VICE News

In Memphis's Forrest Park, there's a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the most infamous and powerful racists in American history. Lately it's been at the center of the city's often shaky race relations. Watch as the KKK, the Memphis City Council, and the local gang members fight for what they each believe is right.

In recent years, a small amount of hackers and gamers have been anonymously reporting fake hostage situations, shootings, and other violent crimes designed to send elite police units, like SWAT teams, to unsuspecting people at their residences. Swatting is a dangerous and expensive prank, which is easy to pull off. Swatters are utilizing easily accessible technology to mask or even alter the ID during calls to 911 dispatchers. With SWAT teams and paramilitary gear becoming the norm across small town America, these calls have predictably chaotic results. Despite the hyper-vigilance of America’s law enforcement, authorities still struggle to defend themselves from the unlikeliest of threats — tech-savvy teenagers. Police militarization meets hacker culture as VICE News investigates the dangerous crime of swatting.

Although it might have seemed like a good idea to host the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil-one of the most soccer-obsessed countries in the world-massive social unrest has taken the country by storm in the lead-up to the tournament. The Brazilian government is spending an estimated $14 billion on this year's tournament, making it the most expensive World Cup to date. This has provoked outrage among Brazilians, who view the government as corrupt. They are seeing vast amounts of money being spent on soccer stadiums and police while politicians ignore the country's endemic poverty and social issues.

In August, al Nusra Front jihadists took control of Syria's side of the border crossing with Israel and kidnapped over 40 United Nations peacekeepers — who have since been released. But al Nusra Front, an al Qaeda-affiliate, isn't Israel's only threat from Syria. President Bashar al-Assad's military, in a possible effort to bait Israel into its civil war to shore up Arab sympathies, has been lobbing mortars across the border. Just a few weeks ago, the Israeli military shot down a Syrian plane flying over the Golan Heights — the first time it has done so since the 1980s. VICE News travels to Israel's "quiet border" in the Golan Heights, where members of al Nusra Front are now a visible threat.

Japan’s obsession with cutesy culture has taken a dark turn, with schoolgirls now offering themselves for “walking dates” with adult men. Last year the US State Department, in its annual report on human trafficking, flagged so-called joshi-kosei osanpo dates (that’s Japanese for “high school walking”) as fronts for commercial sex run by sophisticated criminal networks. In our exclusive investigation, VICE News host Simon Ostrovsky will bring you to one of Tokyo’s busiest neighborhoods, where girls solicit clients in their school uniforms, to a concert performed by a band of schoolgirls attended by adult men, and into a café, where teenage girls are available to hire by the hour. But the true revelations come behind closed doors, when schoolgirls involved in the rent-a-date industry reveal how they’ve been coerced into prostitution.