Former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky, now serving time in a Pennsylvania prison for sexual assault on 10 young boys, is apparently corresponding with people outside the prison walls. And, much like letters from former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez, Sandusky's words reveal much, perhaps even more than he himself realizes. The usual caveats apply about the truthfulness of these letters, of course.

"I've been quite confined, always searching for purpose," Sandusky writes in a letter obtained by TMZand dated May 19. "For now, my main purpose is to endure, learn from and grow form this experience. It is very challenging. I exercise, read, meditate and do a lot of writing. I've written and continue to write my account of what has happened."

Sandusky clearly has not accepted his conviction on 45 of 48 counts of sexual abuse as the final word on the matter. "An appeal is in process," he writes in a letter dated June 16, "but I don't know what to think. I would feel better if we could reveal all the information and unfairness." He writes that he has support from all over the country.

The letters, while short, hint at Sandusky's mindset, and how he is grasping for purpose. "God's light has warmed me with many letters of support and motivation," he writes. "My plan is to continue this battle until the last whistle blows. My hope is to serve even better purposes. Each day, my goal is to embrace each day as a gift. Never surrender except to God. Don't let our circumstances get the best of us. Understand God's presence and purpose. Remain as positive as possible. Exercise your mind, body, and spirit."

In another, he recounts, without additional context, an episode from his youth. "Today, I remembered my childhood, which took place about 20 miles from here. My dad and I were playing baseball, and he told me to choke up on the bat. I pulled it to my mouth and coughed on it. He knew he had a genius on his hands."

Sandusky is serving 30 to 60 years in prison. For the full letters, click here or see below.

- - -

Follow Jay Busbee on Twitter at @jaybusbee.

The convicted child molester and ex-football coach reveals more than he realizes in notes to outsiders.
'Never surrender'

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U.S. Army Private First Class Bradley Manning is escorted into court for the second day of the sentencing phase in his military trial at Fort Meade, Maryland August 1, 2013. REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan

By Tom Ramstack

FORT MEADE, Maryland (Reuters) - The military judge who last week convicted soldier Bradley Manning of committing the biggest breach of classified data in U.S. history through WikiLeaks on Tuesday trimmed the maximum prison sentence the private first class could face.

But the 25-year-old former intelligence analyst could still be spending the rest of his life behind bars after Judge Colonel Denise Lind ruled that he could face a maximum sentence of 90, rather than 136, years for turning over more than 700,000 battlefield videos, diplomatic cables and other secret documents to WikiLeaks.

Manning's attorneys had objected that the prosecution was overreaching in seeking separate sentences for all the espionage charges. His lawyers acknowledged he had downloaded files on different days, but said he grouped many of them into single files before transmitting them in 2010 to WikiLeaks, a pro-transparency website.

Lind, who convicted Manning of 19 criminal counts, ruled that some counts resulted from the same sequence of actions by Manning and should be merged to avoid "an unreasonable multiplication of charges."

For most of the espionage charges resulting from the transmissions, "there is no evidence of prosecutorial overreaching," Lind said.

The court-martial of the slightly built soldier, who was working as an analyst in Iraq when he released the documents to the anti-secrecy site, has drawn international scrutiny. The trove of documents he provided catapulted WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, into the spotlight.

The U.S. government contended that releasing classified information threatened national security.

Access to classified information remains a sensitive subject after Edward Snowden, a U.S. intelligence contractor, this summer revealed the super-secret National Security Agency program to collect phone and Internet records.

Manning, a low-level intelligence analyst described during the trial as an Internet expert, faces the prospect of decades of prison monotony without online access, likely at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

MISTREATMENT

The sentencing phase of Manning's court-martial began last week and is expected to last at least until Friday. Lind ruled during preliminary hearings that the sentence would be trimmed by 112 days because Manning was mistreated following his arrest in Iraq in May 2010.

Manning last week was found not guilty of the most serious charge of aiding the enemy, which carried the threat of life in prison without parole, and his lawyers have portrayed him as naive but well intentioned. They argue his aim was to provoke a broader debate on U.S. military policy, not to harm anyone.

After Lind's ruling, two military officials - Major General Michael Nagata, the deputy chief for the Office of the Defense Representative to Pakistan from 2009 to 2011, and Air Force Colonel Julian Chesnutt, a U.S. military adviser at the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan from 2010 to 2012 - testified behind closed doors on the impact of the WikiLeaks releases on relations with Islamabad.

