Flagstaff, United States - On the southwestern corner of the Navajo reservation, Twin Arrows Casino Resort towers over the empty Arizona desert, its lurid neon lights drawing travellers from the historic Route 66 highway to its bright Las Vegas-style gaming floors. Crossing through the arid plains of western Texas into New Mexico and Arizona, the path of the famous US roadway is punctuated by Native American-operated casinos.

Zozobra, or "Old Man Gloom," is set afire at the climax of this decades-old Sante Fe tradition. All photos by Lyle Shanahan. Last week, at a park in New Mexico’s capital city of Santa Fe, tens of thousands of people gathered to watch the annual burning of what may be the world’s largest marionette.

In the Shu’Fat neighbourhood of East Jerusalem, Palestinian Iyad Al-Shaer stood inside the gutted interior of a modest breeze block structure. The building, an addition to Iyad’s own home, was set to be a new residence for his brother Baser and his fiancé. But the fully furnished home, complete with a heart-covered bedroom that Baser had designed for his future child, now had three gaping holes punctured in its roof.

The success of the pioneering Bitcoin has inspired a proliferation of new cryptocurrencies around the globe, and last week, six Israeli developers introduced their own virtual coin in an attempt to counter the concentration of power and wealth within the Israeli economy. “The centralization of banks and power in Israel is extreme,” said Amnon Dafni, one of the six founders of Isracoin.

Occupied East Jerusalem- For the past two months, Hamzah Abu Terr has slept on the floor of his home. He gave his bed to his three small children whose room he was forced to destroy earlier this year, to avoid large demolition fines issued by the Israeli municipality. "I had no choice," said Hamzah, sitting on the couch at his home in East Jerusalem next to his eldest daughter.

Israel’s aggressive vigilance of its borders has resulted in the loss of another Palestinian life. On Wednesday, 15-year-old Yousef Nayif Yousef Shawamrah Abu-Akar was shot dead by an Israeli soldier in the south Hebron hills. According to the Israeli Defense Forces, Yousef was one of three Palestinian teenagers attempting to sabotage the large barrier wall that separates Israel from the West Bank.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited the White House on Monday, where he spoke with President Barack Obama about the peace negotiations with Israel that began last July and have continued amid growing violence and expanding Israeli settlement construction in the occupied territories. Obama has urged both sides to make tough political decisions in order to salvage the two-state solution.

While the movement to boycott Israeli academic institutions does not yet have widespread US public support, proposed reactionary legislation against it has given the campaign exposure that it otherwise was unlikely to achieve. The Palestinian-led Boycott Divestment and Sanction campaign began in 2005 to put political and economic pressure on Israel to end its violation of human rights and meet its obligations under international law.

In 1943, the world's first nuclear weapon was detonated at the Trinity site in the Chihuahuan Desert, southern New Mexico. The massive blast pulled the white desert sand up into an atomic fireball, the heat transforming the granules into green glass that fell back to the desert floor. Days before and a few hundreds miles north, the world’s first ever nuclear weapons scientists mused over whether or not the atmosphere above the test site would be incinerated by the atomic reaction, ushering in a new age of apocalyptic fear that would define the next couple of generations.

Mounds of radioactive waste dot the eastern portion of the Navajo Nation in the US state of New Mexico. The earthen monoliths contain contaminated material from the more than 250 abandoned uranium mines that once provided the raw materials for the US nuclear complex. As the Cold War ended, so did the demand for uranium.

US security forces arrested 18 Los Angles prison officials and analysts say the case sheds light on poor conditions.

Calls to boycott Israeli academic institutions in support of Palestinian rights are gaining momentum.

Critics say Holy Basin archaeology is being exploited to advance Israeli claims to its 'eternal city'.

On an autumnal Sunday in Ramallah, the courtyard of the $60 million Movenpick hotel is swarming with hundreds of drunk Palestinians. On a stage at one end of the crowd, the Jerusalem band Khallas are playing their own brand of "oriental metal". Meanwhile, groups of young Palestinians do the classical dance known as the dabke, in step to a song that sounds somewhere between early Black Sabbath and traditional Arab folk.

Women street racers known as the "Speed Sisters" have become a beloved component of the Palestinian racing scene.