In brief: Doctor asks to stay in Army
Fort Meade, Md. – An Army doctor who disobeyed orders to deploy to Afghanistan because he questioned President Barack Obama’s eligibility to be commander in chief told a jury Wednesday he was wrong to do so and would now deploy if he could.
Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin, of Greeley, Colo., was speaking during a court-martial hearing Wednesday at Fort Meade.
He faces up to 3 1/2 years in a military prison and dismissal from the Army after being found guilty of missing a flight that would have gotten him to his eventual deployment and pleading guilty to disobeying orders to meet with a superior and to report to Fort Campbell in Kentucky. He asked the jury to let him remain in the Army when it decides his punishment, and jurors are expected to begin deliberating on his sentence today.
“I don’t want it to end this way,” said Lakin, a 17-year veteran of the Army. “I want to continue to serve.”
Sunni group says bombing theirs
Tehran, Iran – Suicide bombers killed at least 39 people and wounded dozens more Wednesday while targeting a procession of worshippers observing an important Shiite Muslim holiday in southeastern Iran, state media reported.
The Jundallah organization, a militant Sunni group that claims to represent Iran’s mostly Sunni ethnic Baluch minority, posted on a website that it was responsible for the attack. The bombing was the latest sign that the troubles in South Asia, including Sunni extremism, are increasingly seeping into Iran.
Jundallah and the Iranian government are locked in an ongoing war that has claimed the lives of hundreds of people over the past five years.
The Iranian government has accused the United States of supporting Jundallah, an assertion denied both by American officials and the militant group. Washington placed Jundallah on its list of terrorist organizations last month.
Multinational crew sets off in Soyuz
Baikonur, Kazakhstan – Astronauts from the U.S., Russia and Italy blasted off into the darkness early today, casting a warm orange glow over the chilly plains of Kazakhstan with their Soyuz spacecraft as they began a mission to the International Space Station.
Russia’s Dmitry Kondratyev, NASA astronaut Catherine Coleman and the European Space Agency’s Paolo Nespoli of Italy rode into space on the Soyuz TMA-20, which plans to dock at the orbiting laboratory on Friday.
Family and colleagues of the crew waited nervously before the launch, which kicked off with a piercing white flash succeeded by a roaring wall of sound.
The departure of the Soyuz had been pushed back several days due to the last-minute replacement of its re-entry module, which had been damaged during unloading earlier this year at the Baikonur cosmodrome in the Central Asian steppes.