U.S. soldier pleads guilty in Afghan massacre
JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. – The American soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians, many of them women and children who were asleep in their villages, pleaded guilty to murder Wednesday and acknowledged to a judge that there was “not a good reason in this world” for his actions.
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales’ plea ensures that he will avoid the death penalty for the middle-of-the night slayings that so inflamed tensions with the Afghan population that the American military suspended combat operations.
Prosecutors say Bales slipped away before dawn on March 11, 2012, from his base in Kandahar Province. Armed with a 9 mm pistol and an M-4 rifle equipped with a grenade launcher, he attacked a village of mud-walled compounds called Alkozai, then returned and woke up a fellow soldier to tell him about it.
The soldier didn’t believe Bales and went back to sleep. Bales then left to attack a second village known as Najiban.
A jury will decide in August whether the soldier is sentenced to life with or without the possibility of parole.
Judge rules in favor of girl who needs lung
PHILADELPHIA – A federal judge in Philadelphia has made a dying 10-year-old eligible to seek donor lungs from an adult transplant list. U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson says he is granting the temporary request because of the severity of Sarah Murnaghan’s condition.
Her mother, Janet Murnaghan, says the family is thrilled by the ruling. It’s in effect until a June 14 court hearing.
The family is challenging organ transplant rules that say children under age 12 must wait for pediatric lungs to become available. The Murnaghans say that rarely happens.
Sarah’s doctors believe they can perform a successful transplant with adult lungs.
Sarah has been hospitalized at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for three months with end-stage cystic fibrosis.
On Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius declined to intervene.
Runner’s pain no pulled muscle – it’s a baby
DULUTH, Minn. – An aspiring half-marathon runner in Minnesota attributed her unbearable back pain to a two-hour training session. A day later, she was cradling a newborn.
Trish Staine, 33, says she had no idea she was pregnant before Monday’s surprise birth. The Duluth mother of three said she hadn’t gained any weight or felt fetal movement in the months before. And besides, her husband had a vasectomy.
“I definitely thought I was done having kids,” she joked. Staine and her husband, John, have a daughter, 7, and a son, 11. She’s also stepmother to John’s three boys, ages 17, 19 and 20.
Big mako shark caught off Calif. could be record
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. – A huge mako shark caught off the coast of Southern California could set a record, but a critic said it should have been released because sharks are threatened worldwide.
Jason Johnston of Texas caught the 1,323-pound shark off Huntington Beach on Monday after a 2½-hour battle, the Orange County Register reported.
“I’ve hunted lions and brown bears, but I’ve never experienced anything like this,” Johnston told the newspaper. “It felt like I had a one-ton diesel truck at the end of the line, and it wasn’t budging.”
If the catch is confirmed and meets conditions, it would exceed the 1,221-pound record mako catch made in July 2001 off the coast of Chatham, Mass., said Jack Vitek, world records coordinator for the Florida-based International Game Fish Association.
The shark should have been released, argued David McGuire, director of the California-based protection advocacy group Shark Stewards.
“I’m a little shocked by it,” he said of the catch.
The shark was being kept on ice and will be donated for research to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.
Associated Press
