BEIRUT (AP) — A car bomb rocked a stronghold of the Shiite militant Hezbollah group south of the Lebanese capital Tuesday, setting several cars on fire and wounding 37 people in a major security breach of a tightly-guarded area, security officials said.

The powerful blast in a bustling commercial and residential neighborhood came as many Lebanese Shiites began observing the holy month of Ramadan, and is the worst explosion to hit the area in years — likely direct fallout of the civil war raging in neighboring Syria.

A group of about 100 outraged Hezbollah supporters marched in the area after the blast, carrying pictures of Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and shouting in support of their leader and sectarian slogans.

Hezbollah operatives fired in the air to disperse people who attacked the interior minister with stones after he inspected the scene of the blast, trapping him for 45 minutes in a building before he was escorted through a backdoor.

"The Shiite blood is boiling," the Hezbollah supporters shouted.

Minister Marwan Charbel is seen by some Shiites as sympathetic to hardline Sunni cleric Ahmad al-Assir, who was agitating against Hezbollah for months and is now on the run.

With skirmishes between Shiites and Sunnis on the rise around the country, religiously mixed and dangerously fragile Lebanon is increasingly buffeted by powerful forces that are dividing the Arab world along sectarian lines. Some Syrian rebel groups, which are predominantly Sunni, have threatened to strike in Lebanon after Hezbollah joined Syrian President Bashar Assad's troops in their battle against opposition fighters.

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A man peers through a shattered window at the scene of a bombing in the Beir el-Abed, a southern sub …

"This is a message, but we will not bow," said Ziad Waked, a municipal official speaking to Hezbollah's Al-Manar television.

Tuesday's explosion struck the area of Beir el-Abed, and was most likely caused by a car bomb, officials said on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. They said the blast was in the parking near the Islamic Coop, a supermarket usually packed with shoppers, and a petrol station.

"The explosion was so strong I thought it was an Israeli air raid," witness Mohammad al-Zein said. "My wife was sleeping in bed and all the glass fell on her, injuring her in the mouth, arms and legs."

Another resident said that he was fasting on the first day of Ramadan and was on his way to shop for the evening meal that would break his daylong fast.

"I was riding my motorcycle on my way to a sweets shop and then there was this massive explosion that knocked me off and I fell on the ground," said a 52-year-old employee of a private company. He declined to be named out of security concerns.

Red Cross head of operations George Kattaneh said 37 people were wounded, saying they were all light injuries, many of them from breaking glass.

The area is a few hundred meters (yards) away from what was known as Hezbollah's "security square" where many of the party's officials live and have offices. Nasrallah received dignitaries there before the 2006 war. The so-called security square was bombed out by Israel in that conflict and Nasrallah has gone underground since then, only rarely appearing in public and never for more than few minutes, fearing Israeli assassination.

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A woman walks past a car destroyed in a bombing in the Beir el-Abed, a southern suburb of Beirut, Le …

Tuesday's explosion is one of the biggest in the area since the end of the country's 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990.

"It is a large area heavily populated. No force in the world can protect every area and every street," Hezbollah lawmaker Ali Moqdad said.

Television footage from the scene revived memories of that conflict, when car bombs set by sectarian groups were common. There have been numerous car bombs targeting politicians and journalists since then, but random car bombs have been rare.

Hezbollah operatives in civilian clothes, some of them carrying Kalashnikov rifles, cordoned off the site of the explosion with yellow ribbons. They and Lebanese security officials barred journalists from approaching the site itself.

Ambulances and fire engines, their sirens wailing, raced to the area and witnesses said casualties were rushed to the nearby Bahman and Rasoul al-Atham hospitals. Immediately after the blast, people could be seen running in the street away from the site of the explosion which set several cars on fire.

The power of the explosion shattered windows and damaged several buildings in the busy residential and commercial area. A security official said the bomb was placed in a car and that it weighed 35 kilograms.

In May, two rockets slammed into a Hezbollah stronghold in south Beirut, wounding four people. The rockets struck hours after Nasrallah vowed in a speech to help propel Assad to victory in Syria's civil war.

