World/Nation Briefs 7.11.2012
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By -
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — An internal investigation into whether football coach Joe Paterno and other Penn State officials helped cover up reports that Jerry Sandusky was molesting children in the school’s locker rooms will be released Thursday, officials said Tuesday.
The report, commissioned by school trustees following the former assistant football coach’s arrest last year, is expected to reveal how the university treated Sandusky after fielding complaints about his encounters with young boys in 1998 and 2001. It is also expected to cast additional light on how Paterno exerted control over the football program while Sandusky worked under him and after Sandusky retired from coaching.
Not only could the report shape how Paterno is remembered, but it also could affect an ongoing NCAA probe into the school’s conduct and criminal cases against two Penn State administrators.
The report is being issued by former FBI director Louis Freeh, who was hired by the university to find out what school officials, including Paterno, knew about the child molester in their midst. It will be published online at 9 a.m. Thursday. Investigators will hold a news conference at 10 a.m. in Philadelphia to discuss the findings and recommendations in the report.
The announcement came the same day that ex-Penn State president Graham Spanier’s lawyers said he told Freeh’s investigators last week that he was never informed that Sandusky was spotted molesting a boy in a school shower. The lawyers were rebutting reports that indicate Spanier could have tried to cover up the abuse that ultimately led to Paterno’s firing.
———
AP IMPACT: Construction costs rising, schedules slipping at new US nuclear plant projects
ATLANTA (AP) — America’s first new nuclear plants in more than a decade are costing billions more to build and sometimes taking longer to deliver than planned, problems that could chill the industry’s hopes for a jumpstart to the nation’s new nuclear age.
Licensing delay charges, soaring construction expenses and installation glitches as mundane as misshapen metal bars have driven up the costs of three plants in Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina, from hundreds of millions to as much as $2 billion, according to an Associated Press analysis of public records and regulatory filings.
Those problems, along with jangled nerves from last year’s meltdown in Japan and the lure of cheap natural gas, could discourage utilities from sinking cash into new reactors, experts said. The building slowdown would be another blow to the so-called nuclear renaissance, a drive over the past decade to build 30 new reactors to meet the country’s growing power needs. Industry watchers now say that only a handful will be built this decade.
‘‘People are looking at these things very carefully,’’ said Richard Lester, head of the department of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Inexpensive gas alone, he said, ‘‘is casting a pretty long shadow over the prospects’’ for construction of new nuclear plants.
The AP’s review of pending projects found:
———
What’s Romney hiding? Obama campaign wants voters to ask, targeting GOP foe’s private finances
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama election campaign has a politically loaded question it wants voters to think about: What is Mitt Romney hiding?
Not a thing, Romney says. The Democrats are just trying to change the subject from the weak economy.
It’s a newly intense back-and-forth as President Barack Obama’s campaign team tries to cast his Republican opponent as a secretive rich guy who keeps his money in offshore accounts and refuses to release more of his tax returns.
The coordinated push, which includes stinging criticism from Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, web videos and television advertisements, comes as the Democrats grasp for ways to gain an advantage in a closely contested election and overcome a steady stream of lackluster economic news.
Getting personal, Biden declared Tuesday that Romney was ‘‘making a lie of the old adage, like father, like son’’ by not meeting the standards his father, George Romney, set when he released 12 years of tax returns during his 1968 presidential bid.
———
Egypt’s president flexes power but yields to caution in showdowns with military
CAIRO (AP) — The faceoff between Egypt’s new Islamist president and the old guard military sharpened Tuesday with parliament defying orders to disband and the highest court slapping back at Mohammed Morsi in what has become an early glimpse into how he may flex his power.
Morsi’s rapid-fire gambits against Egypt’s entrenched institutions show he is willing to push against the establishment left from the era of deposed President Hosni Mubarak. But — so far at least — he and his Muslim Brotherhood allies also have displayed some restraint and pragmatism to avoid setting a collision course during a sensitive transition period.
It could point to a complicated and protracted shake-out between Morsi and Egypt’s security and judicial power centers, as all sides test the limits of their powers while the country awaits its post-Arab Spring constitution — possibly by the end of the year.
In place of an all-out confrontation, Egypt may be witnessing the new rules of political engagement being defined in a time of highly unclear guidelines: tough statements, conflicting orders and attempts to push the envelope but not tear it up.
‘‘One of them came through the ballot box and the other is trying to monopolize power,’’ said Gamal Eid, a prominent rights lawyer.
———
Health care options for those with lots of health, little wealth: Is the cheapest choice best?
WASHINGTON (AP) — They’re young, healthy and flat broke — and now the government says they have to buy thousands of dollars’ worth of medical insurance. What should tapped-out twentysomethings do?
