Trump to award Medal of Honor to Alabama veteran

September 21, 2017 at 12:00a.m.

WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump will award the Medal of Honor to a retired Army medic from Alabama who risked his life several times to provide medical care to his comrades during the Vietnam War, the White House announced Wednesday.

Trump will award retired Army Capt. Gary M. Rose of Huntsville, Ala., the nation’s highest military honor for his actions in combat. Trump will honor Rose for his conspicuous gallantry during a White House ceremony Oct. 23.

The White House said Rose, 69, will be recognized for risking his life while serving as a medic with the 5th Special Force Group during combat operations in Vietnam in September 1970. Rose repeatedly ran into the line of enemy fire to provide medical care and used his own body on one occasion to shield a wounded American from harm.

Iranian president: Trump’s comments ‘ignorant, absurd’

UNITED NATIONS

Iran’s president warned Wednesday that his country will “respond decisively” to any violation of the agreement that reins in its nuclear program and called U.S. President Donald Trump’s “ignorant, absurd and hateful rhetoric” about Iran unfit for the United Nations.

In remarks clearly directed at Trump’s 8-month-old administration, Iranian leader Hassan Rouhani told the U.N. General Assembly: “It will be a great pity if this agreement were to be destroyed by rogue newcomers to the world of politics.”

“The world will have lost a great opportunity, but such unfortunate behavior will never impede Iran’s course of progress and advancement,” Rouhani said.

US allies divided over Trump’s threat against N. Korea

UNITED NATIONS

Japan urged international unity Wednesday in pressuring North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, even as another key U.S. ally pushed back against President Donald Trump’s threat to “totally destroy” the rogue nation if it attacked.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe devoted his entire speech at the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations to North Korea, which has launched two ballistic missiles over its eastern neighbor in the past three weeks.

Abe told the U.N. General Assembly the “gravity of this threat is unprecedented.” He appealed for nations to fully implement U.N. sanctions that were tightened last week after the North’s most powerful nuclear test to date.

Witnesses yell, ‘he can’t hear you’ as cop shoots man

OKLAHOMA CITY

Oklahoma City police officers who opened fire on a man in front of his home as he approached them holding a metal pipe didn’t hear witnesses yelling that he was deaf, a department official said Wednesday.

Magdiel Sanchez, 35, wasn’t obeying the officers’ commands before one shot him with a gun and the other with a Taser on Tuesday night, police Capt. Bo Mathews said at a news conference. He said witnesses were yelling, “he can’t hear you” before the officers fired, but they didn’t hear them.

Sanchez, who had no apparent criminal history, died at the scene. The officer who fired the gun, Sgt. Chris Barnes, has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.

Mathews said the officers were investigating a reported hit-and-run.

Associated Press