DUBAI, United Arab Emirates

Navy gunners open fire to stop boat headed for ship

U.S. Navy gunners aboard a refueling ship opened fire on a small boat racing toward them in broad daylight Monday near the gulf city of Dubai, killing one person.

The rare shooting not far from approaches to the Strait of Hormuz comes at a period of heightened tensions between the United States and nearby Iran.

A United Arab Emirates official said the vessel was a fishing boat. It was unclear why it might have veered so close to an armed American vessel.

There was no immediate sign of Iranian involvement, or any indication that the incident was a reprise of al-Qaida’s 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. But the incident will likely focus further attention on the risks that U.S. vessels face in the gulf.

Lt. Greg Raelson, a spokesman for the Navy’s Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, said a security team aboard the USNS Rappahannock issued a series of warnings before resorting to lethal force. Raelson said the incident is under investigation.

PYONGYANG, North Korea

New vice marshal named for Korean People’s Army

The official Korean Central News Agency says North Korea has named Hyon Yong Chol the new vice marshal of the Korean People’s Army, the news agency said early today.

The appointment was made by the Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the National Defense Commission of North Korea, the agency said.

The announcement comes two days after the dismissal of Ri Yong Ho, who had appeared often at the side of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Ri was vice marshal of the Korean People’s Army and the military’s General Staff chief.

North Korea’s official media reported Monday that Ri had been dismissed from several senior posts due to illness.

CHICAGO

Murder suspects accused of playing ‘knockout’ game

Three Chicago teenagers accused of fatally beating a disabled man and posting video of the attack on Facebook were playing a game that involved finding an innocent victim and trying to knock him out with a punch, investigators alleged in court documents released Monday.

Delfino Mora, 62, a father of 12, was attacked in an alley last week while looking for cans that he collected to make extra money for his family. Authorities said one of the teens punched Mora, who hit his head on the concrete, as the others filmed the attack with a cellphone. They then robbed him of $60.

All three are charged as adults with first-degree murder and are being held without bond.

The trio — Malik Jones, 16, Nicholas Ayala, 17, and Anthony Malcolm, 18 — decided “to play the pick ’em out and knock ’em out game” when they saw Mora in the alley early on the morning of July 10, Cook County prosecutors allege in court documents.

WASHINGTON

Group links life expectancy to value of PSA cancer test

There’s more advice on the contentious issue of prostate cancer screening: A leading group of cancer specialists says the decision hinges in part on a man’s life expectancy.

Doctors should discuss the possible pros and cons of those PSA blood tests with men expected to live longer than another 10 years, the American Society of Clinical Oncology recommended Monday.

That’s a contrast from guidelines issued this spring by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which recommended against routine PSA screening for all men. That government advisory panel found little if any evidence that PSA testing saves lives — and said too many men suffer impotence, incontinence, heart attacks, occasionally even death from treatment of tiny tumors that never would have killed them.

In its own review, the oncologists’ group ASCO concluded that doctors should discourage PSAs for men with less than 10-year life expectancy, for those very reasons.

But it didn’t find the evidence as clear-cut for younger or healthier men — and released a step-by-step guide, in easy-to-understand language, to help them and their primary care physicians understand the controversy and make an informed decision. The new advice echoes guidelines from the American Cancer Society.

— From news service reports

 

Copy the Story Link