Thursday, July 12, 2012

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Joe Paterno and other top Penn State officials buried child sexual abuse allegations against Jerry Sandusky more than a decade ago to avoid bad publicity, according to a scathing report Thursday that exposed a powerful “culture of reverence” for the football program and portrayed the Hall of Fame coach as more deeply involved in the scandal than previously thought.

The alleged cover-up by Paterno, then-university President Graham Spanier and two other Penn State administrators allowed Sandusky to prey on other boys for years, said the report by former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who was hired by the university’s trustees to investigate.

He called the officials’ behavior “callous and shocking.”

“Our most saddening and sobering finding is the total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky’s child victims by the most senior leaders at Penn State,” Freeh said at a news conference in Philadelphia upon the release of the 267-page report. “The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized.”

The findings of the $6.5 million, eight-month investigation into one of the biggest scandals in the history of college sports could further stain Paterno’s reputation. The revered coach who emphasized integrity both on and off the field and ran what was considered one of the cleanest programs in sports died of lung cancer in January at age 85, months after he was summarily fired by the trustees.

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For many, scathing report erases any lingering goodwill toward Paterno, once-pristine legacy

For decades Penn State was considered special, immune from the corruption of college athletics by virtue of Joe Paterno’s high ideals, long list of victories and even longer list of graduates.

Now to many, perhaps most people outside Penn State, that’s been exposed as an illusion.

A blistering report released Thursday found Paterno helped hush up allegations of child sex abuse against a former assistant that went back more than a decade, sacrificing the ideals he preached to protect his football program. Paterno, former FBI Director Louis Freeh said, was “an integral part of this active decision to conceal.”

Nike announced it was stripping Paterno’s name from a child care center at its headquarters, and there were renewed calls to remove a Paterno statue outside Beaver Stadium.

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Activists say more than 100 killed in new massacre in Hama area of Syria

BEIRUT (AP) — A Syrian activist group says more than 100 people have been killed in a new ‘massacre’ in the central province of Hama.

There were no additional details on the attack late Thursday and no further confirmation beyond the report by the Local Coordination Committees, a network of activists.

The LCC blamed the regime for the alleged attack.

The violence in Syria has morphed into an armed insurgency.

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Biden rallies for Obama at NAACP to cheers, paints ominous picture of Romney presidency

HOUSTON (AP) — Vice President Joe Biden rallied support for President Barack Obama before the nation’s largest civil rights organization on Thursday, declaring that Republican challenger Mitt Romney’s election-year agenda would hurt — not help — working families in the black community.

Biden, appearing before the NAACP’s annual convention one day after Romney addressed the group, offered what amounted to a rebuttal of the Republican rival as both campaigns sought support from a key constituency in several swing states.

The vice president did not specifically cite Romney’s argument to the NAACP on Wednesday that he could serve African-Americans better than Obama, the nation’s first black president. Romney was booed when he said he’d repeal Obama’s sweeping health care reform law but otherwise got a polite reception as he reached out to a traditionally Democratic voting bloc.

Biden predictably drew a far more rousing reception as he outlined differences between Obama and Romney on health care, education, energy, women’s rights and research, saying the two rivals had “fundamentally different visions.”

Biden offered a rundown of Obama’s first term, pointing to a landmark health care law, launching the mission that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and the decision to rescue the financial system and U.S. automakers General Motors and Chrysler.

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US government records $904.2 billion deficit through June, slightly below 2011 pace

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. budget deficit grew by nearly $60 billion in June, remaining on track to exceed $1 trillion for the fourth straight year.

Through the first nine months of the budget year, the federal deficit totaled $904.2 billion, the Treasury Department reported Thursday.

President Barack Obama is almost certain to face re-election having run trillion-dollar-plus deficits in each his first four years in office. That would likely benefit his opponent, GOP presumptive nominee Mitt Romney.

Obama and congressional Republicans remain at odds over how to lower the deficit. Unless their disagreement is broken, a series of tax increases and spending cuts could kick in next year. Economists warn that could dramatically slow an already weak U.S. economy and even tip it back into a recession.

The Congressional Budget Office predicts the deficit for the full year, which ends on Sept. 30, will total $1.17 trillion. That would be a slight improvement from the $1.3 trillion deficit recorded in 2011, but still greater than any deficit before Obama took office.

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Obama administration seeks to charge terror commander who was cleared by Iraqi courts

BAGHDAD (AP) — The White House is asking Iraq to hand over a Hezbollah commander who was accused of masterminding a 2007 attack that killed five American soldiers, a senior U.S. official said Thursday, though two Iraqi courts have declared him not guilty.