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Map locates suburb in Beirut hit by explosion; 1c x 2 inches; 46.5 mm x 50 mm;

In June, a rocket slammed into the same area, causing no casualties.

Hezbollah has openly joined the fight in Syria, and the group's fighters were instrumental in a recent regime victory when government forces regained control of the strategic town of Qusair near the Lebanese border.

Lebanon's Sunni Muslims mostly back the overwhelmingly Sunni rebels in Syria, while many Shiites support Assad, who is a member of Syria's minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

"It is not a surprise for Dahyeh, the stronghold of resistance, to be targeted by such lowly, treacherous attacks that bear the fingerprints of the Israeli enemy and its tools," said Hezbollah lawmaker Ali Ammar, referring to the name by which the suburb south of Beirut is known.

Hezbollah, much like the Syrian regime, accuses Syrian rebels of being agents of the U.S. and Israel.

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Associated Press writer Zeina Karam contributed to this report.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A county coroner said Monday that he would not report for "at least two or three weeks" whether one of the two teenage girls who died in the Asiana Airlines crash was struck and killed by an emergency vehicle.

San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault said that while autopsies of the two Chinese girls have been completed, he wants to review written information from the public safety agencies that responded to the crash and audio dispatch files before determining their causes of deaths.

"This is a very high-profile case and has obviously generated a lot of attention," Foucrault said at his office located a few miles south of San Francisco International Airport where the plane crashed Saturday. "I want to make absolutely sure my conclusions are correct."

Foucrault earlier had said he hoped to have preliminary results on Monday that he would make public once they had been shared with the girls' families.

He said he made the decision to hold off independently and that neither city officials nor federal accident investigators had asked him for a postponement.

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In this undated photo made available Monday, July 8, 2013, Ye Mengyuan, left, and Wang Linjia, right …

San Francisco fire officials acknowledged Monday that one of their trucks responding to the crash may have accidentally struck one of the two teenage girls who were the accident's only fatalities.

"One of our fire apparatus may have come into contact with one of our two victims who was at the scene," Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White said during a news conference. "I assure you we are looking closely at this."

The teenagers' families are expected to arrive in San Francisco on Monday, and they will get the autopsy results before they are made public, Foucrault said.

Federal accident investigators have reviewed airport surveillance footage to see if it showed someone being struck by a fire truck on the runway and found "it wasn't conclusive," National Transportation Safety Board chairwoman Deborah Hersman said Monday.

Interviews with emergency responders and especially the autopsy report are expected to bring answers, Hersman said.

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In this undated photo made available Monday, July 8, 2013, a supporter of Wang Linjia, holds up a ph …

"It is a very serious issue and we want to understand it," she said.

San Francisco Fire Department Assistant Deputy Chief Dale Carnes said a report that one of the first five emergency vehicles might have "come in contact" with one of the girls was made as firefighters transitioned from rescue and suppressing the fire to treating and transporting injured passengers to area hospitals.

Carnes couldn't give an exact time of the report, but said police, FBI and other officials were notified "immediately" after the firefighter at the scene reported his concerns.

Hayes-White said the five drivers of the rescue vehicles all passed drug and alcohol tests. No one has been suspended.

The coroner said both victims have been positively identified through fingerprints and that an investigator from his office was waiting to meet with their parents on Monday to help them make arrangements to claim the bodies.

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An unidentified family member of one of two Chinese students killed in a crash of Asiana Airlines' p …

Chinese state media and Asiana have identified the girls as Ye Mengyuan and Wang Linjia, students at Jiangshan Middle School in Zhejiang, an affluent coastal province in eastern China. They were part of a group of 29 students and five teachers from the school who were heading to summer camps in California, according to education authorities in China.

The group had been scheduled to arrive at the West Valley Christian Church's school in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley on Monday after spending the weekend touring the San Francisco Bay Area, school administrator Derek Swales said.

The high school and middle school students would have been taught English and American culture in the mornings and would have toured local universities and gone sightseeing in the afternoons. Organizers of the camp had lined up host homes for the Chinese teens, Swales said.