Lind also ruled she would not allow the prosecution's "aggravation evidence" to be considered in sentencing unless it could be shown to be "a direct and immediate result" of information he gave to WikiLeaks. Aggravation evidence refers to problems that worsened because of a criminal offense.

Examples of evidence the judge said she would not allow include testimony last week from a retired army brigadier general that the Taliban apparently used WikiLeaks information to track down an enemy in Afghanistan and kill him.

In a sign of the international furor the Manning case has generated, a play about the gay soldier won a newly created drama prize on Tuesday at Britain's oldest literary awards.

(Editing by Ian Simpson, Chris Reese and Bernard Orr)

The maximum prison time the WikiLeaks leaker could face is no longer 136 years but could still be hefty.
Claims of 'overreaching'

The father, a 60-year-old living in the Jiangsu province of eastern China, fell ill about five to six days after he visited a live poultry market in March, according to a new report that details the case today (Aug. 6) in the British Medical Journal.

The man's 32-year-old daughter, who became ill about two weeks later, did not visit poultry markets, but did spend several days caring for her sick father before he was admitted to the hospital.

Both patients became severely ill, developing fevers and pneumonia, and later died from the disease. [See 6 Things You Should Know About the New Bird Flu]

Genetic testing revealed that the patients were infected with nearly identical strains of H7N9.

The most likely explanation for these cases is that the father became infected with H7N9 from a poultry market (or the poultry he purchased there), and then he passed the virus directly to his daughter, according to the researchers, at theJiangsu Province Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. This is the first detailed report of probable human-to-human transmission of H7N9, the researchers said.

Cases of H7N9 first appeared in China in March, and so far 133 people have become ill, including 43 who have died. The majority of cases appear to be unconnected to each other.

The new report does not mean that H7N9 is getting closer to causing a pandemic in people, James Rudge and Richard Coke, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in Bangkok, Thailand, wrote in an editorial accompanying the report in the journal.

Limited human transmission of bird flu viruses has been seen in the past, and is not surprising, Rudge and Coke said. Some animal studies also suggested that H7N9 can spread between mammals. But so far, the virus does not appear to spread efficiently — there is no evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission with H7N9, Rudge and Coke said.

In the case of the father and daughter, the daughter was deeply involved in caring for her father — she cleaned up his mucus, and she cleaned his teeth without using protective equipment, according to the report.

Of the 43 people who came into contact with the father and daughter before and during the time they were ill, none became infected with H7N9, the report said.

Still, H7N9 is concerning. The virus does not cause symptoms in birds, so it can spread undetected within poultry populations, Rudge and Coke said.

The report provides "a timely reminder of the need to remain extremely vigilant," Rudge and Coke said. "The threat posed by H7N9 has by no means passed."

Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. Follow LiveScience @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has filed the first criminal charges in the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, two U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The officials confirmed that a sealed complaint was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington against an unspecified number of individuals in the September 2012 attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. One official said those charged included Ahmed Abu Khattala, the head of a Libyan militia. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss a sealed filing.

The New York Times reported late Tuesday that Khattala had been charged with murder and that he has said in an interview that he is innocent. At least two other foreigners have been charged in the attacks, the newspaper said.

Earlier, CNN, NBC News and The Wall Street Journal reported that unspecified counts had been filed and sealed in the Benghazi attack.

"The department's investigation is ongoing. It has been, and remains, a top priority," said Justice Department spokesman Andrew C. Ames, who declined to comment further.

A key Republican urged the administration to do more than file charges.

"Osama bin Laden had been criminally charged long before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks but was not apprehended," Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a statement. U.S. Navy SEALS killed bin Laden in Pakistan on May 2, 2011. "Delays in apprehending the suspected Benghazi killers," Issa added, "will only put American lives at further and needless risk."

The Associated Press reported in May that American officials had identified five men who might be responsible for the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi that occurred just weeks before President Barack Obama's re-election. The suspects were not named publicly, but the FBI released photos of three of the five suspects, asking the public to provide more information on the men pictured. The images were captured by security cameras at the U.S. diplomatic post during the attack, but it took weeks for the FBI to see and study them. The FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies identified the men through contacts in Libya and by monitoring their communications. They are thought to be members of Ansar al-Shariah, the Libyan militia group whose fighters were seen near the U.S. diplomatic facility prior to the violence.

Waiting to prosecute the suspects instead of grabbing them now could add to the political burden the Benghazi case already has placed on Obama and Democrats who want to succeed him in 2016.

