• Texan facility staff filmed one-on-one fistfights• Abuse allegations extend concern to federal level Workers at a Texan state facility that provides support for people with "severe or profound mental retardation" have been found to have been running a fight club between patients and videoing t...

Are this lot the future of orchestras? Ed Pilkington dusts off his violin, heads for his spare room - and joins in the auditions for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra I am auditioning for an orchestra. The piece I'm playing has a celebratory feel, with a punchy finale. But, despite six weeks of practis...

New book by two US military contractors describes former Farc captive as controlling and manipulative There was celebrating all around the world when Ingrid Betancourt was rescued last July from the Colombian jungle, where she had been held hostage for six years by leftist guerrillas. Newspapers dub...

Rothko and Warhol among works offered as collateral as recession-hit wealthy using art to raise cash Annie Leibovitz, the celebrated New York photographer who has captured many of the most memorable images of the icons of Hollywood and Washington over the past 30 years, is not the kind of person usu...

Sir Allen Stanford, the Texas billionaire, has been accused this week of a multiplicity of sins, from perpetrating an $8bn fraud to links with drugs running. So far, though, no one has thought to reproach him on grounds of modesty. The reason why is obvious the moment a visitor steps out of the arri...

A two-day global hunt to find the cricket tycoon Sir Allen Stanford in the wake of allegations that he masterminded a massive financial swindle came to an end last night, when the FBI said it had tracked him down to Virginia. The discovery of the Texas billionaire in Fredericksburg, about 50 miles s...

In the folklore of English letters, the literary friendship between the four dominant voices of the modern British novel - Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis and Julian Barnes - is already the stuff of legend. That was even before we learnt that for two of them the bond even extended to offerin...

When Barack Obama became president there were celebrations around the world. Car horns were honked in Mexico City, thousands gathered to watch the inauguration on big screens in Liverpool and Leeds, feasts were held in Kenya. Yet the festive spirit failed to permeate one small corner of Manhattan, h...

1 Said: "So help me God." The phrase is not required by the constitution, so it's arguable that he, Barack Obama, was president by the time he said it, making these his first words in office. 2 Delivered a 17-minute inauguration address, telling the crowds it was time to "pick ourselves up, dust our...

It was a day on which the political heat unleashed by the Obama phenomenon collided with bone-chilling sub-zero temperatures along America's eastern coast. The heat won. Barack Obama completed the final 137 miles of his improbable journey to the White House yesterday in conditions that would have re...