2 dead, 29 injured at US Embassy protest in Tunis

Associated Press/Hassene Dridi - Demonstrators throw stones during a protest against the anti-Islam film "Innocence of Muslims" outside the U.S. Embassy in Tunis, Tunisia, as police respond with tear gas Friday, Sept. 14, 2012. Protests against he film spread to their widest extent yet around the Middle East and other Muslim countries Friday, as protesters smashed into the German Embassy in the Sudanese capital and security forces in Egypt and Yemen fired tear gas and clashed with protesters to keep them away from U.S. embassies. (AP Photo/Hassene Dridi)

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — Violent protests outside the U.S. Embassyin Tunis against an anti-Muslim film were met with tear gas and gunshots Friday, leaving two people dead, 29 others injured and plumes of black smoke wafting over the city.

Several dozen protesters briefly stormed the U.S. Embassy compound in Tunisia's capital, tearing down the American flag and raising a flag with the Muslim profession of faith on it as part of the protests. Protesters also set fire to an American school adjacent to the embassy compound and prevented firefighters from approaching it. The school appeared to be empty and no injuries were reported.

Earlier, several thousand demonstrators had gathered outside the U.S. Embassy, including stone-throwing protesters who clashed with police, according to an Associated Press reporter on the scene. Police responded with gunshots and tear gas. Police and protesters held running battles in the streets of Tunis. Amid the unrest, youths set fire to cars in the embassy parking lot and pillaged businesses nearby.

The state news agency TAP, citing the health ministry, said both of those killed were demonstrators, while the injured included protesters and police.

A Tunisian employee of the U.S. Embassy who had an injured leg was taken out on a stretcher to an ambulance. It wasn't immediately clear if there were any other injuries. Embassy officials did not respond to calls and emails.

The group that breached the U.S. Embassy's outer wall was eventually pushed back outside by a huge deployment of police and special forces. As night fell, the crowd of protesters outside the embassy dwindled to a handful.

The al-Wataniya 1 television station said the presidential guard also intervened and escorted the U.S. ambassador and about 80 embassy personnel away from the site to safety.

Crowds angry over an anti-Muslim film ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad have assaulted U.S. embassies across the Middle East.

The degree of violence in Tunisia surprised many and raised new questions about the direction of the country, where an uprising last year forced out its longtime president and set off pro-democracy revolts across the Arab world. A once-banned Islamist party came to power in elections last year, but the moderate government has struggled to quell protests by increasingly vocal ultraconservative Muslims known as Salafis.

Taliban Afghan attack kills two U.S. troops, Prince Harry unhurt

ABC News - Taliban Threatens to Kill Prince Harry (ABC News)

Americans killed in Afghanistan attack Two Marines are dead and several troops are wounded at a base where Prince Harry is stationed. Prince unharmed

KABUL (Reuters) - Two U.S. Marines were killed and other Americans were wounded on Friday during a Taliban attack on a base in southern Afghanistan where Britain's Prince Harry is stationed, U.S. officials told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A spokesman for NATO-led forces in Afghanistan said Harry was on the base at the time of the attack but was unharmed.

"Prince Harry was never in any danger," spokesman Martyn Crighton said, adding that the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) would investigate whether his presence on the base had motivated the attack.

The attack involved rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and small-arms fire, with insurgents breaching the perimeter of Camp Bastion in volatile Helmand province, U.S. officials said.

Crighton declined to offer that level of detail or give the nationalities of the victims. Crighton also did not say precisely how many people were wounded in the attack.

Earlier this week, the Afghan Taliban said they were doing everything in their power to either kill or kidnap Queen Elizabeth's grandson in what they dubbed their "Harry Operations.

Crighton said ISAF would investigate whether his presence on the base had motivated the attack.

A U.S. official told Reuters that an initial report estimated five Americans were wounded but added that the extent of their injuries was unclear. The official said that this was only an initial report and that the number could change.

Crighton said the attack took place between 9 p.m. and midnight on Friday and that NATO-led forces were still securing the area in and around Camp Bastion.

The motivation for the attack will undoubtedly come under scrutiny. Violence is sweeping the Muslim world over a film that insults the Prophet Mohammad, although the Pentagon earlier on Friday said protests in Afghanistan were so far peaceful.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart in Washington and Jessica Donati in Kabul; Editing by Eric Beech and Will Dunham)

The signs of times at their worst in this ghastly case

Suspected Mexican teen assassin, 16, linked to 50 killings

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican prosecutors said Thursday they were investigating a 16-year-old suspected hitman who was believed to have participated in at least 50 murders while working for adrug gang.

A spokesman for prosecutors in the northeastern state of Sinaloa said the teenager, identified asFrancisco Miguel N., was part of a gang known as Los Mazatlecos, a criminal group attached to theBeltran Leyva drugs cartel.

Police arrested the teen for carrying a loaded gun and drugs. He later confessed to working as a hitman for the group, local prosecutors said in a statement.

The teenager said he had taken part in executions of police, farmers and even a musician since February.

