Texas pastor dies after guitar beating - Detroit Free Press

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VIOLENCE AT TEXAS CHURCH

A north Texas pastor was killed Monday by an attacker who rammed a car into a church wall, chased the pastor and beat him with an electric guitar, police said.

Police in Forest Hill, a suburb of Ft. Worth, did not say why the unidentified suspect attacked the Rev. Danny Kirk Sr., the founding pastor of the Greater Sweethome Missionary Baptist Church.

The suspect also died a short time after being taken into custody.

Forest Hill Police Chief Dan Dennis said the suspect drove his car into a church wall about noon Monday, apparently on purpose. The suspect got out of the car and began chasing the pastor, and the church secretary hid and called 911, Dennis said.

Police arrived to find the suspect assaulting Kirk with an electric guitar that they believe was already inside the church, Dennis said. An officer used a Taser on the suspect, handcuffed him and put him in the back of a patrol car.

By then, Kirk had died, Dennis said. A maintenance worker who tried to save Kirk was injured and taken to an area hospital. His condition was unknown.

Dennis said the suspect was found unresponsive shortly after being detained and was pronounced dead at a hospital.

TRAYVON MARTIN CASE

Judge denies request for gag order

A Florida judge is denying prosecutors' request for a gag order in the trial of a neighborhood watch leader charged with fatally shooting 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

Circuit Judge Debra Nelson said in an order Monday that there was no need for a gag order at this time to ensure a fair trial for George Zimmerman.

The 29-year-old Zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder in the fatal shooting last February.

Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty and claims the shooting was self-defense under the state's stand your ground law. Zimmerman and Martin got into an altercation inside a gated community in Sanford, Fla.

Prosecutors had asked for the gag order, claiming a website and social media used by Zimmerman's attorney could influence potential jurors in the racially charged case.

SMOKE-FREE LEGISLATION

Bans dramatically cut heart attacks, strokes

Smoking bans quickly and dramatically cut the number of people hospitalized for heart attacks, strokes and respiratory diseases such as asthma and emphysema, an analysis Monday shows.

Heart attack hospitalizations fell an average of 15% after communities passed laws banning smoking in areas such as restaurants, bars and workplaces, according to the largest analysis of smoke-free legislation to date. The analysis included 45 studies covering 33 laws in American cities and states, as well as countries such as New Zealand and Germany.

Stroke hospitalizations fell 16%, while hospitalizations for respiratory disease fell 24%, according to the study, published Monday in Circulation.

BREAST CANCER STUDY

Tests for woman older than 50 save lives

Breast cancer screening for women older than 50 saves lives, an independent panel in Britain has concluded, confirming findings in U.S. and other studies.

But that screening comes with a cost: The review found that for every life saved, about three other women were overdiagnosed, meaning they were unnecessarily treated for a cancer that would never have threatened their lives.

The expert panel was commissioned by Cancer Research U.K. and Britain's department of health and analyzed evidence from 11 trials in Canada, Sweden, Britain and the U.S.

In Britain, mammograms are usually offered to women age 50 to 70 every three years as part of the government-funded breast cancer screening program.

Scientists said the British program saves about 1,300 women every year from dying of breast cancer while about 4,000 women are overdiagnosed. By that term, experts mean women treated for cancers that grow too slowly to ever put their lives at risk. This is different from another screening problem: false alarms, which occur when suspicious mammograms lead to biopsies and follow-up tests to rule out cancers that were not present. The study did not look at the false alarm rate.

ARGENTINE STORMS

Heavy rains cause death, flooding

Heavy rains in Buenos Aires, Argentina, are causing damage and one reported death. More than a thousand people have evacuated their homes.

Nearly 5 inches of rain fell in just a few hours Monday morning, causing power outages, flooding subways and train lines and turning streets into rivers.

Especially hard-hit are the city's teeming slums, where open sewage runs over dirt passageways even when it's dry.