Philadelphia

Bugging device found in mayor’s office

Police conducting a routine security sweep of Mayor John F. Street’s City Hall office found a hidden listening device Tuesday morning, authorities said.

Street, who is seeking re-election, quickly sought to reassure city residents that his office was not the subject of an investigation.

FBI spokesman Linda Vizi said the device was not connected to any campaign espionage, but she refused to say whether Street was being investigated or whether the FBI planted the device.

Tuesday’s discovery comes near the end of a heated mayoral campaign that pits Street against Republican challenger Sam Katz for the second time. Street beat Katz four years ago by less than 10,000 votes in the city of 1.5 million, and polls show a neck-and-neck race again this year.

The Katz camp had nothing to do with the device, spokeswoman Maureen Garrity said.

Atlanta

Court tosses law on testing motorists

The Georgia Supreme Court overturned a law that required motorists involved in serious accidents to submit to drug testing or face the loss of driving privileges for a year.

The state’s implied consent law “authorizes a search and seizure without probable cause” and violates the state and federal constitutions, the court ruled Monday in throwing out a motorist’s conviction.

Under the provision the court struck down, any motorist involved in an accident causing serious injury or death was presumed to have given prior consent to a blood, breath or urine test to determine the presence or alcohol or other drugs in his body.

The court said the law was problematic because it compels testing of anyone involved in a serious accident regardless of whether there was any independent reason to believe they were impaired.

Georgia

Gunman arrested after fire in church

An armed man who said he was “disturbed about the world’s religions” used lighter fluid to set fire to the pulpit and bishop’s chair in a historic Roman Catholic cathedral Tuesday, then surrendered after a brief standoff with police, authorities said.

Nobody was injured. The flames charred the pulpit but caused no structural damage to the twin-spired Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, which dates to 1873 and is a popular tourist stop in Savannah.

Stuart Vincent Smith, 31, was holding a handgun and lighter fluid when he entered the sanctuary shortly after morning Mass, police spokesman Bucky Burnsed said.

Police evacuated the surrounding block and a nearby Catholic girls’ school during the standoff, which lasted less than an hour. Smith, who is from Marietta, was taken into custody without incident and jailed on suspicion of arson.