Six teens shot on street, one fatally; public’s help sought

Six teens shot on street, one fatally; public’s help sought

CLEVELAND

Family members say a 12-year-old boy killed by a stray bullet during a shooting attack near his father’s beauty-supply store in Cleveland was a good student who loved sports.

Abdel Bashiti, of Parma, was shot Friday night when he and his father, who owned the store, walked outside after gunfire erupted.

Five teen boys between the ages of 14 and 16 standing in front of a liquor store next door were wounded, including a 16-year-old hospitalized with a head wound.

Relatives tell Cleveland.com that Abdel was a seventh-grader who was celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday with family members from all over the country. They say he only occasionally helped his father at the store.

Officials are seeking the public’s help in identifying and arresting the shooting suspects.

Body pulled from Cuyahoga River in Cleveland

CLEVELAND

Fire officials said a man’s body was pulled from the Cuyahoga River.

Cleveland.com reported a police officer reported seeing the body at 2 p.m. Saturday. It appeared to be a man in his 50s.

Fire department spokesman Mike Norman said the body may have floated down the river from Lake Erie and could have been in the water for an extended period of time. A firefighter in diving gear removed it from the river.

Norman said in the past few weeks at least one person was reported missing in that area. Cleveland police and the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office are investigating the death.

Reports of sexual assaults spike at Ohio Air Force base

DAYTON

The number of sexual assaults reported at an Ohio air base spiked in 2016, but officials said that does necessarily mean more assaults had occurred.

The Department of Defense said 30 assaults were reported to authorities at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton in 2016 compared with 17 the previous year.

Officials said the statistic indicates only how many reports were received and may include assaults that happened off-base or even before the victim joined the military.

Wright-Patterson spokeswoman Marie Vanover told the Dayton Daily News that makes it impossible to identify significant trends in the increase.

Don Christensen, a retired Air Force chief prosecutor and head of the group Protect Our Defenders, said the “vast majority” of assaults occur at or near the installation where they are first reported.

Gorsuch establishes conservative cred in first year on court

WASHINGTON

More than 2,000 conservatives in tuxedos and gowns recently filled Union Station’s main hall for a steak dinner and the chance to cheer the man who saved the Supreme Court from liberal control.

Justice Neil Gorsuch didn’t disappoint them, just as he hasn’t in his first seven months on the Supreme Court.

“Tonight I can report that a person can be both a publicly committed originalist and textualist and be confirmed to the Supreme Court,” Gorsuch said to sustained applause from members of the Federalist Society, using terms by which conservatives often seek to distinguish themselves from more liberal judges.

The 50-year-old justice has been almost exactly what conservatives hoped for, and liberals dreaded when he joined the court in April. He has consistently, even aggressively, lined up with the court’s most conservative justices. He has even split with Chief Justice John Roberts, viewed by some as insufficiently conservative because of his two opinions upholding President Barack Obama’s health law.

During arguments, Gorsuch has asked repeatedly about the original understanding of parts of the Constitution and laws, and he has raised questions about some long-standing court precedents, including the civil-rights landmark ruling on “one person, one vote.”

France, Italy to tackle violence on women

PARIS

French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday launched an initiative to combat violence and harassment against women in France, aiming to erase a sense of shame that breeds silence among victims and changing what he said is the country’s sexist culture.

In a nearly hourlong speech at the Elysee Presidential Palace, Macron noted that 123 women died in attacks against them in France last year. Having a moment of silence for them, he declared: “It is time for shame to change camps.”

In neighboring Italy, the head of the Chamber of Deputies marked International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women by noting with dismay that the “Weinstein case” hasn’t inspired women to speak out on workplace harassment or assault like it has in the United States and other parts of Europe.

Laura Boldrini was referring to the onslaught of revelations after sexual-harassment and assault allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein were made public.

Egypt’s options dwindling in its fight against militants

CAIRO

The scale of the bloodshed was vastly higher than past militant attacks but the Egyptian government response the same: three days of mourning, reassuring messages in the media that things are under control, and the president promising vengeance.

The identical pattern in the aftermath of Friday’s attack on a mosque in Sinai, which killed more than 300 people, raises the question: Does Egypt have options left?

The military has thrown tanks, fighting vehicles, fighter-jets, warships and helicopter gunships along with tens of thousands of security forces in three years of conflict with extremists, including an affiliate of the Islamic State group in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula.

Man pays off dozens of strangers’ layaway bills at toy store

CHERRY HILL, N.J.

A Secret Santa has spent more than $10,000 to pay for dozens of holiday layaway orders at a New Jersey toy store.

The good Samaritan, who identified himself as “Charlie K,” went to the Toys “R” Us in Cherry Hill on Friday to do some shopping for his son.

While at the store, he decided to pay for 62 layaway orders of strangers – totaling $10,780 overall – and bought an additional $2,000 worth of items to give to Toys for Tots by having everyone who was inside the store pick out three toys to donate.

The man said he wanted to “fulfill some Christmas wishes for people.”

Shoppers who came to pick up some of the orders the man paid for said they were surprised and thankful.

US cutting off supply of arms to Kurds fighting in Syria

ANKARA, Turkey

The United States will cut off its supply of arms to Kurdish fighters in Syria, a move by President Donald Trump that is sure to please Turkey but further alienate Syrian Kurds who bore much of the fight against the Islamic State group.

In a phone call Friday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump said he’d “given clear instructions” that the Kurds will receive no more weapons – “and that this nonsense should have ended a long time ago,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. The White House confirmed the move in a cryptic statement about the phone call that said Trump had informed the Turk of “pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria.”

The White House called the move “consistent with our previous policy” and noted the recent fall of Raqqa, once the Islamic State group’s self-declared capital but recently liberated by a largely Kurdish force.

Associated Press