Nation in brief

Mont. fires threaten blackouts

HELENA, Mont. - Wildfires threatened power transmission lines across the state Saturday, and residents of four cities were warned to prepare for the possibility of blackouts.

NorthWestern Energy officials said Friday that fire damage could lead to major blackouts this weekend and warned customers in Missoula, Butte, Bozeman and Hamilton to be prepared.

Two dozen major fires burning in Montana on Saturday, most of them started by lightning and still uncontrolled, had covered almost 200,000 acres.

MICROSOFT FENDS OFF WORM ATTACK: Microsoft Corp. dodged a new blow Saturday from the "Blaster" Internet worm, but the malicious software is shaping up as one of the costliest Web attacks ever. The worm infected more than 400,000 computers and caused as much as $1-billion in lost productivity and other damages so far, according to some estimates. The worm, which wriggled into computers worldwide last Monday, was supposed to mutate and bombard Microsoft Corp.'s main Internet security help site - the very place where PC users can get a protective software "patch" - beginning at 12:01 a.m. Saturday. But by late in the day, because of preventive steps by Microsoft, the attack had failed to materialize.

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