Since Obama's re-election, Republicans in Congress have condemned the administration's handling of the matter, criticizing the level of embassy security and questioning the talking points provided to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for her public explanation of the attack. Conservatives have suggested that the White House tried to play down the incident to minimize its effect on the president's campaign.

Republicans also have taken political aim at Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time of the attack and is a possible Democratic presidential contender in 2016.

In an interview with the Times in October, Khattala said he had arrived at the American compound in Benghazi as gunfire broke out but that he had played no role in the attack. He told the newspaper that he entered the compound at the end of the siege in an attempt to rescue Libyan guards who worked for the Americans and were trapped.

Khattala accused American leaders of using the Benghazi attack to play "with the emotions of the American people" in an effort to "gather votes for their elections," according to the Times.

Officials say a sealed complaint was filed against an unspecified number of individuals in the deadly incident.

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Glenn Greenwald, the American journalist who first published the documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, testifies before a Brazilian Congressional committee on NSA's surveillance programs, in Brasilia August 6, 2013. REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino

By Anthony Boadle

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Glenn Greenwald, the American journalist who published documents leaked by fugitive former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, plans to make new revelations "within the next 10 days or so" on secret U.S. surveillance of the Internet.

"The articles we have published so far are a very small part of the revelations that ought to be published," Greenwald on Tuesday told a Brazilian congressional hearing that is investigating the U.S. internet surveillance in Brazil.

"There will certainly be many more revelations on spying by the U.S. government and how they are invading the communications of Brasil and Latin America," he said in Portuguese.

The Rio de Janeiro-based columnist for Britain's Guardian newspaper said he has recruited the help of experts to understand some of the 15,000 to 20,000 classified documents from the National Security Agency that Snowden passed him, some of which are "very long and complex and take time to read."

Greenwald told Reuters he does not believe the pro-transparency website WikiLeaks had obtained a package of documents from Snowden, and that only he and filmmaker Laura Poitras have complete archives of the leaked material.

Greenwald said Snowden, who was in hiding in Hong Kong before flying to Russia in late June, was happy to leave a Moscow airport after being granted temporary asylum, and pleased that he had stirred up a worldwide debate on internet privacy and secret U.S. surveillance programs used to monitor emails.

"I speak with him a lot since he left the airport, almost every day. We use very strong encryption to communicate," Greenwald told the Brazilian legislators. "He is very well."

"He is very pleased with the debate that is arising in many countries around the world on internet privacy and U.S. spying. It is exactly the debate he wanted to inform," Greenwald said.

After a meeting in June with Snowden in Hong Kong, Greenwald published in The Guardian the first of many reports that rattled the U.S. intelligence community by disclosing the breadth and depth of alleged NSA surveillance of telephone and internet usage.

Last month, in an article co-authored by Greenwald, the Brazilian newspaper O Globo reported that the NSA spied on Latin American countries with programs that can monitor billions of emails and phone calls for suspicious activity. Latin American countries fumed at what they considered a violation of their sovereignty and demanded explanations and an apology.

COMMERCIAL SECRETS

In Brazil, the largest U.S. trading partner in South America, angry senators questioned President Dilma Rousseff's planned state visit to Washington in October and a billion-dollar purchase of U.S.-made fighter jets Brazil is considering.

Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee peppered Greenwald with questions on Tuesday, such as whether the NSA was capable of spying on Brazil's commercial secrets, including the discovery of promising offshore oil reserves, and the communications of the country's president and armed forces.

Greenwald had no details on specific targets and said the documents did not name telecommunications and internet companies in the United States and Brazil that might have collaborated with the NSA's collection of internet users' data.

The journalist said Snowden planned to stay in Moscow "as long as he needs to, until he can secure his situation." He said Snowden knew he ran the risk of spending the rest of his life in jail or being hunted by the most powerful nation in the world, but had no doubts about his decision to leak the documents on the U.S. surveillance programs.

Greenwald criticized governments around the world for failing to offer Snowden protection, even while they publicly denounced the U.S. surveillance of their citizens' internet usage.

Meanwhile, Washington is working through diplomatic channels to persuade governments to stop complaining about the surveillance programs, he said.

"The Brazilian government is showing much more anger in public than it is showing in private discussions with the U.S. government," Greenwald told reporters. "All governments are doing this, even in Europe."

In a speech at the United Nations on Tuesday, Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota called the interception of telecommunications and acts of espionage in Latin America "a serious issue, with a profound impact on the international order." But he did not mention the United States by name.

(Editing by Paul Simao)

Glenn Greenwald plans "many more revelations" on U.S. surveillance in the coming days.
Exactly the debate he wanted'