Allan Lengel

The NCAA wanted to send a message that protecting children is more important than Penn State football. But if the NCAA really meant it, it would have suspended play for at least a year.

A $60 million fine essentially amounts to one year of revenue generated from the program.

And no bowl games for four years?

Well, many of the bowl games are irrelevant. To boot, Jerry Sandusky shouldn’t have been the only person to get indicted for what happened.

Cover ups matter.

I’m a Big Ten alum. I attended Michigan State University.

Had it happened at the Michigan State, I would have expected no less than a year suspension of the program.

I couldn’t even imagine going to a game involving Penn State.

What the officials at that university did, including coach Joe Paterno, is nothing short of criminal.

So next time the NCAA says it wants to send a message that children are more important than football, maybe it should mean it.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent is recovering after he accidentally shot himself in Miami Beach after a traffic stop Saturday, NBC 6 Miami reports.

After talking to the driver of the car he pulled over, the agent was walking back to his car when his gun went off and shot him in the leg.

The agent was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where his condition was unknown this morning, according to NBC 6 Miami.

ICE declined to identify the agent.

Steve Neavling

The FBI is investigating a potential link between an adult dating website and the man accused in the Aurora, Colo. massacre, the Washington Post reports.

Authorities said they found an account on Adult Friend Finder, called Classicjimbo, that resembles the shooter, James Holmes.

On the account on the site, which is for people to meet potential sex partners, the questioned is posed on Classicjimbo’s account: “Will you visit me in prison?,” according to the Washington Post.

While the account hasn’t been verified,  the idea that Holmes was anticipating a life in prison may be another indication that he was planning an attack.

The account spooked one woman.

“Please do not take it personally if I am hesitant to talk to anyone,” she wrote, according to the Washington Post . “I just found out that someone I friended on this site shot 71 people.”

Steve Neavling

The U.S. is expanding its war on drugs to Africa, the New York Times reports.

Targeting areas used to smuggle Latin American cocaine into Europe, the U.S. is training an elite unit of counter-narcotics police in Ghana and plans to do so with Nigeria and Kenya.

The aggressive position in Africa is a sign that the U.S. is increasing some operations while the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, according to the New York Times.

“We see Africa as the new frontier in terms of counterterrorism and counternarcotics issues,” Jeffrey P. Breeden, the chief of the D.E.A.’s Europe, Asia and Africa section, told the New York Times. “It’s a place that we need to get ahead of — we’re already behind the curve in some ways, and we need to catch up.”

courtesy of http://wantagh.patch.com

An ATF agent who was killed trying to prevent a pharmacy robbery in his hometown in New York had a portion of a street named after him over the weekend, Newsday reports.

Senior Special Agent John F. Capano Avenue is the new name of Waverly Avenue at Seamans Neck Road where Capano grew up in his childhood home.

Capano, 51, was trying to prevent a robbery at a pharmacy when he and the suspect began grappling over the phone. A retired Nassau police lieutenant fatally shot Capano, thinking he was the robber.

Last week the Nassau County district attorney’s office said it would not file criminal charges against the retired lieutenant because he was trying to defend himself when Capano fired.

Steve Neavling

Bassem Youssef, an Egyptian-born FBI supervisor, will have another chance to prove he was discriminated against after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the Associated Press reports.

A federal appeals court, in a 3-0 vote, revived the workplace discrimination case after a judge in 2008 ruled the case was insufficient because Youssef didn’t suffer materially adverse action at work.

The appeals court will decide whether Youssef was discriminated because of false rumors that his Muslim faith prevented him from following orders in Saudi Arabia and that he had worn traditional head gear, according to the AP.

Youssef says neither is true.

OTHER STORIES OF INTEREST

• FBI Says Missing Girls May Be Alive
• FBI to Help Probe Hitman Scam
• Painter Stops Forging Work Because of Probe
• Investigation Begins After Anthrax Scares at Bay Area Schools
• Feds Hope to Imprison Greenwich Pastor