Residents evacuated near derailment

Residents evacuated near derailment

CASSELTON, N.D.

Authorities evacuated part of a North Dakota town near the scene of a fiery oil train derailment Monday.

Cass County Sheriff’s Sgt. Tara Morris said as many as 300 Casselton residents were to be evacuated.

Morris said there was no immediate danger. It’s a precaution in case winds change as some derailed cars continue to burn.

Investigators couldn’t get close to the blaze, and estimates of how many cars caught fire varied.

BNSF Railway Co. says it believes about 20 cars caught fire after its oil train left the tracks about 2:10 p.m. Monday. The sheriff’s office says it thinks 10 cars were on fire.

No one was hurt. The cause is under investigation.

Population growing faster in South, West

WASHINGTON

Population growth in Southern and Western states, led by Texas, California and Florida, accounted for more than 80 percent of new residents nationwide over the past three years, surpassing the Northeast and Midwest in the demographic contest that plays a key role in determining states’ political clout, census data released Monday show.

If states continue to grow at the same pace for the rest of the decade, Texas could gain three more congressional seats in 2020, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of the Census Bureau figures. Florida, North Carolina, Virginia and Colorado would stand to gain one seat each, while Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Minnesota, West Virginia and Rhode Island would lose a seat each.

Antarctic ship waits for copter rescue

SYDNEY

Passengers on board a research ship that has been trapped in Antarctic ice for a week are expected to be rescued by helicopter, after three icebreakers failed to reach the paralyzed vessel, officials said today.

The 74 scientists, tourists and crew on the Russian ship MV Akademik Shokalskiy, which has been stuck since Christmas Eve, had been hoping the Australian icebreaker Aurora Australis would be able to crack through the thick ice and allow them to continue on their way. The Aurora came within 12 miles of the ship Monday, but fierce winds and snow forced it to retreat to open water.

Egypt prosecutors question journalists

CAIRO

Egyptian state security prosecutors interrogated a team of journalists working for Al-Jazeera’s English channel Monday a day after they were arrested in Cairo, a security official said Monday.

State security prosecutors usually investigate cases involving national security or terrorism. The official said the journalists from the Qatar-based network were being questioned for broadcasting without permission from a five-star hotel, the Cairo Marriott.

Doctor at center of abortion case dies

SARASOTA, Fla.

Dr. Kenneth Edelin, a Boston physician at the center of a landmark abortion case in the 1970s, died Monday morning in Sarasota, Fla. He was 74.

Edelin’s wife, Barbara, confirmed that he died after suffering from cancer.

Edelin made national headlines when he was convicted of manslaughter in 1975 for performing an abortion. That was two years after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized the procedure with its decision on Roe v. Wade.

According to NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Massachusetts Supreme Court later overturned Edelin’s guilty verdict, in a case that helped legally define what an abortion is and when human life begins.

Combined dispatches