Bergdahl charged with desertion
Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier who slipped away from his patrol base in Afghanistan in 2009 and was held in captivity for five years, has been charged with desertion and misbehaving before the enemy, Army officials said Wednesday, setting the stage for emotionally charged court proceedings in coming months.
The charges were announced by the service at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, hours after the 28-year-old was handed a charge sheet, according to one of his attorneys. Bergdahl will next face a preliminary Article 32 hearing, which is frequently compared to a grand jury proceeding in civilian court.
If convicted, he faces the possibility of life in prison. The Army’s decision comes after nearly 10 months of heated debate about whether Bergdahl should face charges and about the circumstances of his recovery.
Critics – and an independent review by the Government Accountability Office – said President Barack Obama broke the law in authorizing the release of five Taliban detainees held by the United States in exchange for Bergdahl without consulting Congress. Others have insisted that Washington had a responsibility to bring Bergdahl home by any means necessary.
House OKs GOP deficit-erasing budget
WASHINGTON – Normally quarrelsome House Republicans came together Wednesday night and passed a boldly conservative budget that relies on nearly $5 trillion in cuts to eliminate deficits over the next decade, calls for repealing the health-care law and envisions transformations of the tax code and Medicare.
Final passage, 228-199, came shortly after Republicans bumped up recommended defense spending to levels proposed by President Barack Obama.
Much of the budget’s savings would come from Medicaid, food stamps and welfare, programs that aid the low-income, although details were sketchy.
Democrats said the GOP numbers didn’t add up and called their policies wrong-headed.
Yemeni president flees by sea
SANAA, Yemen – President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi fled Yemen by sea Wednesday as Shiite rebels and their allies moved on his last refuge in the south, captured its airport and put a bounty on his head, officials said. Hours later, Saudi Arabia announced it had begun airstrikes against the Houthi rebels.
The departure of the close U.S. ally and the imminent fall of the southern port of Aden pushed Yemen further toward a violent collapse. It also threatened to turn the impoverished but strategic country into another proxy battle between the Middle East’s Sunni powers and Shiite-led Iran.
Saudi ambassador to the United States Adel al-Jubeir said his country had begun airstrikes against the rebels. He declined to say whether the Saudi campaign involved U.S. intelligence assistance.
There were indications that others in the region would follow suit: The United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain joined Saudi Arabia in a statement published by the Saudi Press Agency, saying they would answer a request from Hadi “to protect Yemen and his dear people from the aggression of the Houthi militias which were and are still a tool in the hands of foreign powers that don’t stop meddling with the security and stability of brotherly Yemen.” Oman, the sixth member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, didn’t sign onto the statement.
Broken drive shaft caused chairlift issue
PORTLAND, Maine – A chairlift malfunction that injured seven skiers at the Sugarloaf ski area and resort was caused by a broken drive shaft on a gearbox that allowed the lift to move in reverse and by the failure of a brake system with a design flaw, officials said Wednesday.
The lift, carrying more than 200 skiers, was stopped by an emergency brake that engaged automatically, contrary to early reports that a worker manually activated it.
A team of engineers and a state inspector released the findings of a preliminary review and investigation at the resort in Carrabassett Valley, a small town that’s also home to a skiing and snowboarding academy. They said they were correcting the design flaw that was identified.
Sugarloaf’s general manager said he was grateful to have “a clearer understanding of what occurred.”
Associated Press, Washington Post