Swales said a charter bus was heading north to pick up the teens when the crash occurred. He said the camp was postponed and the students will go back to their families. Some church members have begun donating money, and church leaders were trying to figure out how to contribute to the families devastated by the crash.

"We want people to know that we care even though we have not met them," the Rev. Glenn Kirby said.

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Unidentified family members of one of two Chinese students killed in a crash of Asiana Airlines' pla …

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Associated Press writer Paul Elias contributed to this story.

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A U.S. soldier cuts into a cake during Fourth of July celebrations at the Bagram airbase, north of Kabul July 4, 2013.REUTERS/Omar Sobhani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is considering pulling out all its troops from Afghanistan next year, U.S. officials said, amid tension between the President Barack Obama's administration and Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government.

Obama is committed to wrapping up U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, but the United States has been talking with officials in Afghanistan about keeping a small residual force there of perhaps 8,000 troops.

U.S. officials did not deny a report that Obama has become increasingly frustrated by his dealings with Karzai. Their relationship fell to new depths after last month's U.S. move to open peace talks with the Taliban, which led Karzai to suspend talks on a security pact between the two allies.

A June 27 video conference between Obama and Karzai aimed at lowering tensions ended poorly, the New York Times reported, citing U.S. and Afghan officials with knowledge of the conversation.

Senior Afghan figures close to Karzai were skeptical that Washington would consider a complete withdrawal.

"Both sides understand how to pressure each other. But both the U.S. and Afghanistan fully understand the need for foreign troops, especially U.S. ones, to stay beyond 2014 and that it is vital for security here and in the wider region," a top palace official told Reuters on Tuesday on condition of anonymity.

"We don't think the U.S. will compromise on that, because past experience of abandoning Afghanistan was that the country descended into chaos," the official said, recalling the bitter civil war that raged after the 1989 Soviet withdrawal and subsequent toppling of the Najibullah government.

Much of Kabul was gutted in the ensuing conflict between rival warlords until the Taliban seized control of the country in 1996 and introduced their austere Islamic regime.

The Times reported that Karzai had accused the United States of trying to forge a separate peace with the Taliban and its Pakistani supporters in an arrangement that would expose Karzai's government to its enemies.

Since the video conference, a full military pullout from Afghanistan like the one from Iraq had been transformed from a "worst-case scenario" to an option "under serious consideration in Washington and Kabul", the Times reported.

U.S. officials, asked about the report, pointed reporters to a comment by Ben Rhodes, the deputy White House national security adviser, who said in January that the "zero option" of leaving no troops behind is "an option that we would consider". The comment still stands, officials said.

Asked about the Times report, one senior Obama administration official said: "All options remain on the table but a decision is far from made."

Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman General Zahir Azimi also said there had been no decisions on the pace and scale of a U.S. withdrawal, and similar scenarios had circulated in the past.

A former Karzai political adviser, Nasrullah Stanikzai, said the Afghan government must pursue its own strategic and political interests in negotiations with the United States, but tense relations between Obama and Karzai were not helping.

"But U.S. officials saying they are considering leaving no troops behind after 2014 is just propaganda to put pressure on Afghan government so Washington can get an outcome it wants in a bilateral security pact," Stanikzai said.

The negotiations on a U.S. role in Afghanistan, suspended by the mercurial Karzai in June, will cover vital basing issues and whether reduced numbers of U.S. troops may be able to continue attacks against al Qaeda and other extremist groups, including in neighboring Pakistan.

The United States also considered keeping a small force in Iraq after the broad troop withdrawal from that country, but talks with Iraqi leaders failed to yield such a deal.

"There's always been a zero option, but it was not seen as the main option," the Times quoted a senior Western official in Kabul as saying. "It is now becoming one of them, and if you listen to some people in Washington, it is maybe now being seen as a realistic path."

More than a dozen American troops were killed in Afghanistan last month.

The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan — now around 63,000 — already is set to decline to 34,000 by February, the Times noted. The White House has said the great majority of American forces would be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

U.S. troops have been in Afghanistan since 2001. The United States invaded Afghanistan to topple the Taliban who had harbored the al Qaeda network responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States weeks earlier.

