The drug war in Mexico is taking a terrible toll in Central America. The region now has the highest homicide rate in the world, according to a new UN report, as traffickers move more and more U.S.-bound cocaine through Central America's struggling, weak states. Nick Miroff reports with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

When FBI agents arrive at the scene of a shooting or a terrorist attack, there's often someone else standing in the background. It's a representative from the FBI's Office for Victim Assistance, there to help people suffering in the aftermath of a disaster.

The planning for those unfortunate days starts here, in a windowless conference room in the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building, where seven serious-looking people are sitting around a table.

The typical college student today isn't "typical" anymore: Only 1 in 4 lives on campus and studies full time.

But part-timers and commuter students are much less likely to finish — most part-time students are still without a degree or a certificate after eight years. Higher education is desperately looking for strategies that improve those numbers. There might be one in Tennessee.

In this presidential cycle, as in the last, there is no question which Republican candidate has the most ardent supporters: Ron Paul, the 76-year-old Texas congressman whose brand of libertarianism often puts him at odds with all of his rivals. But with less than seven weeks to go for the nation's first primary, there are signs that Paul could surprise people.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is sitting pretty in New Hampshire, where he has been the front-runner all year, so whoever comes in second in the Granite State isn't doing too shabbily.

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For military families with loved ones serving in Iraq, this holiday season comes with varying degrees of relief and anxiety, as the nine-year war in Iraq winds down and deployments come to an end. Members of the Kentucky National Guard, deployed nearly six months ago, are beginning to come home from Iraq.

Brenna Angel, from member station WUKY, has the story of one soldier who has mixed emotions about his desire to serve and the toll it takes on his family.

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This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. Protesters across Egypt are demanding an end to military rule and they say they no longer want anyone connected to former President Hosni Mubarak's regime in power. But an Egyptian high court recently gave a green light to hundreds of former members of Mr. Mubarak's outlawed ruling party to run for parliament. With elections scheduled to begin next week, critics worry that people connected to that era might have the money and connections to win. NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson...