Child abuse case is handed to jury
Child abuse case is handed to jury
BELLEFONTE, Pa. (AP) — Jerry Sandusky was either a “predatory pedophile” who lured young boys to Penn State with gifts and access to big-time football, or a victim of now-grown men who lied to get a payout, attorneys argued Thursday as the former coach’s child sex abuse case went to a jury.
As jurors deliberated into the evening, one of Sandusky’s adopted sons came forward for the first time to say that his father had abused him. Matt Sandusky, 33, was prepared to testify for prosecutors at the trial, his attorneys said in a statement. The statement didn’t specify what the alleged abuse was.
The elder Sandusky, who faces life in prison if convicted of 48 counts of abuse of 10 boys over 15 years, was smiling and chuckling to himself as prosecutors wrapped up closing arguments. His wife, Dottie, leaned forward in her seat with a concerned look, resting her chin in her hands.
The former assistant football coach was arrested last November in a scandal that led to the firing of beloved head coach Joe Paterno, who died of cancer in January, and the departure of the university’s president.
Poll: Romney is closing the gap
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fighting a swell of economic anxiety, President Barack Obama has lost much of the narrow lead he held just a month ago over Mitt Romney and the two now are locked in a virtually even race for the White House, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.
The survey also found a majority of Americans disapproving of how the Democratic president is handling a national economy that fewer people think is improving.
Less than five months before the election, 47 percent say they will vote for the president and 44 percent for Romney, a difference that is not statistically significant.
The poll also shows that Romney has recovered from a bruising Republican primary, with more of his supporters saying they are certain to vote for him now.
The economy remains Obama’s top liability. Only 3 out of 10 adults say the country is headed in the right direction and 55 percent disapprove of his handling of the economy, the highest level detected in AP-GfK polls this year.
U.S. commerce
secretary resigns
WASHINGTON (AP) — Commerce Secretary John Bryson resigned Thursday less than two weeks after suffering a seizure and multiple car accidents in the Los Angeles area, saying he didn’t want his health to be a distraction from his job.
Bryson, a 68-year-old former California utility executive, served as a member of President Barack Obama’s economic team and advised the president on energy issues. He made his resignation official in a letter to Obama dated Wednesday, saying it was a “consequence of a recent seizure and a medical leave of absence.”
“I have concluded that the seizure I suffered on June 9 could be a distraction from my performance as secretary, and that our country would be better served by a change in leadership,” Bryson wrote.
Obama met with Bryson in the Oval Office on Thursday to thank him for his service. The president said in a statement he had accepted the resignation and that Bryson had provided “invaluable experience and expertise” to his administration.
Bryson’s resignation followed a series of traffic incidents in Southern California on June 9. Authorities said Bryson was driving alone in a Lexus near Los Angeles when he struck a vehicle that had stopped for a passing train. He spoke briefly with the three occupants, and then hit their car again as he departed.
The secretary then struck a second car in a nearby city, where he was later found unconscious in his car. Commerce officials said Bryson had not suffered a seizure previously and had “limited recall of the event” involved in the crashes.
Bird flu study is finally released
NEW YORK (AP) — The second of two bird flu studies once considered too risky to publish was released Thursday, ending a saga that pitted concerns about terrorism against fears of a deadly global epidemic.
Both papers describe how researchers created virus strains that could potentially be transmitted through the air from person to person. Scientists said the results could help them spot dangerous virus strains in nature.
But last December, acting on advice of a U.S. biosecurity panel, federal officials asked the researchers not to publish details of the work, which identified the genetic mutations used to make the strains. They warned the papers could show terrorists how to make a biological weapon.
That led to a wide-ranging debate among scientists and others, many of whom argued that sharing the results with other researchers was essential to deal with the flu risk.
Bird flu has spread among poultry in Asia for several years and can be deadly in people, but it only rarely jumps to humans. People who get it usually had direct contact with infected chickens and ducks. Scientists have long worried that if the virus picked up mutations that let it spread easily from person to person, it could take off in the human population, with disastrous results.
The two teams that conducted the controversial research eventually submitted revised versions of their papers to the federal biosecurity panel. They said the changes focused on things like the significance of the findings to public health, rather than the experimental details themselves.
The panel announced in March it supported publishing the revised manuscripts, saying it had heard new evidence that sharing information about the mutations would help in guarding against a pandemic. It also concluded that the data didn’t appear to pose any immediate terrorism threat. The government agreed in April.
The benefit of scientists sharing data from the new paper “far outweighs the risk,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Wednesday.
One paper, from Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and colleagues, was published last month by the journal Nature. On Thursday, the journal Science published the second paper, from a team led by Ron Fouchier of the Netherland’s Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam.
Both papers tested the ability of the altered bird flu viruses to spread through the air between ferrets, none of which died from those infections. The Fouchier paper reports that the virus could spread this way by acquiring as few as five specific mutations.
Two of those mutations are already found frequently in strains of the virus. And the other three could arise during infection of people or other mammals, a new mathematical analysis in Science concluded. But the likelihood is unclear. An author of the analysis compared the situation to earthquake prediction.
“We now know we’re living on a fault line,” Derek Smith of Cambridge University and the Erasmus center told reporters. “It’s an active fault line. It really could do something.”
Fouchier said the ferret results don’t give a clear answer about how deadly an altered virus would be in people.
Eddy Holmes of Penn State University, who studies the evolution of flu viruses but did not participate in the Fouchier or Kawaoka studies, said those works present the first good experimental evidence about how the bird flu virus could mutate to become more easily spread between people.
The studies are “a useful frame of reference” for studying that question, but not the final answer, he said.