(Reporting by Will Dunham, Phil Stewart and Steve Holland in WASHINGTON, and Rob Taylor, Hamid Shalizi and Mirwais Harooni in KABUL; Editing by Nick Macfie)

• by Kristina Chew
• July 7, 2013

About 100,000 children may be working illegally in Greece, according to an estimate from child protection groups and the Greek ombudsman, reports the Greek daily Ekathimerini. The speculation is yet another sign of how Greece’s economic crisis (Greece is in its sixth year of recession and almost 10 percent of children live in a household in which not even one family member has a job) continues to take a huge toll on all sectors of Greek society.

The actual number of children working illegally — whose parents are unemployed and/or who are Roma or migrants and often without any health coverage — can only be estimated. Most of the work child laborers do is undocumented and therefore very likely to consist of low pay, unsafe and substandard conditions. For example, children working on farms in rural areas are being exposed to agricultural chemicals. Child victims of trafficking or forced labor typically work illegally, so they are not included in labor statistics.

The rise in illegal child labor is occurring at a time when Greeks have faced record-high levels of unemployment. For Greeks under age 25, the unemployment rate is 59.2 percent. The country’s overall unemployment rate was 26.8 percent in March. “Unprecedented” numbers of younger Greeks — more than 120,000 recently qualified doctors, engineers, IT professionals and scientists, half with graduate degrees – have been emigrating to Germany, Australia and other countries in search of work. Those who have chosen to stay in Greece face huge obstacles to find employment of any sort.

Information about the number of children dropping out of school in Greece is equally alarming.Eurostat, the European Statistical Authority, says that 11.4 percent of the student population – some 70,000 students — dropped out of school in 2012. According to Ekathimerini, Greece’s own Ministry of Education “could not provide official data regarding children who leave secondary education.” The ministry did note that around 3,500 primary school students had withdrawn from school in 2011-12.

According to the the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, ”every kind of labor that puts a child’s physical or intellectual development at risk is prohibited.” Ilias Lyberis, the director of Unicef Hellas, comments that in at least half of child labor cases, it is the child’s own family who has them work. The economic crisis has more than clearly “given rise to new challenges that the state must address.”

But so far, the Greek state has not exactly risen to the challenge of looking out for the needs of its future citizens. Greece has “one of the poorest records in the European Union in terms of policies for the protection of children” regarding tax breaks and other benefits, Ekathimerini points out. In May, Unicef reported that nearly a half a million Greek children are now living in poverty; almost half don’t even have their basic nutritional needs met.

The U.N. and Unicef have called on Greece to adopt a national action plan to address the negative impact of the crisis on children. To address the rising problem of underage workers, Unicef has called for Greece to train labor inspectors to address issues such as trafficking and child labor. The goal is to create a centralized body focusing specifically on these issues and to redesign policy regarding how benefits are paid to minors.

European leaders pledged to spend 6 billion euros over two years on job creation, training and apprenticeships for young people with struggling economies in places like Greece, Spain and Portugal. As the reports of illegal underage workers in Greece make clear, the very youngest Greek citizens are terribly in need of help. The economic crisis is not the only one that Greece faces.

Read more: Athens, child labor, economic crisis, eu, euro, europe, eurozone, greece, roma,sovereign debt crisis, underage workers

Photo of a Roma child in Crete via Giannis Angelakis/Flickr

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Caridad Colon had never known what it was like to be hungry, homeless or unemployed in her 47 years living in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico.

She was financially independent for nearly three decades, first working as a cashier in a Chinese restaurant and later as a secretary for a global transportation business after three years' worth of university studies.

But her company recently joined the scores of businesses that have closed as Puerto Rico struggles to emerge from a six-year recession. Colon lost her job, and eventually her home.

"I have always been a person who has worked my whole life," she said. "It's very frustrating. You feel this horrible helplessness ... you start to think, how did I reach this point?"

Puerto Rico's homeless population has risen sharply in the past two years amid an ongoing economic crisis that includes a nearly 14 percent unemployment rate, higher than any U.S. state. Officials say they expect the problem will only grow worse.

