Courthouse asbestos accord reached

CAMBRIDGE
Employees at the Middlesex County Courthouse will be allowed to review and challenge construction plans that could expose them to cancer-causing asbestos, under an agreement reached yesterday. The agreement applies to ongoing work in the 38-year-old Edward J. Sullivan Courthouse before the asbestos is removed. The employees already had won a ruling to evacuate the building during the asbestos-abatement phase of the remodeling, tentatively scheduled to begin Dec. 31, said Chris Milne, a lawyer for the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys. The academy, the Middlesex district attorney, and clerks of the Middlesex Superior and Trial courts sued to protect employees and lawyers who practice at the courthouse from elevator repairs and other construction that could unsettle asbestos, Milne said. (AP)

ABINGTON

Trying to get something done at town hall can be a pain, and for one local woman it was, literally. Joanne Harding broke a tooth on a Tootsie Roll she took from a candy jar in the town clerk's office in Abington Town Hall last month during a visit to get a license for her dog. She now wants the town to help pay her $4,000-$5,000 dental bill. Town Manager Phillip Warren Jr. forwarded Harding's request for financial assistance to the town's insurance carrier. "We'll wait to see what the insurance company says," Warren said. Meanwhile, the candy jars at the clerk's office remain. (AP)

BENNINGTON, Vt.

Soil tests around the State Office Building failed to find any substances that could explain why a number of employees contracted a rare lung ailment. Tests done for the state Health Department failed to find any traces of beryllium, a metallic element believed to be linked to sarcoidosis, which has stricken six current or former workers at the Bennington State Office Building. Zinc levels were also "below any level of concern." Officials are preparing to close the building, moving workers into trailers on site and to temporary offices in downtown Bennington. They are expected to be out within 2 1/2 weeks. (AP)

KITTERY, Maine

The submarine USS Hyman G. Rickover, named for the admiral known as the father of the nuclear Navy, arrived yesterday at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard for inactivation. The Rickover, with a crew of 12 officers and 115 enlisted sailors, recently completed 22 years of service with a six-year deployment to the North Atlantic. The fast attack sub was launched in 1983 in Connecticut, the 22d of the Los Angeles class vessels. The Rickover had the distinction of being the only one in the class to be named after a person instead of a city. Rickover served 63 years in the Navy before being forced to retire in 1982. He died four years later. (AP)

ASHLAND, N.H.

The Vatican has rejected a state lawmaker's appeal of the merger of three Roman Catholic parishes. In July 2006, Bishop John McCormack announced that St. Agnes Church in Ashland, St. Timothy in Bristol, and St. Matthew in Plymouth would be merged to form Holy Trinity Parish. The Diocese of Manchester said that the churches in Ashland and Bristol would close and that all congregations would meet in Plymouth. A month later, Representative Fran Wendelboe, Republican of New Hampton, sent a letter of appeal to the Vatican linking the merger to a loss of respect for the state's Roman Catholic leaders because of the priest sex abuse scandal. Wendelboe, a parishioner at St. Agnes, said she hopes to raise $10,000 to take the matter to the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the Roman Catholic Church's highest court. (AP)