LONDON

Scotland Yard official quits as hacking scandal widens

Scotland Yard’s assistant commissioner resigned Monday, a day after his boss also quit, and fresh investigations of possible police wrongdoing were launched in the phone hacking scandal that has spread from Rupert Murdoch’s media empire to the British prime minister’s office.

Prime Minister David Cameron called an emergency session of Parliament on the scandal and cut short his visit to Africa to try to contain the widening crisis. Lawmakers today are to question Murdoch, his son James and Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of Murdoch’s U.K. newspaper arm.

In a further twist, a former News of the World reporter who helped blow the whistle on the scandal was found dead Monday in his home, but it was not believed to be suspicious.

TORONTO

Collapse of stage in storm called ‘a freak situation’

The organizer of an Ottawa music festival where the stage collapsed during a sudden storm, scattering thousands of fans who were watching the band Cheap Trick, called the accident “a freak situation” at a news conference Monday.

Organizers had been monitoring the weather moments before a violent summer gale toppled the main stage at the Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest on Sunday night, said Mark Monahan, the festival’s executive director. Three people were hospitalized for their injuries but were later released, he said.

Cheap Trick had been playing for about 20 minutes when howling winds and storm clouds suddenly blew in. The band quickly left as the stage began to collapse, sending about 10,000 fans scrambling to make their way to safety.

ISLAMABAD

Lawyer files charges against ex-CIA counsel over drones

A Pakistani lawyer filed charges Monday against the CIA’s former legal counsel for authorizing drone missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal area that activists say killed mostly innocent civilians.

Advocacy groups hope that the charges against John A. Rizzo, a now-retired longtime CIA lawyer, will lead eventually to a lawsuit in the United States over the secretive drone program, which is highly unpopular in Pakistan but has become a central tool of the Obama administration’s fight against al-Qaida and Taliban militants in Pakistan’s remote tribal areas near Afghanistan.

Lawyers connected with the case said they focused on Rizzo, 63, because he discussed the process of drone targeting, determining who should be “blown to bits,” as he put it in an interview with Newsweek magazine earlier this year. Rizzo, who retired in 2009, described how he signed off on a monthly hit list, though he said at one point that “they tried to minimize collateral damage, especially women and children.”

RALEIGH, N.C.

Woman paralyzed in pool plans to be married Friday

A year after she was paralyzed in poolside horseplay at her bachelorette party, Rachelle Friedman knows one thing she would change about her life before the injury.

“I wish we had danced together more because I love dancing so much, and we didn’t do it enough,” she said of her soon-to-be husband. “Looking back, I would have done it every night.”

Friedman will finally make it down the aisle Friday, marrying the man who has waited to exchange vows since the accident. She will wear the same gown she chose for the first ceremony but with her father pushing her wheelchair down the aisle instead of walking her down it, arm in arm.

Also joining her will be the bridesmaid who shoved her into the shallow end of a pool on May 23, 2010 – causing a freak accident that changed their lives. The 25-year-old from Knightdale has stuck with her friend and refused to reveal her identity even as newspapers, television and Internet sites carried the story around the world.

“She was tragically hurt, mentally and emotionally. And I was tragically hurt, physically,” Friedman said on the day that a tailor was altering her strapless, simple wedding dress. “It’s harder to deal with when you’re hurt emotionally sometimes than when you’re hurt physically.”

TRENTON, N.J.

Rabbi, wife surrender to FBI on charges in divorce case

A New Jersey rabbi and his wife surrendered Monday to the FBI on charges that they abducted an Israeli man, beat him and threatened to bury him alive if he didn’t give his wife a religious divorce.

The case against David Wax and his wife in U.S. federal court started with a divorce dispute in Israel’s Rabbinical Court over the victim’s refusal to give his wife a “get,” an Orthodox Jewish divorce document permitting a wife to remarry.

Wax, 49, and Judy Wax, 47, made a brief appearance in federal court before being released on $500,000 bond each.