SAVANNAH, Ga. — An Army cook and single mother may face criminal charges after she skipped her deployment flight to Afghanistan because, she said, no one was available to care for her infant son while she was overseas.
Spc. Alexis Hutchinson, 21, of Oakland, Calif., said she had no choice but to refuse deployment orders because the only family she had to care for her 10-month-old son — her mother — was overwhelmed by the task, already caring for three other relatives with health problems.
Her civilian attorney, Rai Sue Sussman, said Monday that one of Hutchinson’s superiors told her she would have to place the child in foster care.
Kevin Larson, a spokesman for Hunter Army Airfield, said he didn’t know what Hutchinson was told by her commanders, but he said the Army would not deploy a single parent who had nobody to care for his or her child.
D.C.: War-crimes court conference will include U.S.
For the first time in nearly eight years, the United States will participate in a conference with members of the International Criminal Court, a decision that signals growing U.S. support for a war crimes tribunal the Bush administration once shunned. Stephen Rapp, the U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes, said Monday that the “United States will return to engagement with the ICC.” But he said the United States has no intention of joining the court in the foreseeable future, and that it will not allow an international prosecutor to try American personnel.
More scrutiny for CIA overseas operations
Sensitive CIA operations overseas will face new scrutiny from the nation’s intelligence director, Dennis Blair, under a plan approved by the White House and outlined in a memo to the espionage work force last week. Among the activities that could be evaluated are the CIA’s campaign of Predator missile strikes against militant targets in Pakistan, as well as secret paramilitary and spying operations in other countries.
Michigan: Family murder-suicide
Phillip Parsons, 35, an out-of-work truck driver, was found dead on his bedroom floor Sunday night in Columbus Township with a single gunshot to his head. His wife, Gina Parsons, 34, was shot multiple times and found in the couple’s bed. Parson’s son, Sean, and his wife’s son, Andrew Davis, were each shot once and found in their bedrooms. The boys, both 14-year-old high school freshmen, were stepbrothers from the couple’s previous marriages.
Iran: Nuke plant at advanced stage
Iranian construction of a previously secret uranium enrichment site is at an advanced stage, with high-tech equipment already in place at the fortified facility ahead of its 2011 startup, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report Monday. The IAEA report offered no estimate of the capabilities of the underground plant known as Fordo, but a senior international official familiar with the U.N. agency’s work in Iran said it appeared designed to produce about a ton of enriched uranium a year. The official, as well as analysts, said that would be enough for a nuclear warhead but too little for Iran’s civilian reactors that have yet to come online.
Italy: Gadhafi tries to convert Italian women at party
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi hosted a soiree in Rome for about 200 young Italian women, but instead of the party they expected the women were given a lecture on Islam and copies of the Quran, a news report said Monday. A reporter for Italy’s ANSA news agency went undercover with the women, who were hired for $75 by a modeling agency for the event Sunday evening. Journalist Paola Lo Mele and other women were taken to a villa, where Gadhafi lectured them on women’s rights and religion, and urged them to convert to Islam. “All the girls expected a party with a gala dinner,” Lo Mele told her agency. Instead, “he made a 45-minute speech on Islam and women’s role in Islam. It was a bit of an indoctrination session.” Gadhafi was in Rome to attend a U.N. summit on world hunger.
From Herald news services
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