Well, some may just do nothing. The annual fine for shrugging off the new federal insurance requirement, which is to begin in 2014, starts out at a relatively low $95, depending on income. That would be far cheaper than paying premiums.
But that doesn’t necessarily make blowing off the mandate a good idea for the fit and frugal. Millions of young people will qualify for good deals on health care if they take time to sort through the complicated law.
Many will get Medicaid coverage at virtually no cost. Others will qualify for private insurance at a fraction of the full premiums. And health plans offered under the law will limit individuals’ out-of-pocket expenses to about $6,250 per year or less — a bulwark against gigantic, unexpected medical bills.
‘‘It doesn’t have to be cancer or a heart attack or even a bad car accident,’’ said Karen Pollitz, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation whose own son needed $15,000 worth of surgery after he broke his wrist while skateboarding at age 20. ‘‘Once you show up in the ER, it starts to cost you some money.’’
———
News Guide: Industry facing cost pressure while building new round of nuclear plants
Q: How many nuclear plants are under construction in the U.S.?
A: Three. Two nuclear reactors are being built at Plant Vogtle in eastern Georgia. Two more reactors are under construction at Plant Summer in central South Carolina. A fifth reactor mothballed in 1985 is being finished at Plant Watts Bar in Tennessee.
Q: How often are nuclear plants built?
A: The last nuclear plant built in the United States was the existing reactor finished at Watts Bar in 1996.
Q: How much does a nuclear plant cost?
———
Baseball cards discovered in Ohio attic may be worth millions; Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner pictured
DEFIANCE, Ohio (AP) — Karl Kissner picked up a soot-covered cardboard box that had been under a wooden dollhouse in his grandfather’s attic. Taking a look inside, he saw hundreds of baseball cards bundled with twine. They were smaller than the ones he was used to seeing.
But some of the names were familiar: Hall of Famers Ty Cobb, Cy Young and Honus Wagner.
Then he put the box on a dresser and went back to digging through the attic.
It wasn’t until two weeks later that he learned that his family had come across what experts say is one of the biggest, most exciting finds in the history of sports card collecting, a discovery worth perhaps millions.
The cards are from an extremely rare series issued around 1910. Up to now, the few known to exist were in so-so condition at best, with faded images and worn edges. But the ones from the attic in the town of Defiance are nearly pristine, untouched for more than a century. The colors are vibrant, the borders crisp and white.
———
UN envoy Kofi Annan presses his peace plan for Syria with Damascus allies Iran and Iraq
BAGHDAD (AP) — The U.N.’s special envoy on the Syrian crisis sought to build support for his peace efforts Tuesday with the leaders of Iran and Iraq, saying President Bashar Assad has agreed to a plan to quell the bloodshed in the most violent areas of Syria and then expand the operation to the whole country.
Top diplomat Kofi Annan said at a news conference in Iran that the plan still must be presented to the Syrian opposition. But he said his talks with Assad a day earlier focused on a new approach to ending the violence, which activists say has killed more than 17,000 people since March 2011.
‘‘(Assad) made a suggestion of building an approach from the ground up in some of the districts where we have extreme violence — to try and contain the violence in those districts and, step by step, build up and end the violence across the country,’’ Annan told reporters in Tehran, his first step on a tour of Syria’s allies. He did not elaborate on the plan.
Annan later visited Iraq and met Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to discuss ways to end the fighting.
‘‘I think we’ve all watched the tragic situation in Syria, the killings, the suffering of the people,’’ Annan said in Baghdad. ‘‘And everyone I’ve spoken to shares the concerns and the needs for us to stop the killing.’’
———
Olmert’s acquittal in Israel sets off debate over effect of his ouster on peace process
JERUSALEM (AP) — Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s acquittal of the most serious charges in a high-profile corruption case on Tuesday set off a fierce debate about how the peace process might have proceeded differently had the former leader not been driven from office three years ago.
Olmert has claimed he was on the brink of a historic agreement with the Palestinians when he was forced to resign in early 2009. His departure cleared the way for hard-liner Benjamin Netanyahu’s election, and peace efforts have been at a standstill ever since.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called Olmert on Tuesday afternoon to congratulate him on the acquittal, said Nimr Hamad, an Abbas adviser.
‘‘There is no doubt that a great opportunity was wasted with the absence of Olmert. There had been huge progress on all core issues ... and the Palestinian and Israeli positions were getting very close on all issues. Unfortunately, that’s all gone now,’’ Hamad said.
Olmert, who headed the centrist Kadima Party, stepped down after he was charged with a series of crimes that included accepting cash-stuffed envelopes from an American supporter and double billing Jewish organizations to cover overseas travel. The alleged crimes took place while Olmert was mayor of Jerusalem and a Cabinet minister, before he became prime minister.
