Search Results for: Texas Observer

The 2015 National Magazine Award Winners: A Reading List

This year’s National Magazine Awards were handed out Monday night in New York, with General Excellence honors going to publications including The New Yorker, Glamour, Garden & Gun, Nautilus and The Hollywood Reporter. Vogue won the award for “Magazine of the Year.”

Here’s a brief rundown of some of the winning stories from the night:

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Multimedia: “Beyond the Border” (Texas Observer)

Texas has become the deadliest state in the US for undocumented immigrants. In 2012, 271 migrants died while crossing through Texas, surpassing Arizona as the nation’s most dangerous entry point. The majority of those deaths didn’t occur at the Texas-Mexico border but in rural Brooks County, 70 miles north of the Rio Grande, where the US Border Patrol has a checkpoint. To circumvent the checkpoint, migrants must leave the highway and hike through the rugged ranchlands. Hundreds die each year on the trek, most from heat stroke. This four-part series looks at the lives impacted by the humanitarian crisis.

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Longreads’ Best of WordPress, Vol. 3

Our latest collection is now live at WordPress.com, featuring stories from Aeon, Grantland, Brooklyn Quarterly, The Awl, Texas Observer and more. Get the full list here.

Longreads’ Best of WordPress, Vol. 3

Longreads Pick

Here are 10 of our favorite stories right now from Aeon, Grantland, Brooklyn Quarterly, The Awl, Texas Observer and more.

Source: Longreads
Published: Aug 12, 2014

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle and Readmill users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle and Readmill users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

Read more…

Hundred of international parental child abduction cases are reported to the U.S. State Department each year, and left-behind parents are finding it difficult to receive help:

Monica Sanchez, who lives in San Marcos, bounced between law enforcement agencies for days after her ex-boyfriend, Armando Muñoz Garcia, abducted their 2-year-old daughter Sarahi in January 2012. Sanchez reported the kidnapping to the San Marcos Police Department, but officers told her they needed proof of legal custody in order to help her. The Guadalupe County Sheriff’s Office said the same thing.

Sanchez had filed for custody of her daughter, but the court hadn’t ruled in the case. Under the law, it’s a crime for one parent to take a child out of the country without the other parent’s permission. Sanchez didn’t know this.

The federal government requires law enforcement agencies to immediately report missing children under the age of 18 to the National Crime Information Center, whether the parent filing the report has a custody order or not. And Texas recently approved a law that makes international abductions a felony. Yet most law enforcement officers refuse to file missing persons reports without a custody order, which requires an attorney and takes time and money to acquire. In the meantime, a parent can slip out of the country with his child before officers can stop him.

“Taken.” — Priscila Mosqueda, Texas Observer

More from Texas Observer

Top 5 #Longreads of the Week: Slate.com, The Atlantic, The Texas Observer, n+1, Guernica, a fiction pick, plus a guest pick from Marcus Sortijas.

Photo: Wikipedia

A couple’s personal experience dealing with Texas’s new sonogram law, which requires a woman to have a sonogram and hear a doctor describe her child before moving forward with an abortion:

“I don’t want to have to do this at all,” I told her. “I’m doing this to prevent my baby’s suffering. I don’t want another sonogram when I’ve already had two today. I don’t want to hear a description of the life I’m about to end. Please,” I said, “I can’t take any more pain.” I confess that I don’t know why I said that. I knew it was fait accompli. The counselor could no more change the government requirement than I could. Yet here was a superfluous layer of torment piled upon an already horrific day, and I wanted this woman to know it.

“‘We Have No Choice’: One Woman’s Ordeal with Texas’ New Sonogram Law.” — Carolyn Jones, Texas Observer

See also: “The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy.” — Ruth Padawer, New York Times, Aug. 20, 2011

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

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This week, we’re sharing stories from Jessica Schulberg, Patrick Strickland, Shanna B. Tiayon, Sarah Berns, and Madeleine Aggeler.

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1. Kip Kinkel Is Ready to Talk

Jessica Schulberg | HuffPost | June 13, 2021 | 15,200 words

“At 15, he shot and killed his parents, two classmates at his school, and wounded 25 others. He’s been used as the reason to lock kids up for life ever since.”

2. ‘The Foot Soldiers’: A Neo-Nazi Skinhead Gang Terrorized Dallas in the Late 1980s

Patrick Strickland | Dallas Observer | June 9, 2021 | 6,624

“The racist white nationalist movement has deep roots. Some run directly back to Dallas and the violent Confederate Hammerskins.”

3. If We Can Soar: What Birmingham Roller Pigeons Offer the Men of South Central

Shanna B. Tiayon | Pipe Wrench | June 15, 2021 | 6,574 words

“But there’s a deeper story behind what the birds offered them then and still offer today, with men entering their fifth and sixth decade raising Birmingham Rollers. A why shaped by race, place, and gender. A why that traces the plight of Black men in the U.S., landing us squarely in the prevailing systems of inequality that still exist today.”

4. Love and the Burning West

Sarah Berns | Shondaland | June 9, 2021 | 1,667 words

“She nearly died while fighting a fire. All she could think about was the tragedy of dying while still a virgin.”

5. Benji Is One Down Dog

Madeleine Aggeler | Texas Monthly | June 2, 2021 | 1,900 words

The blue heeler “is one of the most famous canines in America, but he hasn’t let it go to his sweet, soft little head.”