Apple cuts prices on lower-end iPads

Apple cuts prices on lower-end iPads

NEW YORK

Apple is cutting prices on two iPad models and introducing red iPhones, but the company held back on updating its higher-end iPad Pro tablets.

A much-speculated 10.5-inch iPad Pro didn’t materialize, nor did new versions of current sizes in the Pro lineup, which is aimed at businesses and creative professionals. The new devices are mostly refreshes of current models. Apple unveiled them through press releases Tuesday rather than a staged event.

Prosecutor: Not reporting Sandusky let evil ‘run wild’

HARRISBURG, PA.

The failure of Penn State’s former president to report child molestation accusations against Jerry Sandusky allowed evil “to run wild,” prosecutors said Tuesday at the start of Graham Spanier’s trial. A defense attorney accused prosecutors of trying to “criminalize a judgment call.”

Opening statements got underway in the long-delayed criminal trial against Spanier, who faces felony charges of child endangerment and conspiracy for how he handled a 2001 report that the former assistant football coach had abused a boy in a team shower.

Sandusky, a former assistant football coach, was convicted in 2012 of sexually abusing 10 boys and is serving decades in prison.

Two former Penn State officials took plea deals last week – former vice president Gary Schultz and former athletic director Tim Curley. They are expected to testify along with a victim of Sandusky’s.

Arkansas plans 8 executions over a 10-day period

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.

After nearly a dozen years without an execution, Arkansas is racing to put eight men to death next month over a 10-day period – an unprecedented timetable the state says is necessary because one of the three ingredients in the lethal injection will soon expire.

If carried out, the executions beginning April 17 would make Arkansas the first state to execute that many inmates in such a short time since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976.

The accelerated schedule calls for prison staff to conduct four double executions, with only a few days in between. It poses a number of risks, experts say, and the state’s preparations are shrouded in secrecy.

‘Norfolk 4’ pardoned

RICHMOND, VA.

Virginia’s governor pardoned four former sailors who became known as the “Norfolk Four,” ending a decades-long fight to clear the men of rape and murder convictions based on intimidating police interrogations.

A spokesman for Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the governor granted absolute pardons for the men in the 1997 rape and killing of Michelle Moore-Bosko. DNA evidence linked another man, Omar Ballard, to the crimes. He acknowledged that he was solely responsible and is serving a life sentence.

Associated Press