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STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — An internal investigation into whether football coach Joe Paterno and other Penn State officials helped cover up reports that Jerry Sandusky was molesting children in the school’s locker rooms will be released Thursday, officials said Tuesday.
The report, commissioned by school trustees following the former assistant football coach’s arrest last year, is expected to reveal how the university treated Sandusky after fielding complaints about his encounters with young boys in 1998 and 2001. It is also expected to cast additional light on how Paterno exerted control over the football program while Sandusky worked under him and after Sandusky retired from coaching.
Not only could the report shape how Paterno is remembered, but it also could affect an ongoing NCAA probe into the school’s conduct and criminal cases against two Penn State administrators.
The report is being issued by former FBI director Louis Freeh, who was hired by the university to find out what school officials, including Paterno, knew about the child molester in their midst. It will be published online at 9 a.m. Thursday. Investigators will hold a news conference at 10 a.m. in Philadelphia to discuss the findings and recommendations in the report.
The announcement came the same day that ex-Penn State president Graham Spanier’s lawyers said he told Freeh’s investigators last week that he was never informed that Sandusky was spotted molesting a boy in a school shower. The lawyers were rebutting reports that indicate Spanier could have tried to cover up the abuse that ultimately led to Paterno’s firing.
———
AP IMPACT: Construction costs rising, schedules slipping at new US nuclear plant projects
ATLANTA (AP) — America’s first new nuclear plants in more than a decade are costing billions more to build and sometimes taking longer to deliver than planned, problems that could chill the industry’s hopes for a jumpstart to the nation’s new nuclear age.
Licensing delay charges, soaring construction expenses and installation glitches as mundane as misshapen metal bars have driven up the costs of three plants in Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina, from hundreds of millions to as much as $2 billion, according to an Associated Press analysis of public records and regulatory filings.
Those problems, along with jangled nerves from last year’s meltdown in Japan and the lure of cheap natural gas, could discourage utilities from sinking cash into new reactors, experts said. The building slowdown would be another blow to the so-called nuclear renaissance, a drive over the past decade to build 30 new reactors to meet the country’s growing power needs. Industry watchers now say that only a handful will be built this decade.
‘‘People are looking at these things very carefully,’’ said Richard Lester, head of the department of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Inexpensive gas alone, he said, ‘‘is casting a pretty long shadow over the prospects’’ for construction of new nuclear plants.
The AP’s review of pending projects found:
———
What’s Romney hiding? Obama campaign wants voters to ask, targeting GOP foe’s private finances
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama election campaign has a politically loaded question it wants voters to think about: What is Mitt Romney hiding?
Not a thing, Romney says. The Democrats are just trying to change the subject from the weak economy.
It’s a newly intense back-and-forth as President Barack Obama’s campaign team tries to cast his Republican opponent as a secretive rich guy who keeps his money in offshore accounts and refuses to release more of his tax returns.
The coordinated push, which includes stinging criticism from Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, web videos and television advertisements, comes as the Democrats grasp for ways to gain an advantage in a closely contested election and overcome a steady stream of lackluster economic news.
Getting personal, Biden declared Tuesday that Romney was ‘‘making a lie of the old adage, like father, like son’’ by not meeting the standards his father, George Romney, set when he released 12 years of tax returns during his 1968 presidential bid.
———
Egypt’s president flexes power but yields to caution in showdowns with military
CAIRO (AP) — The faceoff between Egypt’s new Islamist president and the old guard military sharpened Tuesday with parliament defying orders to disband and the highest court slapping back at Mohammed Morsi in what has become an early glimpse into how he may flex his power.
Morsi’s rapid-fire gambits against Egypt’s entrenched institutions show he is willing to push against the establishment left from the era of deposed President Hosni Mubarak. But — so far at least — he and his Muslim Brotherhood allies also have displayed some restraint and pragmatism to avoid setting a collision course during a sensitive transition period.
It could point to a complicated and protracted shake-out between Morsi and Egypt’s security and judicial power centers, as all sides test the limits of their powers while the country awaits its post-Arab Spring constitution — possibly by the end of the year.
In place of an all-out confrontation, Egypt may be witnessing the new rules of political engagement being defined in a time of highly unclear guidelines: tough statements, conflicting orders and attempts to push the envelope but not tear it up.
‘‘One of them came through the ballot box and the other is trying to monopolize power,’’ said Gamal Eid, a prominent rights lawyer.
———
Health care options for those with lots of health, little wealth: Is the cheapest choice best?
WASHINGTON (AP) — They’re young, healthy and flat broke — and now the government says they have to buy thousands of dollars’ worth of medical insurance. What should tapped-out twentysomethings do?
