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• University spokesman David La Torre said the potential for a four-year ban on playing football was floated during discussions between Penn State President Rodney Erickson and NCAA officials.
• The trustees met with Erickson on the subject at a State College hotel Wednesday and afterward issued their statement.
• The penalty hasn't been used since the NCAA suspended Southern Methodist University for the 1987 season. SMU then sat out the '88 season on its own and has never fully recovered its status in college football.
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• LONDON (AP) -- Around the 2012 Olympics and its host city with journalists from The Associated Press bringing the flavor and details of the games to you:
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• WANNA BET?
• High stakes between Britain and Australia this Olympics.
• Britain's Olympics Minister Hugh Robertson and his Australian counterpart, Sports Minister Kate Lundy, have a side bet on which country will win the most the gold medals at the Olympics.
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• WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate has debated, sniped and voted on the politically fraught issue of tax cuts, and next week it'll be the House's turn. Still, Americans won't know until after the November elections how much more of their paychecks will go to the government next year.
• Turning both houses of Congress into a campaign stage on one of the defining issues of the presidential and congressional races, Republicans and Democrats are putting each other on record over which Americans, if any, should receive an extension of former President George W. Bush's income tax cuts.
• The Senate got the ball rolling Wednesday with surprise debates and passage of a Democratic bill fashioned on President Barack Obama's proposal to extend the income tax cuts to all but the wealthiest Americans through 2013. It passed even though the measure stands no chance of surviving the Republican-led House.

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