World / Nation Briefs March 4, 2012
<p>Chardon High School students form a heart with their hands as a Chardon player attempts free throws during a Division I sectional semifinal high school basketball game at Euclid High School, in Euclid, Ohio, on Thursday. The students showed their support for the victims of a school shooting Monday at Chardon.</p>
Hundreds honor student killed in Ohio shooting
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 for 16-year-old Demetrius Hewlin will be held Tuesday and for 17-year-old Russell King Jr. on Thursday.
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 reports.
Those honoring the teen wore the school's colors of red and black and huddled in hoods, knit hats and blankets. They held U.S. flags and signs featuring red hearts and saying "We are One Heartbeat." Some expressed continued disbelief about the Monday attack.
Kids likely not harmed in CVS pill mix-up
TRENTON, N.J. - Children who may have taken breast cancer treatment medication mistakenly distributed by a New Jersey pharmacy instead of prescribed fluoride pills likely won't suffer any health problems, a pharmaceutical expert said Saturday.
CVS Caremark officials say only a few children ingested pills for breast cancer treatment that they mistakenly received, and company investigators are still working to determine how and why the errors occurred at the pharmacy in Chatham. The pharmacy has acknowledged improperly dispensing Tamoxifen instead of chewable fluoride tablets to children in as many as 50 families between Dec. 1 and Feb. 20.
CVS said it had spoken with or left messages for every family whose child was dispensed a 0.5 mg fluoride prescription from its Chatham location within the past 60 days.
Survivors attend first hearing on shipwreck
GROSSETO, Italy - The first hearing of the criminal investigation into the Costa Concordia's shipwreck was held in a theater Saturday instead of a courthouse because of high demand, with angry survivors seeking compensation, justice and the truth.
The judge at the hearing assigned four experts to analyze the cruise ship's data recorder and ordered them to report their findings in July, confirming predictions by Prosecutor Francesco Verusio that examination of the data, as well as of conversations involving officers on the ship's bridge, could take months.
Prosecutors must decide whether to seek a trial against the captain, other top officers and officials of Italian cruise company Costa Crociere SpA, which is owned by Miami-based Carnival Corp. Crucial to their decision could be what the experts determine are such details as the Concordia's velocity when it slammed into a reef the night of Jan. 13 off Giglio island, its exact route and what commands were given by whom and when.
Participants acknowledged that the search for truth and justice will be a long one.
The shipwreck killed 25 people, and seven others are missing and presumed dead. Captain Francesco Schettino is accused of abandoning ship while many of the 4,200 passengers and crew were still aboard during a confused evacuation.
Syria hands over bodies of two journalists
DAMASCUS, Syria - The bodies of two foreign journalists who were killed in shelling while trapped inside a besieged district in the central Syrian city of Homs have left Syria late Saturday on board a French plane to Paris, the Polish Foreign Ministry said.
Earlier Saturday, Syrian Red Crescent officials handed over the bodies to embassy officials. French Ambassador Eric Chevallier received the body of French photographer Remi Ochlik, and a Polish diplomat received the remains of American Marie Colvin. U.S. interests in Syria are represented by Poland after the U.S. closed its embassy in Damascus last month.
The bodies, in brown coffins placed on stretchers, were transferred outside the Assad hospital in Damascus and driven away in an ambulance. The journalists' belongings were placed in black plastic bags.
The Polish Foreign Ministry in Warsaw said the bodies left Syria late Saturday on a French plane headed to Paris. No other details were given.
Putin poised to regain Kremlin; protests likely
MOSCOW - Vladimir Putin appears all but certain to return to the Kremlin in today's Russian presidential election, but he'll find himself in charge of a country far more willing to challenge him.
An unprecedented wave of massive protests showed a substantial portion of the population was fed up with the political entrenchment engineered by Putin since he first became president in 2000, and police are already preparing for the possibility of postelection unrest in Moscow.
The Putin system of so-called "managed democracy" put liberal opposition forces under consistent pressure, allowing them only rare permission to hold small rallies and bringing squads of police to harshly break up any unauthorized gathering.
- The Associated Press