President of Pa. charity linked to abuse resigns (AP)

PITTSBURGH – The youth charity at the center of the child sex-abuse charges against former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky received donations in recent years from hundreds of corporations, community groups and individuals — including the judge who arraigned Sandusky earlier this month.

On Monday, The Second Mile's president resigned, saying he hoped his departure would help restore faith in its mission. The group also announced it had hired Philadelphia's longtime district attorney as its new general counsel.

Jack Raykovitz, a practicing psychologist, had led the group, which was founded by Sandusky in 1977, for 28 years.

Raykovitz had testified before the grand jury that recommended indicting Sandusky on child abuse charges. The panel said Sandusky found his victims through the charity's programs.

Annual reports show how widely popular the charity was before the scandal hit. Hundreds of corporations, community groups and individuals donated each year.

Among them was State College District Judge Leslie A. Dutchcot, who set Sandusky's bail earlier this month. She and her husband donated between $500 and $999 to The Second Mile in 2009, and she volunteered for the group, according to annual reports and her website.

The judge set bail for Sandusky at $100,000 unsecured — meaning he did not have to post collateral to be freed but would have to post $100,000 if he ever failed to show up for a hearing.

Dutchcot did not immediately respond to a question on whether she will recuse herself from the case because of those past ties to The Second Mile. She has also removed the mention of The Second Mile from her website.

Major companies and their foundations also have given to The Second Mile. Between 2008 and 2010, the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, Highmark Foundation, The Hershey Company and State Farm Companies Foundation all gave $50,000 or more to the charity.

Raykovitz said in a statement Monday that he hopes his resignation would mark the beginning of a "restoration of faith in the community of volunteers and staff" at The Second Mile.

Tax forms indicate that Raykovitz's wife, Katherine Genovese, was executive vice president of The Second Mile. She has been with the group since 1984. It's not clear if she still works at the charity, as the staff biography page has been removed from the website.

The Second Mile has said that its youth programs serve as many as 100,000 children a year.

Sandusky, who retired from Penn State in 1999, informed The Second Mile board in November 2008 that he was under investigation. The charity subsequently barred him from activities involving children, charity officials said.

The ex-coach allegedly assaulted eight children over a 15-year span. His attorney has said he's innocent.

Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley and Senior Vice President Gary Schultz were charged with perjury. Both have denied wrongdoing and have left their university posts.

The scandal led to the departure of university President Graham Spanier and the dismissal of legendary head coach Joe Paterno after law enforcement officials said they didn't do enough to stop suspected abuse when it was reported to them in 2002.

The Second Mile also announced a new general counsel on Monday. Lynne Abraham is replacing Wendell Courtney, who resigned last week.

Abraham served as the top prosecutor in Philadelphia for nearly two decades, during which she was known for her no-nonsense approach. The city's first female district attorney, she earned the lasting nickname "one tough cookie" from former Mayor Frank Rizzo. She decided not to run again in 2009 and became a partner at the Philadelphia office of the Archer & Greiner law firm in early 2010.

The Second Mile board also said that it would conduct an internal investigation to assess policies and make recommendations regarding future operations. They hope to have those findings by the end of December.

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NATO air strike kills fighter linked to Afghan hotel attack (Reuters)

KABUL (Reuters) – NATO aircraft killed an insurgent leader linked to a deadly hotel attack in the Afghan capital this week, the coalition said on Thursday, a raid that raised questions about whether Afghan forces are ready for the looming security transition.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on the Intercontinental, one of two major hotels used by foreigners and Afghan government officials, a rare night-time raid that began on Tuesday and ended five hours later with 12 killed.

However, the NATO-led Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network had also been involved in the assault by nine suicide bombers and gunmen.

ISAF identified the Haqqani network leader killed in an air strike as Ismail Jan, who it described as a deputy to the senior Haqqani commander in Afghanistan, Haji Mali Khan.

It said he and "several Haqqani fighters" were killed in the air strike in the Gardez district of Paktia province south of Kabul on Wednesday.

"The Haqqani network, in conjunction with Taliban operatives, was responsible for the Tuesday night attack on the Kabul Intercontinental hotel which killed 12 people, including a provincial judge," ISAF said in a statement.

The brazen raid came only a week after President Barack Obama announced a phased withdrawal of combat troops, with 10,000 to leave by the end of this year and another 23,000 by the end September 2012.

Obama's announcement preceded the start of a gradual transition of responsibility to Afghan forces from next month that will end with all foreign combat troops leaving Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

With that transition process to begin in seven areas next month, the hotel raid raised serious questions about whether Afghan forces, particularly the police, were ready to take over.

"It shows one of the concerns is that the Afghan security forces are growing in quantity, not in quality," said Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Analysts Network.

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The attack ended when snipers on board a NATO helicopter killed the last three attackers fighting from the roof of the hotel. Earlier television footage showed Afghan forces firing wildly into the air.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that some police had refused to fight back.

ISAF has been training members of the 126,000-strong Afghan National Police since 2009.

Afghan police, who will be at the front line of the security transition in villages and towns across Afghanistan, have long been viewed as inept and lagging behind the training of the better-equipped army, which had been the focus of training efforts since the Taliban were toppled in late 2001.

Violence has risen to record levels across Afghanistan over the past 18 months as NATO troops, especially U.S. forces, hit back against a growing insurgency, especially in the Taliban heartland in the south.

A quarterly report by the United Nations secretary-general to the Security Council about Afghanistan found that the number of security incidents since March had risen 51 percent on the same period in 2010, with suicide attacks rising sharply.

Attacks in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar were especially worrying. "The city of Kandahar and its surroundings registered the majority of the incidents during the reporting period, with a quarter of the overall attacks and more than half of all assassinations recorded countrywide," the report said.

But Ruttig said the attack also highlighted other problems confronting Afghanistan before the transition process, which also includes handing the running of civil institutions and projects over to Afghans, begins.

Not the least of those is the political paralysis that has gripped the country for months.

"The fact that neither NATO nor the Afghans were able to prevent it says something -- that transition needs to be something more than just security," Ruttig said of the hotel attack.

"Security forces are only part of transition. There also needs to be a strengthening of political institutions and, at the moment, the parliamentary crisis has brought politics to a standstill," he told Reuters.

Last week, a special poll court set up by a decree by President Hamid Karzai overturned the results for a quarter of the seats in parliament from elections last year, effectively throwing out 62 MPs who had been declared winners.

The move, and the court itself, have been branded unconstitutional and illegal by Afghan and Western officials and observers. Critics have said the court was set up by Karzai to further his own political agenda and silence opposition.

(Additional reporting by Alistair Scrutton; Editing by Sugita Katyal)

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