Authorities removed more than 180 women and children from the Texas compound of a polygamist sect on Saturday evening after receiving reports of ”sexual and physical abuse”. The 10 000-member Mormon group is led by Warren Jeffs, who was convicted in Utah last year on two counts of accomplice to rape.
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/ 25 January 2008
The show will go on, even if there is a picket at the red carpet, writes Dan Glaister.
Painting a swastika on a public building is a hate crime. But what happens when the building itself is the swastika? While appearing innocuous from the ground, the striking shape of a construction in San Diego, now on view to internet users accessing Google Earth, is unmistakable — it resembles the Nazi symbol.
Plans were announced recently for a biopic of the life of <i>Playboy</i>’s founder, Hugh Hefner, writes Dan Glaister in Los Angeles.
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/ 5 February 2007
Venezuela’s congress extended the authority of the President, Hugo Chávez, on Wednesday when it passed a measure allowing him to rule by decree. The legislation gives Chávez powers to transform 11 “strategic areas” by decree over the coming 18 months to pave the way for “21st-century socialism”.
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/ 4 December 2006
Kim Jong Il enjoys the fine things in life. Unlike his repressed subjects, the diminutive North Korean leader has a well-developed taste for fine wines, gourmet foods and Western electronic goods. But now the United States administration, showing a previously unappreciated subtlety in its determination to bring rogue nations to book, has decided to take away the Dear Leader’s toys.
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/ 28 November 2006
Something very, very wrong is happening. I’m flying along the windy, cypress-lined roads of Pebble Beach in California being chased by a hairdryer. Or at least that’s what it sounds like. "Do you drive many high-performance cars?" asks Mike Harrigan, an executive from Tesla motors. He sits in the passenger seat as I take the wheel of his $100 000 vehicle, and he watches over my progress as if the future of the planet depends on this car, writes Dan Glaister.
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/ 12 November 2006
For all the talk of the first Democrat leader of the House since Newt Gingrich’s Republican revolution 12 years ago, perhaps an even bigger landmark is the ascension of a woman — Nancy Pelosi — to a role that is said to be two heartbeats away from the presidency. Only two higher national positions remain to be conquered by women: the offices of president and vice-president.
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/ 25 September 2006
An authoritative United States intelligence report pooling the views of 16 government agencies concludes the US’s campaign in Iraq has increased the threat of terrorism. Its conclusions contradict assertions made by President George Bush and White House officials during the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, it seems, has friends in high places. Some leading Hollywood liberals — the mythic entity said to prowl the hills of Los Angeles dispensing money and influence — are siding with the Republican governor.