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Firefighters scramble to shield town from wildfire

PHOENIX - Using fire to fight fire, crews said Saturday they had managed to protect a community that was in the path of the mammoth wildfire spreading through dry brush and grass in rugged central Arizona.

Thanks to successful burnout operations along the southwest flank of the Cave Creek Complex fire, any danger that the fire would reach Black Canyon City had been significantly diminished, fire officials said.

The community of 4,500 is about 40 miles north of Phoenix on Interstate 17.

The fire was 45 percent contained. Crews had worked during the night to burn out vegetation along the western edge and were conducting more burnout operations Saturday farther south, said David Elkowitz, a spokesman for crews working the southern zone of the fire that had covered 214,300 acres.

Elsewhere, a blaze in eastern Nevada, near the Utah state line, was scattered across an area of nearly 353,000 acres, although only about half of that land had burned, fire officials said.

Officials said that fire was about 49 percent contained Saturday.

TOPEKA, Kan. - The Kansas Supreme Court said Saturday it will consider keeping schools closed because state legislators have failed to comply with the court's demand that they spend more money on public schools.

Students are already on summer break in Kansas and aren't scheduled to return until August. However, if the Legislature doesn't resolve the funding issue, the court could keep 445,000 students and 64,000 teachers and staffers from returning to the classroom when the new school year starts.

The court's order suggested it could even block spending on bond payments, leases and other financial obligations.

Saturday marked the 11th day of a special legislative session called by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to try to answer the court's demand. Lawmakers adjourned for the holiday weekend without a solution.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Ohio is more than tripling the size of its school voucher program, making it the nation's largest since the practice of using public money for private school tuition was found constitutional three years ago.

The tuition aid, which has been available only in Cleveland since 1996, will allow up to 14,000 additional students statewide to leave schools that persistently fail academic tests and move to private schools, beginning in the fall of 2006.

"This is a commitment that needed to be made, providing Ohio parents and children with more choices in education," said Karen Tabor, spokeswoman for House Speaker Jon Husted.

The state's $51-billion budget that Republican Gov. Bob Taft signed Thursday includes funding for 14,000 children. The state will pay $4,250 for students in kindergarten through eighth grade and $5,000 for high-schoolers.

FREEPORT, N.Y. - A 7-year-old who had been a flower girl at her aunt's wedding a few hours earlier was killed Saturday when the limousine she was riding in was hit head-on by a driver police say was drunk.

The 59-year-old limo driver also was killed, and the girl's parents, grandparents and 5-year-old sister were injured. The driver who hit them was on the wrong side of the road, New York State Police Trooper M.B. McCloud said.

The grandparents each suffered multiple fractures to their legs. Other family members suffered minor injuries. The victims' names were not released.

Martin Heidgen, 24, of Little Rock, Ark., was arrested on a charge of driving while intoxicated and was being held pending arraignment. Heidgen fractured his ankle and cut his jaw in the crash, authorities said.