In brief: Workers removing pipe at blast site

ALLENTOWN, Pa. – A section of natural gas pipe suspected of causing a massive explosion and fire that killed five people will be removed and transported to an engineering firm for analysis, a utility company official said Monday.

Workers began removing the piece of 12-inch cast-iron pipe on Monday, UGI spokesman Joe Swope said. Crews are taking their time because they don’t want to lose any important evidence, Swope said.

The blast rocked an Allentown neighborhood Wednesday night, sparking an inferno that burned for hours while crews tried to shut off the supply of gas.

A 16-year-old girl and a 4-month-old boy were among those killed.

Church abuse suit filed under ’02 law

PHILADELPHIA – A civil lawsuit filed Monday against the Archdiocese of Philadelphia by a man who said two priests had sexually abused him as a child may signal a new era in church abuse litigation in Pennsylvania.

The Roman Catholic archdiocese, long shielded by strict time limits by the state for filing personal-injury claims, has been spared the multimillion-dollar settlements that have crippled or even bankrupt other U.S. dioceses.

But the 28-year-old “John Doe” plaintiff who sued the archdiocese, its last two cardinals, its victim advocates and others had until age 30 to file the complaint under a 2002 law designed to give child sex abuse victims more time to come forward.

“It’s only now that he’s been stable enough to weather a lawsuit,” said the man’s lawyer, Dan Monahan of Exton, who has been working with the client for a year.

Blogger sued over edited video

WASHINGTON – Shirley Sherrod has filed a defamation suit against Andrew Breitbart, the conservative gadfly she alleges triggered her firing by the Obama administration and ignited a national debate on race and reverse discrimination.

Sherrod was the Georgia director for rural development for the U.S. Department of Agriculture until last June, when Breitbart posted online a heavily edited video excerpt of her speaking to a Georgia civil rights group.

“Although the defamatory blog post authored by Defendant Breitbart purported to show video proof that Mrs. Sherrod exhibited racism in performance of her USDA job,” states the complaint, posted Monday by the website Talking Points Memo, the video Breitbart used was an excerpt “from a much longer speech by Mrs. Sherrod that demonstrated exactly the opposite.”

As a result of Breitbart’s actions, the complaint says, Sherrod has suffered “enduring damage to her reputation, as well as emotional distress and financial damages from her loss of employment at USDA.”

City officials joked about high salaries

LOS ANGELES – The two top officials in the scandal-ridden California city of Bell illegally paid themselves hugely inflated salaries and created a paper trail to hide their actions while joking that they were acting like pigs, according to a document filed in court Monday.

E-mails and other documents from former Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia’s computer will show that she and former City Manager Robert Rizzo created phony contracts that raised their salaries to “outrageous” levels, according to the memorandum from District Attorney Steve Cooley.