Oregon

Hundreds flee wildfires

More residents packed up Wednesday and left a valley in southwestern Oregon as firefighters reinforced a defensive line against a 30-mile wall of flames.

Authorities had urged the area’s 17,000 residents on Tuesday to be ready to evacuate within 30 minutes.

Trucks and trailers with furniture have been leaving the area since Sunday, and a Cave Junction animal hospital sold out of pet carriers and nearly ran out of sedatives for dogs and cats, an employee said.

About 400 people had told the Red Cross they had left the valley by Wednesday evening, according to the Josephine County sheriff’s office.

Bulldozers dug fire lines connecting a network of Siskiyou National Forest roads to keep the fire’s eastern front from four communities along U.S. Highway 199. But the weather worsened Wednesday, with forecasts of strong wind from the north and low humidity.

“We are looking at the fire at this time as uncontrollable,” said Greg Gilpin, of the state Department of Forestry.

Washington, D.C.

Deadbeat dads arrested

More than 60 fathers were arrested Wednesday in a national crackdown on people who have chronically failed to pay child support.

It was the largest sweep in the four years since the federal government began pursuing parents who owe large sums of money and have a proven ability to pay.

Sixty-three men, including a former pro football player, were arrested beginning Sunday in cases originating in 23 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Each had been indicted already or has a pending criminal complaint for failure to pay court-ordered support. Each man faces a maximum sentence of two years in jail, plus restitution of money owed.

Among those arrested was James E. Harris, in East. St. Louis, Ill., who played defensive end for the Oakland Raiders from 1998-99, said HHS spokeswoman Judy Holtz. Harris earned more than $1.1 million during his football career and is now the owner of a housing development corporation in Missouri, HHS said. He owes $103,000 and has not made a payment in more than 2 1/2 years, authorities said.

Alabama

Project removes dead voters from rolls

Alabama’s voter registration rolls once were so loaded with dead people they became fodder for Jay Leno’s monologue on the “Tonight Show.”

The graveyard vote no longer exists, though.

The state just completed a 13-year project to clean up the voter rolls by removing more than 150,000 voters who had died. Another 50,000 were taken off because they had moved away.

Atlanta

Police still undecided on high-tech scooters

The Atlanta Police Department is undecided about buying new high-tech sidewalk scooters after a test run.

Six of the battery-powered, two-wheeled Segway Human Transporters, which can top out at 15 mph, were lent to the department to patrol downtown during the spring and summer. They will be returned to the company this month.

Chief Richard Pennington, who will decide whether to make a purchase, has not had a chance to evaluate the vehicles’ performance, police spokesman John Quigley said.

Atlanta is the first city to give the high-tech scooters a broad tryout, according to Segway officials. The scooter was introduced by inventor Dean Kamen in December 2001.

Boston

Heart attack victim dies waiting for stop

Authorities are investigating why a man who suffered a fatal heart attack on a commuter train had to wait about 20 minutes for medical attention while the train made its regular stops.

An assistant conductor, meanwhile, defended the action, saying she performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on 61-year-old James Allen and that it would have been dangerous for the train to rush through stations without stopping.

Allen died Tuesday in the emergency room at Boston Medical Center, where he was taken when the train stopped in Boston, said Brian Pedro, spokesman for the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority.

Pedro on Wednesday said MBTA police were reviewing the emergency procedures of Amtrak, which provides crew for the commuter rail line, to see if there was negligence. Amtrak placed the train’s conductor on administrative leave.

Boston

Even slight weight gain raises heat-failure risk

Cardiologists have long known that obesity increases the risk of death from heart failure, but a new study shows that being even slightly overweight as few as four pounds over also increases the risk substantially.

That increased risk, furthermore, arises from being overweight itself rather than from fat’s effect on hypertension and diabetes. A 15-year study on nearly 6,000 people shows that being overweight alone is responsible for 11 percent of cases of heart failure in men and 14 percent of cases in women, a team from the Boston University School of Medicine reports in today’s New England Journal of Medicine.

An estimated 61 percent of adults in this country are considered overweight, according to the study.

San Antonio

Police find truck packed with illegal immigrants

Authorities said they found a tractor-trailer rig containing as many as 100 illegal immigrants Wednesday after a witness reported screams coming from the trailer.

About 32 people were in custody Wednesday. Two were sent to the hospital for treatment of dehydration, said Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman Denton Lankford.

“Some of the people had been in the trailer for as long as 12 hours,” he said. “They had cut themselves and their hands trying to get out.”

Police went to a truck stop at 1 a.m. Wednesday and found the immigrants, many of whom scattered after being released from the trailer.

The driver, Antonio Deleza, 48, of Laredo, was charged with driving without a license or insurance. Deleza was also being held by the INS on charges related to alleged smuggling, police said. It wasn’t immediately known whether he had a lawyer.