The case is a tricky aftermath of the long U.S. military campaign in Iraq that ended last year and has elements of both Iraqi and U.S. internal politics.

Ali Mussa Daqduq has been released from prison but is being held under house arrest in Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone as Washington seeks to bring U.S. charges against him. Daqduq, a Lebanese citizen, is considered a top threat to Americans in the Middle East and was detained for more than four years by the U.S. military before it left Iraq last December.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Antony J. Blinken, the national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, said the U.S. wants to keep Ali Mussa Daqduq locked up for as long as legally possible.

Blinken said the Obama administration also will file a request on behalf of the victims’ families for Iraq’s highest appeals court to review and correct its June 25 order to free Daqduq.

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Stone tools from Oregon cave show 2 separate technologies used by earliest Americans

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — Stone tools and human DNA from ancient caves in Oregon offer new evidence of how some of the first Americans spread through the continent: Quite apart from the better-known Clovis culture, a separate group occupied the West.

Archaeologists said Thursday that using multiple techniques, they have dated broken obsidian spear points from Paisley Caves to about 13,200 years ago, as old as much different stone tools from the Clovis culture found in the southeast and interior United States. Radio-carbon dating of human DNA from coprolites — ancient desiccated human feces — shows people lived in the caves as early as 14,300 years ago.

The dates indicate that the Clovis style of chipping stone was not the mother of Stone Age technology, as others have theorized, and that the two styles were developed independently by different groups, said Dennis Jenkins, an archaeologist with the University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History who led the excavations. That development may have happened in the Ice Age region of Beringia, where Siberia and Alaska were linked, before the two groups migrated south, he said.

The findings by an international team of scientists from the U.S., Britain and Denmark were reported online Thursday in the journal Science.

The Clovis culture is named for elegantly chipped stone points found at a site uncovered in 1929 near Clovis, N.M. The bases are distinctly concave where they were tied to the wooden shafts of spears or throwing darts for hunting. The style found in Oregon is known as western stemmed projectile points, for their thick bases and their discovery throughout the western U.S.

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Tyler leaving ‘American Idol’ after 2 seasons; Lopez says his exit will affect her decision

NEW YORK (AP) — Steven Tyler says he’s exiting “American Idol” to put rock ‘n’ roll first.

Tyler said he’s leaving the hit show after two seasons to rededicate himself to Aerosmith, the band he fronts. The rock star said he loved every minute on the hit Fox singing contest but added, “it’s time to bring rock back.”

“After some long … hard … thoughts … I’ve decided it’s time for me to let go of my mistress ‘American Idol’ before she boils my rabbit,” Tyler said in a statement, making a joking reference to the 1987 Michael Douglas-Glenn Close thriller “Fatal Attraction.” 

“I strayed from my first love, Aerosmith, and I’m back — but instead of begging on my hands and knees, I got two fists in the air and I’m kicking the door open with my band.”

The band is currently on a nationwide tour with Tyler and has an album due out in the fall.

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1 chimp dead, 1 tranquilized after escaping Las Vegas home, jumping on car

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Las Vegas police say they had no choice but to kill one chimpanzee and tranquilize another after the agitated animals escaped a home.

Officer Marcus Martin told KLAS-TV (http://bit.ly/NrM6wT) that a caller reported a chimp atop a vehicle and another caller reported a primate banging on a police car after the escape was reported about 10 a.m. Thursday.

Martin said the chimps were very large and estimated they weighed 170 pounds or more.

Police sent out tweets calling the animal dangerous and urging residents to stay inside their cars or homes.

By noon, the chimps were both stopped. Video showed one of the animals lying face down in the middle of a road surrounded by animal control and police cars.

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Burn ’em! Lawmakers outraged US Olympic uniforms are made in China

WASHINGTON (AP) — Uniforms for U.S. Olympic athletes are American red, white and blue — but made in China. That has members of Congress fuming.

Republicans and Democrats railed Thursday about the U.S. Olympic Committee’s decision to dress the U.S. team in Chinese manufactured berets, blazers and pants while the American textile industry struggles economically with many U.S. workers desperate for jobs.

“I am so upset. I think the Olympic committee should be ashamed of themselves. I think they should be embarrassed. I think they should take all the uniforms, put them in a big pile and burn them and start all over again,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference on taxes.

“If they have to wear nothing but a singlet that says USA on it, painted by hand, then that’s what they should wear,” he said, referring to an athletic jersey.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters at her weekly news conference that she’s proud of the nation’s Olympic athletes, but “they should be wearing uniforms that are made in America.”