom has transformed vast parts of Texas, pumping money into local economies while raising fears about groundwater and air pollution. The boom has caused increased crime and truck traffic, and has likely spawned earthquakes. But the oil and gas bonanza has also brought more subtle, but no less significant, social changes.
Paedophile Warren Jeffs is serving a life sentence in jail. As a new television drama tells his story, Alex Hannaford asks: why is he still so powerful?
The shootings at Sandy Hook school claimed the lives of 20 children and shocked the world. So why do a growing number of Americans want gun controls relaxed? Alex Hannaford meets the fiery ‘Open Carry’ activists
Texas’ largest prison guard union is calling for a partial end to the controversial use of solitary confinement on death row. In a letter to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) obtained by the Observer , the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3807 advocates for TDCJ to house death-row prisoners who pose the lowest security risk in cells with other inmates.
