Florida: NASA looks to Tuesday to finally launch shuttle

NASA ordered a valve replacement for space shuttle Endeavour on Saturday, further delaying its flight to the international space station.

Endeavour’s launch already has been postponed twice by thunderstorms, on Thursday and Friday. Liftoff had been rescheduled for Monday, but the valve change bumped it to Tuesday.

With stormy weather forecast for early this week anyway, mission managers decided to go ahead and replace the valve.

Texas: Doolittle navigator, 83, dies

Henry Potter, who served as Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle’s navigator during the daring bombing raid on Japan that boosted American morale four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, has died. He was 83.

Potter, a retired Air Force colonel, died Memorial Day after a long illness in a hospital in Austin.

On April 18, 1942, 16 B-25 bombers Doolittle’s Raiders flew from the Pacific at low altitude across Japan and bombed dozens of military targets in and around Tokyo, Yokohama, and three other cities. Doolittle then led his raiders toward airstrips in south-central China.

The surprise Doolittle Raid stunned the Japanese, who had believed their homeland was invulnerable.

Washington, D.C.: Charter flight passengers bypassing security checks

Passengers on charter flights get no security screening at most U.S. airports, bypassing the security crackdown imposed on commercial air travel after the Sept. 11 hijackings, The Washington Post reported in today’s editions.

The FBI warned last weekend that suicide attacks using small planes could be in the works. But fliers continue to book charters as easily as renting a car, and to board them without any checks for weapons, the paper said.

“Here we’ve gone through the tremendous expense and inconvenience of trying to make airline flying as safe as possible, and at the same time we’re at this point missing entirely on the dangers of private aircraft,” said Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis.

Washington, D.C.: Camp X-Ray detainee lawyer: Clients wanted to help needy

Most detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have no affiliation with al-Qaida or the Taliban and are largely young Arab men who rushed to Afghanistan with visions of assisting the needy or fighting American troops, according to a lawyer who represents scores of the captives.

Inflamed by televised images of deprivation, the men now detained left jobs and families to go to Afghanistan, said Najeeb Al-Nauimi, an attorney from Qatar who represents about 60 of the 384 captives at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Once in Afghanistan, the great majority never touched a gun or got anywhere near Osama bin Laden’s training camps, he said.

Al-Nauimi’s account could not be corroborated; parts of it have appeared in some Middle Eastern news outlets, and at least one U.S. law firm that represents Kuwaiti detainees at Guantanamo Bay has made some similar claims.