Combined briefs

-Missing women item on one of kidnap victims appearing on Dr. Phil runs as a full story in Dayton and Journal News.

- Cuba item on entertainment crackdown runs as a full story in Journal News.

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NEW YORK

Subway vigilante charged in drug case

Subway vigilante Bernie Goetz, who ignited a national furor over racism and gun control after he shot four panhandling youths on a train in the 1980s, has been charged with misdemeanor sale and possession of marijuana, authorities said Saturday. Goetz was nabbed in a sting operation in Union Square park Friday evening for selling $30 worth of pot to an undercover officer, police said. He was arrested on charges of criminal sale of marijuana. Goetz, 65, was arraigned Saturday on three misdemeanor drug charges for sale and possession of marijuana, and was released on his own recognizance.

WEST POINT

Military academy hosts

first male wedding

Two graduates of West Point are the first men to marry each other at the military academy. Larry Choate III married Daniel Lennox Saturday afternoon at the U.S. Military Academy’s Cadet Chapel. Both men are out of the Army and both wore tuxedoes for the ceremony. About 20 guests attended, some in uniform. The 28-year-old Lennox is getting his master’s degree in business administration at Harvard University. The 27-year-old Choate is applying to Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. West Point hosted two same-sex weddings of women in 2012, more than a year after New York legalized gay marriage. But Saturday’s wedding was the first between two men at West Point.

VENEZUELA

Government seizes

2 American vessels

Venezuela has quietly seized control of two oil rigs owned by a unit of Houston-based Superior Energy Services after the company shut them down because the state oil monopoly was months behind on payments. The seizure took place Thursday after a judge in the state of Anzoategui, accompanied by four members of the local police and national guard, entered a Superior depot and ordered it to hand over control of two specialized rigs to an affiliate of PDVSA, the state-owned oil producer. PDVSA justified the equipment’s expropriation, calling it essential to the South American nation’s development and welfare, according to a court order.

TORONTO

Mayor says he won’t

resign amid scandal

Embattled Toronto Mayor Rob Ford reiterated Saturday that he won’t resign despite mounting pressure for him to step aside after police said they had obtained a copy of a video that appears to show the mayor puffing on a crack pipe. Ford smiled outside his office and said: “No. As I told you before I’m not resigning.” Allegations that the mayor of Canada’s largest city had been caught on the video smoking crack cocaine first surfaced in May. Two reporters with the Toronto Star and one from the U.S. website Gawker said they saw the video but did not obtain a copy. Police Chief Bill Blair said he was “disappointed” in Ford at a news conference Thursday in which he announced that the video had been recovered from a computer hard drive during an investigation of an associate of the mayor’s suspected of providing him drugs.

NATION

Honda recalls thousands

of Odyssey minivans

Honda is recalling 344,000 of its 2007-08 Odyssey minivans because a malfunctioning computer could cause “heavy and unexpected braking without the driver pressing on the brake pedal and without illumination of the brake lamps,” the automaker informed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The action is part of a worldwide recall of almost 381,000 vehicles, a Honda spokesman, Chris Martin, wrote in an email. It is Honda’s second recall this year for unintended braking problems, after one in March of about 183,000 vehicles. The automaker said it was not aware of any accidents or injuries related to the problem that prompted the current recall.

COLORADO

Man points toy

gun at officer

A Colorado man who police say pointed a toy gun at an officer and called it a Halloween prank is facing criminal charges that prosecutors are calling “felony stupid.” Police say 29-year-old Patricio Preciado pointed a toy gun in the face of Grand Junction police Officer Cody Kennedy early Friday. The officer said he drew his handgun as Preciado laughed and said it was a joke. According to the officer’s arrest affidavit, Kennedy “told him it wasn’t funny and that I had almost shot him.” Preciado faces charges of attempted robbery and felony menacing. He was released on bond Friday.

CLEVELAND

Kidnapped woman

to appear on Dr. Phil

One of three women who escaped from a ramshackle Cleveland home after more than a decade in captivity is about to share her story. Michelle Knight will appear on the “Dr. Phil” show Tuesday and Wednesday in a taped interview. The show says Knight “describes the horrible conditions in the house” and discusses her physical, mental and sexual abuse. That includes “being tied up like a fish” and spending weeks chained and tortured in the basement, according to the show. Knight, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus escaped May 6 when Berry pushed out a door and yelled for help. Their kidnapper, Ariel Castro, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison. He hanged himself Sept. 3, just weeks into his sentence.

SYRIA

Bronze Jesus statue

rises amid conflict

In the midst of a conflict rife with sectarianism, a giant bronze statue of Jesus has gone up on a Syrian mountain, apparently under cover of a truce among three factions in the country’s civil war. Jesus stands, arms outstretched, on the Cherubim mountain, overlooking a route pilgrims took from Constantinople to Jerusalem in ancient times. The statue is 40 feet tall and stands on a base that brings its height to 105 feet, organizers of the project estimate. That the statue made it to Syria and went up without incident on Oct. 14 is remarkable. The project took eight years and was set back by the civil war that followed the March 2011 uprising against President Bashar Assad. The statue’s safety in the conflict is by no means guaranteed. It stands among villages where some fighters, linked to al-Qaida, have little sympathy for Christians.

AFRICA

French journalists

abducted, killed

Gunmen abducted and killed two French radio journalists on assignment in northern Mali on Saturday, French and Malian officials said, grabbing the pair as they left the home of a rebel leader. The deaths come four days after France rejoiced at the release of four of its citizens who had been held for three years by al-Qaida’s affiliate in North Africa. It was not immediately clear who had slain the French journalists. France launched a military intervention in January in its former colony to try and oust the jihadists from power in Kidal and other towns across northern Mali. Separatist rebels have since returned to the area.

CUBA

State orders end to

cinema, game salons

Cuban authorities are bringing down the curtain at the privately run cinemas and video game salons that have mushroomed on the island recently, saying Saturday that the businesses are unauthorized and proprietors must halt such entertainment immediately. The movie and video parlors have been operating in a legal gray area often under licenses for independent restaurants, offering basic food and refreshments even though the entertainment is the main draw. They are not mentioned on the list of nearly 200 areas of independent enterprise authorized under limited economic changes begun by Raul Castro, but until now they were not explicitly prohibited either. An announcement published in Communist Party newspaper Granma said the show is over.