Charges: The foster father of acrobat Angel...

Charges: The foster father of acrobat Angel Wallenda was arrested in Spring Hill, Fla., on child pornography charges after she told police that he abused her as a child. “He photographed me” in sexually explicit poses, said Wallenda, 23, who married into the famed Flying Wallendas in 1985. “I thought it was so wrong. But I was so embarrassed I wouldn’t tell anybody,” she said in Mansfield, Pa. Richard W. Brook, 52, was charged last week with 40 counts of child pornography based on pictures and videotapes found at his home.

* Out of the Frying Pan . . . : In her sequel to “Gone With the Wind,” Alexandra Ripley moved “Scarlett” across the ocean and thereby avoided repeating GWTW’s stereotypes of blacks--but she ran into criticism from Irish-Americans. Ripley portrays the Irish as “a fickle, ignorant and violent race, prone to treachery and the most outrageous superstitions,” says the weekly Irish Echo. Ripley was unavailable for comment.

* Cry for Help I: Televangelist Oral Roberts has written more than 1 million of his regular contributors for money to save his Tulsa, Okla., ministry from a “satanic conspiracy.” “We’ve got to have a financial breakthrough or all hell is going to break loose,” says the letter. Roberts’ son, Richard, said the ministry had seen a sharp drop in donations over the past 30 days. He linked the decline to an unrelated scandal in which evangelist Jimmy Swaggart was seen with a prostitute in Indio.

* Cry for Help II: A New Baltimore, Mich., motorist whose truck slammed into a moving freight train got a harrowing ride early Tuesday. Gordon Gibson’s pickup was being dragged along the track when he freed himself and jumped to the train. Gibson, 41, “yelled for help the entire time, but of course no one could hear him,” said a police spokesman. Gibson, suffering minor arm and head injuries, rode on the train’s flatbed car for 15 miles before the train stopped. He was listed in fair condition at a hospital.