Well, some may just do nothing. The annual fine for shrugging off the new federal insurance requirement, which is to begin in 2014, starts out at a relatively low $95, depending on income. That would be far cheaper than paying premiums.
But that doesn’t necessarily make blowing off the mandate a good idea for the fit and frugal. Millions of young people will qualify for good deals on health care if they take time to sort through the complicated law.
Many will get Medicaid coverage at virtually no cost. Others will qualify for private insurance at a fraction of the full premiums. And health plans offered under the law will limit individuals’ out-of-pocket expenses to about $6,250 per year or less — a bulwark against gigantic, unexpected medical bills.
‘‘It doesn’t have to be cancer or a heart attack or even a bad car accident,’’ said Karen Pollitz, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation whose own son needed $15,000 worth of surgery after he broke his wrist while skateboarding at age 20. ‘‘Once you show up in the ER, it starts to cost you some money.’’
———
News Guide: Industry facing cost pressure while building new round of nuclear plants
Q: How many nuclear plants are under construction in the U.S.?
A: Three. Two nuclear reactors are being built at Plant Vogtle in eastern Georgia. Two more reactors are under construction at Plant Summer in central South Carolina. A fifth reactor mothballed in 1985 is being finished at Plant Watts Bar in Tennessee.
Q: How often are nuclear plants built?
A: The last nuclear plant built in the United States was the existing reactor finished at Watts Bar in 1996.
Q: How much does a nuclear plant cost?
———
Baseball cards discovered in Ohio attic may be worth millions; Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner pictured
DEFIANCE, Ohio (AP) — Karl Kissner picked up a soot-covered cardboard box that had been under a wooden dollhouse in his grandfather’s attic. Taking a look inside, he saw hundreds of baseball cards bundled with twine. They were smaller than the ones he was used to seeing.
But some of the names were familiar: Hall of Famers Ty Cobb, Cy Young and Honus Wagner.
Then he put the box on a dresser and went back to digging through the attic.
It wasn’t until two weeks later that he learned that his family had come across what experts say is one of the biggest, most exciting finds in the history of sports card collecting, a discovery worth perhaps millions.
The cards are from an extremely rare series issued around 1910. Up to now, the few known to exist were in so-so condition at best, with faded images and worn edges. But the ones from the attic in the town of Defiance are nearly pristine, untouched for more than a century. The colors are vibrant, the borders crisp and white.
———
UN envoy Kofi Annan presses his peace plan for Syria with Damascus allies Iran and Iraq
BAGHDAD (AP) — The U.N.’s special envoy on the Syrian crisis sought to build support for his peace efforts Tuesday with the leaders of Iran and Iraq, saying President Bashar Assad has agreed to a plan to quell the bloodshed in the most violent areas of Syria and then expand the operation to the whole country.
Top diplomat Kofi Annan said at a news conference in Iran that the plan still must be presented to the Syrian opposition. But he said his talks with Assad a day earlier focused on a new approach to ending the violence, which activists say has killed more than 17,000 people since March 2011.
‘‘(Assad) made a suggestion of building an approach from the ground up in some of the districts where we have extreme violence — to try and contain the violence in those districts and, step by step, build up and end the violence across the country,’’ Annan told reporters in Tehran, his first step on a tour of Syria’s allies. He did not elaborate on the plan.
Annan later visited Iraq and met Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to discuss ways to end the fighting.
‘‘I think we’ve all watched the tragic situation in Syria, the killings, the suffering of the people,’’ Annan said in Baghdad. ‘‘And everyone I’ve spoken to shares the concerns and the needs for us to stop the killing.’’
———
Olmert’s acquittal in Israel sets off debate over effect of his ouster on peace process
JERUSALEM (AP) — Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s acquittal of the most serious charges in a high-profile corruption case on Tuesday set off a fierce debate about how the peace process might have proceeded differently had the former leader not been driven from office three years ago.
Olmert has claimed he was on the brink of a historic agreement with the Palestinians when he was forced to resign in early 2009. His departure cleared the way for hard-liner Benjamin Netanyahu’s election, and peace efforts have been at a standstill ever since.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called Olmert on Tuesday afternoon to congratulate him on the acquittal, said Nimr Hamad, an Abbas adviser.
‘‘There is no doubt that a great opportunity was wasted with the absence of Olmert. There had been huge progress on all core issues ... and the Palestinian and Israeli positions were getting very close on all issues. Unfortunately, that’s all gone now,’’ Hamad said.
Olmert, who headed the centrist Kadima Party, stepped down after he was charged with a series of crimes that included accepting cash-stuffed envelopes from an American supporter and double billing Jewish organizations to cover overseas travel. The alleged crimes took place while Olmert was mayor of Jerusalem and a Cabinet minister, before he became prime minister.
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