(Continued from page 23)

• Al-Ikhbariya is privately-owned but strongly supports President Bashar Assad's regime. Pro-government journalists have been attacked on several previous occasions during the country's 15-month uprising, although such incidents are comparatively rare.
• Rebels deny they target the media. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group confirmed the raid and the deaths of several employees, but had no other information.
• Information Minister Omran al-Zoebi told reporters that gunmen stormed the station compound in the town of Drousha, about 20 kilometers (14 miles) south of the capital Damascus, placed explosives and then detonated them. He said the attackers killed seven people and kidnapped others.
• "What happened today is a massacre, a massacre against the freedom of the press," al-Zoebi said in comments broadcast on state-run Syrian TV. "They carried

out a terrifying massacre by executing the employees."
• ___

• Nearly two decades before Matt Sandusky's blockbuster allegation that he was sexually abused by his adoptive father, his biological mother raised questions about their relationship.
• Debra Long fought the court system over her son's placement in the home of the famed Penn State assistant football coach, who was convicted Friday of sexually abusing 10 boys.
• Her objections, which she discussed in a December interview with The Associated Press, add a new dimension to the grim trial testimony that illustrated how Sandusky wooed the victims he culled from his charity for at-risk youth.
• Prosecutors said Sandusky used gifts, trips and access to Penn State's vaunted football program to attract and abuse vulnerable boys he met through the charity, The Second Mile.
• "If they'd have listened, these boys didn't have to be abused," Long said. "They would have found the problem back then, and a whole lot of kids wouldn't be victims now."
• ___

(Continued on page 25)