Tokyo

Accused U.S. deserter plans to surrender

Accused U.S. Army deserter Charles Jenkins will surrender to the U.S. military “very shortly” to face the charges against him, he said in a letter released by the Japanese government today.

In the letter, Jenkins said he intended to “voluntarily report to Camp Zama … to begin the process that will bring closure to my pending legal situation.” Camp Zama is a U.S. Army base south of Tokyo.

Jenkins is accused of deserting from his U.S. Army unit in 1965 and defecting to North Korea. He arrived in Japan in July to receive medical treatment after being reunited in Indonesia with his Japanese wife, whom he met in North Korea.

Afghanistan

Aid group accuses U.S. of killing civilians

U.S. warplanes launched attacks near a village in eastern Afghanistan, killing more than a dozen people, after assailants rocketed a government office, officials said Tuesday.

Afghan officials said U.S. bombs landed in the village of Weradesh and five unarmed civilians were killed. But the American military said the village wasn’t hit and it had no reports of civilian casualties.

The Danish Committee for Aid to Afghan Refugees, or DACAAR, which had a team in Weradesh, said several bombs were dropped and its staff believed eight villagers were killed.

The group’s 14 staff members fled their camp just before it was hit by one bomb, said Gorm Pedersen, DACAAR’s director in Kabul. One worker was slightly injured and much of the group’s equipment was damaged.

Massachusetts

Noted astronomer who studied comets dies

Fred Lawrence Whipple, the last surviving giant of 20th century astronomy, died Monday at a hospital in Cambridge. He was 97.

The Harvard researcher proposed the theory that comets are “dirty snowballs” in 1950, saying that comets consisted of ice with some rock mixed in, rather than sand held together by gravity, as was widely believed.

His theories were proven correct in 1986 by close-up photographs of Haley’s comet by the European Space Agency’s Giotto spacecraft.

Whipple also developed radar-deflecting chaff during World War II, devised a shield to protect spacecraft from meteor damage, and assembled a worldwide network of amateur astronomers that was the only one available to monitor the Russian satellite Sputnik when it was launched in October 1957.