CHATHAM, Mass. – A weakening but still dangerous Hurricane Earl steamed toward the gray-shingled cottages and fishing villages of Cape Cod on Friday, disrupting people’s vacations on the unofficial final weekend of the short New England summer.

Packing winds of just 80 mph, the storm swirled up the Eastern Seaboard after sideswiping North Carolina’s Outer Banks, where it caused flooding but no injuries and little damage.

For the most part, it was expected to swing wide of New York City and Long Island, and much of the rest of the mid-Atlantic region, but pass close by Cape Cod, Nantucket Island and Martha’s Vineyard late Friday, bringing with it rain and high winds.

Vacationers pulled their boats from the water and canceled Labor Day weekend reservations on Nantucket, the well-to-do resort island and old-time whaling port expected to get the worst of the storm. Shopkeepers boarded up their windows.

Nation

Boy, girlfriend jailed after fatal shootings

A 13-year-old boy and his 12-year-old girlfriend will soon face capital murder charges in a Dallas-area double-shooting after the second victim died, authorities said Friday.

Alan Nevil, 48, died Thursday night from wounds he suffered in an Aug. 17 attack that also killed his wife, Darlene Nevil, 46, Garland police spokesman Joe Harn said.

Alan Nevil was found bleeding on a neighbor’s front yard. He told police who shot him and authorities arrested the 13-year-old boy and 12-year-old girl within a quarter-mile of the house, Harn said.

Police have declined to identify the children or reveal their relationship to the Nevils because they are minors. For juveniles, the maximum penalty for capital murder is 40 years’ confinement in a Texas Youth Commission facility.

LA Sheriff distrusts medical pot shops

The Los Angeles County sheriff has escalated his war of words against California medical marijuana dispensaries, saying as many as 97 percent operate as criminal enterprises.

Some of the pot shops get marijuana from Mexican drug cartels, and most dole out pot to people with no medical need for it, Sheriff Lee Baca said. He presented no evidence to support his claim.

Baca’s comments coincided with a recent announcement that he would lead efforts against a November ballot measure to legalize marijuana for personal use in California. Critics scoffed at the claims.

“When they run out of scare tactics, they come out with stuff like this,” said Michael Backes, a board member of the Cornerstone Research Collective, which provides marijuana to patients in the Eagle Rock area of Los Angeles.

Arizona governor regrets ‘beheadings’

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said Friday she was wrong when she claimed that headless bodies were turning up in the Arizona desert as part of border-related violence.

“That was an error, if I said that,” Brewer said about beheadings occurring in Arizona.

The Republican incumbent’s June comments about beheadings were raised during a Wednesday debate by Democratic challenger Terry Goddard, who said the comments were false and damaging to Arizona’s image.

She said she was referring to beheadings and other cartel-related violence in Mexico that she said could spill over into the United States and that she is sorry if people were misled.

World

Pakistan blast kills dozens of Shiites

A suicide bombing claimed by the Pakistani Taliban killed at least 43 Shiite Muslims at a procession in southwest Pakistan on Friday. The assault sharply drove up the toll of sectarian assaults in a country battered by massive flooding.

To the northwest in Pakistan’s restive tribal regions, two suspected U.S. missile strikes killed at least seven people in an area controlled by one of the main groups battling Americans in neighboring Afghanistan, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

Two other militant bombings left at least two people dead and several wounded on a day convulsed by the violence that threatens the stability of Pakistan’s weak civilian government – an essential but problematic Western ally in the fight against Islamist militants.

Pro-Tehran groups target opponent

Pro-government crowds swarmed outside the battered home of a key Iranian opposition leader Friday in Tehran after militiamen attacked with firebombs and beat a bodyguard unconscious in a brazen message of intimidation and pinpoint pressure on dissent.

The assault on Mahdi Karroubi’s five-story residence late Thursday – just hours before major state-backed rallies – displayed the growing tactics of trying to isolate and harass top opposition figures after relentless crackdowns appear to have driven protesters from the streets.

The 72-year-old Karroubi, a cleric and former parliament speaker, has been the most public protest leader in recent months – and has paid the price with repeated damage to his car and tense confrontations with backers of the Islamic state.

But the latest backlash, described by a pro-reform website, was by far the most aggressive.