14 year old takes fellow students hostage at gunpoint in West Virgina. Fortunately there are no armed teachers so everybody survives, including the armed teenager.

Courtesy of International Business Times: 

Police in West Virginia took a 14-year-old boy in custody Tuesday for holding hostage a class of 29 students and a teacher at gunpoint in a high school. The boy surrendered following negotiations with police. 

The incident occurred at Philip Barbour High School in the state’s north-central Barbour County around 1 p.m. and no injuries were reported. The boy, armed with a pistol, took hostage a classroom at the school's second floor, the state police said, in a Facebook statement. 

Barbour County Schools Superintendent Jeffrey Woofter told the Associated Press (AP) that students entering for the next class were asked to leave when they opened the door of the classroom where the teen was holding the hostages. These students alerted another teacher, who then informed school officials about the situation. An assistant principal then asked for the police to be alerted, Woofter said.

The school was placed on lock-down and police began negotiating with the teen: 

“After initial negotiations, the suspect agreed to release all of the hostages. After further negotiations, the suspect put the gun down and surrendered to law enforcement without further incident,” the police said in the statement.

Apparently the boy's pastor played a part in getting him to put down the gun:

Ultimately, the boy's pastor convinced the boy to drop the gun and walk away. The pastor said his daughter is a senior at the school, and she had recently stepped in when she saw the boy being bullied. 

"He's a child who's been bullied to the point where he just snapped," said Pastor Howard Swick with Haven of Hope Ministry in Philippi. "And I'm watching this 14-year-old child with a gun, crying. He looked completely hopeless and didn't know what to do, and realized he had taken this farther than he had ever wanted to go. He didn't know how to retreat."

So essentially here was a potentially dangerous situation involving a handgun.

No poorly armed individuals in the school confronted him.

The police were called.

And ultimately there was no loss of life.

Gee imagine how differently that might have played out if this were one of those schools that allowed armed teachers to roam the halls.

"I take full responsibility." President Obama responds to news that two American hostages being held by al Qaeda were killed during counter terrorism operations.

Courtesy of ABC News: 

President Obama said today that he takes "full responsibility" for a U.S. government counterterrorism operation that killed two innocent hostages held by al Qaeda. 

Dr. Warren Weinstein, an American held by the terror group since 2011, and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian national who had been an al Qaeda hostage since 2012, were "accidentally" killed in a U.S. operation in January, the president acknowledged. 

"I want to express our grief and condolences for the families of two hostages," Obama said from the White House briefing room, noting that at the time, the U.S. believed no civilians were present at the operation site. 

"Since 9/11, our counterterrorism efforts have prevented terrorism attacks and saved innocent lives, both here in America and around the world, and that determination to protect innocent life only makes the loss of these two men especially painful for all of us," he added. "It is a cruel and bitter truth that in the fog of war generally and our fight terrorists specifically, mistakes, sometimes deadly mistakes, can occur. But one of the things that sets America apart from many other nations, one of the things that makes us exceptional is our willingness to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from our mistakes." 

Though the administration asserted in a statement that the operation was “lawful and conducted consistent with our counter-terrorism policies,” President Obama promised a thorough independent review, saying he declassified the mission "because the Weinstein and Lo Porto families deserve to know the truth."

Here is the video of the President's remarks.

I thought the President looked emotionally drained during this press conference, and it seems clear that this news has hit him hard.

I commend the President for taking full responsibility for the deaths and declassifying the mission so that there can be an investigation.

Hardest job on the planet, bar none.