Tens of thousands flee wildfire

OROVILLE, Calif. — Tens of thousands of people fled a fast-moving wildfire Thursday, some clutching babies and pets as they abandoned vehicles on foot to escape fast-moving flames in an area several hours north of San Francisco.

“It’s a very dangerous and very serious situation,” Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea told The Associated Press. “I’m driving through fire as we speak. We’re doing everything we can to get people out of the affected areas.”

The blaze destroyed an unknown number of structures and injured some civilians, but the extent of their injuries was not immediately known, said California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Capt. John Gaddie.

All of Paradise, a town of about 27,000 people 290 kilometres northeast of San Francisco, was ordered to evacuate, said Butte County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Miranda Bowersox.

The wildfire was reported at 6:30 a.m., Rick Carhart, a Cal Fire spokesman, said. Within roughly six hours, the fire had grown to more than 69 square kilometres, said Gaddie.

Governor’s race still not settled

ATLANTA — Republican Brian Kemp resigned Thursday as Georgia’s secretary of state, a day after his campaign said he had captured enough votes to become governor. His Democratic rival, Stacey Abrams, refused to concede and her campaign demanded that state officials “count every single vote.”

As the state’s top election official, Kemp oversaw the race, a marquee contest in the nation’s midterms. His resignation Thursday morning came as a hearing began for a lawsuit in which five voters asked that he be barred from exercising his duties in any future management of his own election tally.

Abrams’ campaign had repeatedly accused Kemp of improperly using his post as secretary of state and had been calling for him to step down for months, saying his continuation in the job was a conflict of interest. Kemp made clear that he wasn’t stepping down in response to that criticism, but to start on his transition to the governor’s office.

His resignation took effect just before noon Thursday. He said an interim secretary of state had been appointed to oversee the rest of the vote count.

Captain indicted in fatal sinking

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The captain of a tourist boat that sank in southwest Missouri and killed 17 people, including nine members of an Indiana family, didn’t tell passengers to put on flotation devices or prepare them to abandon ship even after waves crashed into the boat during a severe storm, according to an indictment released Thursday.

The federal indictment shows Kenneth Scott McKee faces 17 counts of misconduct, negligence or inattention to duty by a ship’s officer resulting in death. The deaths occurred after the duck boat, a refurbished amphibious vessel originally used by the military during the Second World War, sank during a storm in July.

U.S. Attorney Tim Garrison said the 51-year-old McKee also is accused of failing to properly assess the weather before and after the boat went into Table Rock Lake near Branson, a Midwestern tourist town known for country music shows and entertainment venues.

Death-row woman freed in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD — A Christian woman acquitted after eight years on death row in Pakistan for blasphemy was released, but her whereabouts in Islamabad on Thursday remained a closely guarded secret in the wake of demands by radical Islamists that she be publicly executed.

Aasia Bibi was with her family and under heavy security after being transferred to the Pakistani capital overnight from her detention facility in southern Punjab, triggering expectations that her departure from the country could be imminent.

The European Parliament has made an offer to protect Bibi and her family, but for the moment she was still in Pakistan, according to two people close to her.They spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to endanger Bibi’s life.

Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry confirmed later on Thursday that Bibi was still in Pakistan.

Radical Islamists have been demanding Bibi’s death as well as the death of the three Supreme Court judges who acquitted her last week.