WORLD DIGEST || Hundreds honor slain Chardon student

Hundreds honor slain Chardon student

CHARDON, Ohio

Hundreds of people stood shoulder to shoulder along the street on a cold, windy Saturday morning to honor one of three teenagers killed in a high-school shooting.

The service in Chardon for 16-year-old Daniel Parmertor is the first of the three funerals. Services will be Tuesday for 16-year-old Demetrius Hewlin and Thursday for 17-year-old Russell King Jr.

Parmertor’s family said they planned to bury him with his first paycheck — still unopened — from his new job at a bowling alley, The Plain Dealer reported.

Assault in Syria

BEIRUT

Syrian forces launched a fresh assault on Homs on Saturday as the Red Cross pressed forward with efforts to deliver badly needed aid to thousands of people stranded in a besieged neighborhood despite warnings from regime troops of land mines and booby traps.

Two days after they fought their way into the rebel stronghold of Baba Amr, government forces shelled several other neighborhoods of the city, the country’s third largest with about 1 million people. They included districts where many of Baba Amr’s residents had fled, activists said.

The Syrian regime has said it was fighting “armed gangs” in Baba Amr, which has become a symbol of the nearly year-old uprising against President Bashar Assad’s authoritarian rule. The revolt has killed more than 7,500 people, according to the U.N.

Suspect arrested in shooting at club

TEMPE, Ariz.

Police made one arrest and were looking for two other suspects after a shootout amid a large crowd outside an Arizona nightclub left more than a dozen people wounded and set off a chaotic scene as the injured screamed for help and hundreds tried to flee.

The number of people confirmed wounded in the shooting late Friday in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe rose to 14 after a person went to a hospital Saturday with a gunshot wound to the foot, police spokesman Lt. Mike Horn said.

None of the wounded had life-threatening injuries. Twelve of them had relatively minor injuries, some driving themselves to hospitals, while two were seriously hurt.

President Obama talks tough on Iran

NEW YORK

President Barack Obama has issued tough talk on Iran’s nuclear program as he prepares to deliver a key speech today, ahead of a meeting Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Obama said Israel should postpone any military action against Iran, while assuring Israel it has U.S. support.

“When the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say,” the president said in an interview with the Atlantic published Friday. “I don’t bluff.”

Obama said a military component remains on the U.S.’s lists of options to deal with Iran’s nuclear program but warned against a premature strike that would allow Iran to portray itself as a victim.

Associated Press