Locked in a violent standoff, Ayacucho stands at the top of a Peruvian congressional list that gauges political violence in Peru's 25 provinces.

In the episode Offender he inadvertently leaked information allowing a vigilante father to work out the identity of his son's murderer; the result was a violent standoff that was only defused when the man's wife persuaded him to stand down.

On Wednesday, for instance, subscribers to the electronic edition of The San Jose Mercury News received an update on a violent standoff in a west San Jose apartment.

Employees' efforts to organize for better wages and working conditions led to a violent standoff this year - a dispute that simmers today in the form of an intermittent strike by some families, including Esteban's own.

"Confessions" recalls a violent standoff with her mother over Tan's first real boyfriend, a mangy deserter from the German Army, that ended with Tan's mother holding a meat cleaver to her daughter's neck.

And in the context of the present, violent, real-world standoff between two artificial constructions known as the West and the Islamic world, it certainly makes sense.

It is also the scene of some of Colombia's most violent standoffs between the Farc and paramilitaries, as they vie for the country's $13 billion cocaine industry.

Later in April, tribal police officers, saying they were concerned about the safety of the gambling public, closed and barricaded the hall and braced themselves for a tense and potentially violent standoff.

After a tense and somewhat violent standoff, the governor sent in the state militia to protect the miners.