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March 17, 2012 | | FABULIST His stories of Apple factory horrors in China were based in truth, even if the details were lies. As NPR's "This American Life" devotes an episode to retracting Daisey's story, Jacob Bernstein reports on his undoing. JUSTICE Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the American soldier allegedly responsible for killing 16 Afghan civilians last week, could be formally charged with murder as early as Saturday. Bales, 38, arrived late Friday night at a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kans., after being identified Friday. U.S. officials said Bales won’t necessarily be tried in the U.S., as the Afghan government is demanding court proceedings be held in Afghanistan. Bales, a married father of two, has a clean record of conduct, officials said. He had been deployed to Iraq three times where he suffered a traumatic brain injury before he was sent to Afghanistan. SYRIA Two bombs hit the Syrian capital of Damascus early Saturday morning, killing at least 27 security forces and civilians, according to state-run TV, which broadcast an awful scene of bloody carnage. The blasts reportedly came from car bombs targeting the government’s aviation-intelligence department and criminal-security department buildings. A reporter from the Associated Press said shooting broke out shortly after the blasts—the latest in a string of suicide bombings that have killed dozens of people since late December. As usual, President Bashar al-Assad’s regime said “terrorist forces” behind the yearlong uprising were responsible for the attacks, though the opposition says government forces had strategically set up the bombings to tarnish their reputation. GUILTY Jurors in the Dharun Ravi case said Friday that they used Ravi’s own words to convict him of invasion of privacy and other crimes. “The fact that he actually confessed in his statement, which was very intellectual to us—because how can we go against his word?” said Kashad Leverett, 20, one of the 12 jurors in the case. Ravi was convicted Friday of invasion of privacy as well as bias intimidation, a hate crime, after he used a webcam to spy on his roommate, Tyler Clementi, having a sexual encounter with a man. Clementi killed himself after the incident. Ravi had previously rejected a plea deal that would have spared him any jail time or the threat of deportation. He is scheduled to be sentenced on May 21. Meanwhile, legal experts said Friday that Ravi could face “serious risk” of deportation, since he is a legal resident of the U.S. but not a citizen. INTERVENTION In a rare display of public pressure, China expressed “worry” to ally North Korea over the country’s planned satellite and rocket launch, which is raising tension in the region and could break a recent aid deal with the U.S. Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua said Deputy Foreign Minister Zhang Hijun met with Pyongyangs’s ambassador on Saturday to discourage the launch, which is planned for April to mark the 100th birthday of its late leader Kim Il-sung, grandfather of current leader Kim Jong-un. In a report released Saturday, Zhang said he hoped North Korea would “exercise restraint and avoid escalation of tension that may lead to a more complicated situation.” | | 
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