In the News

Man shot by Cheney suffers heart attack

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – The lawyer shot by Vice President Dick Cheney during a hunting accident is expected to stay in the hospital for about a week after suffering a mild heart attack when a shotgun pellet in his chest traveled to his heart.

Harry Whittington, who was moved back to the intensive-care unit Tuesday after the heart attack, will be watched to make sure more metal pellets do not reach other vital organs, hospital officials said. The 78-year-old was reported in stable condition.

Doctors at Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi-Memorial said Whittington suffered a “silent heart attack” -obstructed blood flow, but without the classic heart-attack symptoms of pain and pressure.

Doctors said they decided to leave the pellet alone rather than operate to remove it. They said they are highly optimistic Whittington will recover and live a healthy life with the pellet in him.

Cartoon protests in Pakistan leave three dead

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Gunfire and rioting erupted Wednesday as tens of thousands of people took to the streets in several Pakistani cities during the country’s third consecutive day of violent protests over the Prophet Muhammad cartoons. Three people were killed, including an 8-year-old boy.

More than 70,000 people flooded the streets of the northwestern city of Peshawar, said Saeed Wazir, a senior police officer. The massive crowd went on a rampage, torching businesses and fighting police, who struck back with tear gas and batons. A bus terminal operated by Korean conglomerate Daewoo was torched, police said.

Protesters burned a KFC restaurant, three movie theaters and the offices of the main mobile phone company in the country. A Norwegian mobile phone company’s offices were also ransacked. Gunfire was heard near the burning KFC, as police tried to clear people from a main street, witnesses said.

An 8-year-old boy died after being struck in the face by a bullet fired by a protester, police officer Shahid Khan said. A 25-year-old man was killed by an electric cable snapped by gunfire, said the man’s cousin, Jehangir Khan.

At least 45 people were being treated for injuries in Peshawar’s two state-run hospitals, Khan and witnesses said.

New test measures your risk of dying

CHICAGO – There’s a new test for baby boomers and their parents, and it’s one where you definitely want a low score. The 12-question test measures risk of dying within four years, and the more points you get, the greater your risk.

Created for people older than 50 by researchers at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, the quiz is designed “to try to help doctors and families get a firmer sense for what the future may hold,” to help plan health care accordingly, said lead author Dr. Sei Lee.

“We know that patients and families want more prognostic information from doctors,” said Lee, who helped develop the test. “It’s a very natural human question of, ‘What’s going to happen to me?'”

The report appears in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association.

Willie Nelson releases gay cowboy song

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Country music outlaw Willie Nelson sang “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” and “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys” more than 25 years ago. He released a very different sort of cowboy anthem this Valentine’s Day.

“Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly (Fond of Each Other)” may be the first gay cowboy song by a major recording artist. But it was written long before this year’s Oscar-nominated “Brokeback Mountain” made gay cowboys a hot topic.

Available exclusively through iTunes, the song features choppy Tex-Mex style guitar runs and Nelson’s deadpan delivery of lines like, “What did you think all them saddles and boots was about?” and “Inside every cowboy there’s a lady who’d love to slip out.”

The song, which debuted Tuesday on Howard Stern’s satellite radio show, was written by Texas-born singer-songwriter Ned Sublette in 1981. Sublette said he wrote it during the “Urban Cowboy” craze and always imagined Nelson singing it.

Someone passed a copy of the song to Nelson back in the late 1980s and, according to Nelson’s record label, Lost Highway, he recorded it last year at his Pedernales studio in Texas.