More than 1,650 homeless people were estimated to be living just in the less-populated half of the U.S. territory's this year, up from 980 two years ago, according to the nonprofit Puerto Rico Pro Homeless Coalition of Coalitions. Officials say they are finding a similar increase in the more-populated San Juan metropolitan area, though that report is still being completed.

"This is the most dramatic number we've seen," said executive director Francisco Rodriguez.

Across the island of 3.7 million people, homeless people can be seen sleeping on park benches, under bridges or in doorways. Many are addicted to drugs, and it is common to see them begging at stoplights in and around San Juan.

Contributing to the problem is the island's home foreclosure rate, which rose again this fiscal year to more than 13,600 cases, according to the Courts Administration. There were more than 13,400 cases the previous fiscal year, compared to about 7,300 cases in fiscal year 2003.

Meanwhile, Puerto Rico's median household income has dropped in recent years while its poverty rate has inched up to nearly 47 percent. That's compared with Mississippi, the poorest state in the U.S. where nearly 23 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.

Rodriguez said that nearly 80 percent of previous cases involving homeless people were tied to drugs, but that financial and family problems now play a bigger part. "We're seeing more women on the street," he said.

Colon said she lived off her limited savings and then sold her microwave oven, living room set and other items before she was forced to move out of her rented apartment.

Having no parents, grandparents, children or a significant other, Colon found herself on the street.

She spent one night as a homeless person, choosing to go to a 24-hour Wal-Mart in the municipality of Bayamon, just south of San Juan.

"It was the only solution, the only place where I would feel somewhat safe," she said.

She arrived around 1 a.m. and left in the morning after having spent several hours walking around the store.

"I pretended I was shopping," Colon said. "It was very hard. You ask yourself, 'How many hours are left? I want to sleep.'"

That morning, she spent what little savings remained on renting a bedroom from the manager of a San Juan apartment complex that, unknown to her, was nicknamed "Crackville" for the proliferation of crack cocaine. She shares a bathroom with two heroin addicts and has learned to listen for strangers outside the door before leaving the apartment. "I am terrified of my neighbors," she said. "I sprint up and down those stairs."

Officials with a nonprofit San Juan organization called The Hospice of Jesus said Colon's situation is typical of homeless people struggling to find permanent, affordable housing. Aggravating the situation in Puerto Rico is the lack of emergency shelters and transitional housing, Rodriguez said.

Only 24 beds are available for people without homes in the island's southern and western regions, while Puerto Rico's second largest city, Ponce, has no shelter for about 200 homeless people, said Rodriguez.

Most of the island's homeless live under bridges or sleep on park benches or parking lots, like 45-year-old Yadis Agosto, who recently moved back to Puerto Rico from Ohio.

The recovering crack addict said she grew up with an alcoholic father and began using drugs when she was 14. "Now I'm clean," Agosto said. But she's still struggling to find a place to live.

Ivette Perez Toro, special assistant to the Department of Family secretary, blamed the growing number of homeless women in Puerto Rico on domestic violence and the financial crisis. "Unemployment has had a domino effect," she said. "They lose their homes, their cars."

As a U.S. territory, Puerto Rico received $16 million in federal funds this past year to target homelessness. Although a big increase from the $3 million the island received in the early 2000s, far more is needed, Perez said.

Some 1,500 homeless people a year alone visit The Hospice of Jesus in San Juan, said Edwin Otero, director of volunteer and external services. "We have to keep looking for more resources to deal with an increase in people," he said.

Caridad Colon is among dozens of people who stands in line for food at the hospice daily. "Just like them, if I don't come here, I don't eat," she said.

Colon said when she first arrived at the program, she couldn't talk when workers asked her questions. She could only cry. "To go from being a completely independent person to one completely dependent on someone for everything, including food, that changes your perspective," she said.

Without work for eight months, she's still looking after applying for jobs as a cashier, a security guard and a maintenance worker.

"Once I get a job, I can put my bills in order and take charge of my life again," she said.