BELLEFONTE, Pa.
Alleged victims say Sandusky threatened, offered tickets
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One, a foster child, said he was threatened, warned he would never see his family again if he ever told anyone what happened.
Another said he stayed quiet because he didn’t want to stop getting tickets to the hottest game in town – Penn State football.
That was how two of Jerry Sandusky’s accusers explained the former Penn State assistant coach’s hold over them.
“He told me that if I ever told anyone that I’d never see my family again,” the former foster child said Wednesday, the third day of testimony in Sandusky’s child sexual abuse trial.
He said it terrified him when Sandusky uttered the threat after the coach pinned him while wrestling in the basement of the Sandusky home and performed oral sex on him.
Sandusky, 68, is charged with sexually abusing 10 boys over a 15-year period, accusations he has denied.
His arrest last fall rocked Penn State and led to the firing of football coach Joe Paterno for not taking stronger action against Sandusky after allegations emerged a decade ago.
Three of Sandusky’s accusers testified Wednesday, bringing to five the number of them who have taken the stand.
The 25-year-old man, identified in court papers as Victim 10, said Sandusky also assaulted him on other occasions in 1998 and 1999, including once at a pool and another time in the basement.
He said he was about 11 at the time.
GREENSBORO, N.C.
Prosecutors drop all charges in Edwards corruption case
Federal prosecutors dropped all charges Wednesday against John Edwards after his corruption trial ended last month in a deadlocked jury.
Jurors in North Carolina acquitted the former presidential candidate on one count of accepting illegal campaign contributions and deadlocked on five other felony counts. The judge declared a mistrial.
Prosecutors will not seek to retry Edwards on the five unresolved counts, according to a U.S. Justice Department statement.
LOS ANGELES
Scientists think Saturn moon may have methane lake
In a surprise find, scientists say they have spotted hints of a methane-rich lake and several ponds near the equator of Saturn’s biggest moon.
Lakes were previously spied near Titan’s polar regions.
It was long thought that bodies of liquid could not exist at Titan’s midsection because energy from the sun at those latitudes would cause methane pools to evaporate.
“This discovery was completely unexpected because lakes are not stable at tropical latitudes,” said planetary scientist Caitlin Griffith of the University of Arizona, who led the discovery team.
By measuring reflected sunlight from Titan’s surface and atmosphere, the international Cassini spacecraft detected a dark region near the landing site of Huygens, a companion probe that parachuted to Titan’s equator in 2005.
Scientists said further analysis of the dark feature suggests the presence of a 927-square-mile hydrocarbon lake – twice as big as Lake Champlain, a freshwater lake that borders upstate New York and Vermont.
Near the equatorial lake were hints of four shallow ponds similar in size and depth to marshes on Earth.
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