The 16-year-old, one of whose nicknames was "El Nino" or "The Boy," said he was given an AK-47 rifle and a pistol to carry out the various attacks in Sinaloa, a violent coastal state with a long tradition of drug trafficking.

Sinaloa is home to the powerful drug cartel of the same name, led by Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman. Once allied to Guzman, the Beltran Leyva gang has fought with him since breaking from the Sinaloa cartel in 2008.

A number of teenagers have been captured working for drug gangs, lured by the prospect of quick money. In June 2011, a group of six teenage drug gang members were captured after a shootout with police in central Mexico.

Turf wars between the gangs and their clashes with security forces have killed more than 55,000 people during the rule of outgoing President Felipe Calderon.

Over One Million U.S. Kids Are Homeless

• by Piper Hoffman
• September 14, 2012

More than one million students in this country are homeless.

The number of homeless children is actually much higher. The U.S. Department of Education, which released the one million figure this June, included only “children enrolled in U.S. public preschools and kindergarten through 12th grade for the 2010-2011 school year,” according to the Orlando Sentinel. As the Sentinel points out, that excludes “infants, toddlers, preschool-aged children who aren’t enrolled in public programs and homeless children who are home-schooled.” It also excludes homeless teenagers who are not enrolled in school. The National Center on Family Homelessness estimates that the true number of homeless children in the U.S. is closer to 1.6 million.

Since the recession began in 2007, the number of homeless kids “in public schools nationwide has increased 57 percent,” the Sentinel reports. It may be that part of this increase is a result of efforts to enroll more homeless children in school (as required by a federal law called the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act), though undoubtedly the lion’s share is due to increases in the number of homeless people in our country. Counting the members of a population as transient (and often hidden) as the homeless is notoriously difficult and a perennial bone of contention between public authorities and advocates, but one estimate, by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, posited a number of 3.5 million homeless individuals in 2009.

As a former professional advocate for policies to end homelessness, I learned about the challenges homeless youth face. Children enrolled in school are often forced to transfer schools if their shelters are in different school districts than their homes were. Already suffering from the disruption of becoming homeless, these students enter a school full of children and teachers they don’t know and may face the stigma of being “the homeless kid.” (The McKinney-Vento Act guarantees homeless children the right to remain in their original school, as the National Education Association notes, but it is not always enforced and “has never been fully funded.”)

Most shelters are not suitable places to study. Families tend to sleep in one room, which is rarely furnished with a desk and is often filled with the student’s family members. Quiet spaces are rare. Some homeless students do their homework on the bus or train to school, if they manage to do it at all.

Other homeless children are “doubled-up” in the homes of extended family rather than staying in shelters. Together with siblings and parents, they crowd in with relatives who may be near poverty themselves. Some children live with their families in their cars or all together in one motel room. Again, these conditions rarely afford students a quiet place to concentrate on their homework.

Another obstacle to studying is that homeless kids may be too busy caring for their younger siblings while their parents are at work or out looking for jobs. According to a study from 1999 reported by The National Center on Family Homelessness, 29 percent of adults in homeless families with children had jobs.

Wherever they are staying, homeless children may have trouble focusing in class not only because they were not able to do the homework, but also because they may not have had enough to eat or a decent place to sleep, and they may be emotionally overwhelmed by the upheavals in their personal lives. Sometimes they may not make it to school at all because they do not have winter coats or shoes and it is too cold to go outside.

Homeless teenagers on their own, commonly known as runaways, are often not enrolled in school at all. Many if not most of these youth have suffered trauma at home severe enough to make life on the streets seem like a better alternative. Two common causes of teenage homelessness are physical or sexual abuse at home (according to DoSomething.org physical abuse accounts for half of runaways), and conflicts with parents who learned that their children were not heterosexual (“approximately 40% of homeless youth identify as” lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered – “compared to 10% of the general youth population in the United States,” according to Safe Horizon).

Runaways sometimes cannot enroll in school without a permanent address (though this violates McKinney-Vento); sometimes they fear that school authorities will alert their parents to their whereabouts. Like children who are homeless with their families, they usually lack a suitable place to study and may be too hungry or tired to focus in class. They are vulnerable to sexual violence and other crime, disease and pregnancy.

Whatever the precise number of homeless youth in the United States is, it cannot describe what their lives are like. To learn more and pitch in, visit The National Coalition for the Homeless, The National Alliance to End Homelessness, The National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth or one of the many other local and national organizations working to help this vulnerable population.

Related Stories:

Staggering 38% Increase in Child Homelessness in the United States

Homeless LGBT Youth: A Day In Our Shoes

Growing Homelessness Among Children, Says 60 Minutes

US Marine unit heading to Sudan in response to violence, protests at US Embassy there

WASHINGTON - A U.S. official says an elite Marine rapid response team is headed to Sudan in the wake of violence and protests against the embassy in Khartoum.

The deployment comes as Sudanese police opened fire on protesters trying to climb the walls of the U.S. Embassy.

The Marine unit, known as a fleet antiterrorism security team, was sent in response to Friday's violence and as a precautionary measure, as waves of attacks roiled the Muslim world over a film critical of Islam.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the deployment was not made public.