The prospect of wolf hunting in the Northern Rockies has been the subject of fraught court fights and emotional public hearings, but the second legal wolf hunt in the region in this century has gotten off to a lackadaisical start in Idaho.

A backcountry hunt started Tuesday in 13 zones across the state, where there are an estimated 1,000 wolves. Quotas have been established in many parts of the state, but there's no overall limit on the number of wolves that can be killed this season.

Officials do want to maintain a population of at least 150 wolves in that area with 15 breeding pairs.

But only 7,774 Idaho residents had purchased hunting tags for wolves by Tuesday, along with 571 out-of-state hunters -- less than a third the number sold during the 2009 hunt, which was the first since wolves were removed from the protections of the federal Endangered Species Act.

Idaho ranchers have welcomed the hunt, citing an increase in livestock depredation by wolves of 17% over last year, with at least 87 confirmed killings of cattle, sheep and dogs since July, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Idaho hunters shot 188 wolves during the 2009-10 season, which had a quota of 220. The hunts in Idaho and neighboring Montana were suspended last year after new lawsuits were filed arguing that wolves had not yet recovered enough to begin killing them again.

Conservationists unsuccessfully sought a last-minute stay while their case remains on appeal, leaving the door open to Tuesday's season, which for the first time will also permit trapping of wolves.

Montana's season opens Saturday. Hunters in that state will be allowed to shoot up to 220 wolves, which would leave the state with an estimated 425 wolves.

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-- Kim Murphy in Seattle

Photo: A gray wolf in Yellowstone National Park. Credit: William Campbell / U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Wildfires raging in parts of Texas and Oklahoma have displaced hundreds of residents, destroyed several dozen homes and threaten many more -- and officials say the region's unbearably hot, dry weather is only making it worse.

The heat, the bone-dry brush, low humidity and gusty winds are creating perfect conditions for the fires that were gaining speed late Tuesday. Fire authorities in both states said they were waiting until Wednesday to get a better assessment of the situation.

"Right now, they have established an anchor point at the heel of the fire," Tom Berglund, a spokesman for the Texas Forest Service, told The Times. "From there, they are going to be able to move up the edges of the fire and try to corral it."

He said the enemy at this point is the weather. "It's going to be hot and dry and windy," he said, adding that winds were gusting up to 15 mph. The area is studded with thick cedar and juniper trees that have been sucked dry by months of relentless heat and sun. As a result, he said, "they are just burning explosively."

Authorities do not yet know what caused the fires.

The North Texas fires have so far engulfed more than 3,500 acres, including land that already burned during a devastating spring fire that claimed more than 160 homes. The current fire has destroyed at least 20 homes, and the flames are threatening more than 125 homes in the Possum Kingdom Lake area about 75 miles west of Fort Worth. Hundreds of people have been evacuated from the area, Berglund said.

In Oklahoma, the fires were closer to being controlled. Fire and emergency officials reported that the fire destroyed about 12 homes, a church and an estimated 1,500 acres in the northeastern part of the city. Several hundred homes were evacuated and more than 7,000 homes and businesses were without power. 

The dry weather was a problem there as well, setting cedar trees ablaze and causing utility poles to light up "like matchsticks," according to one report.

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Despite twister damage, Tuscaloosa ready for Bama football opener

-- Rene Lynch
On Twitter @renelynch

Photo: A helicopter drops water on a fire near Possum Kingdom Lake, Texas. Credit: Robby Ferguson / Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Two or three natural disasters ago, the nation turned its eyes to Tuscaloosa, Ala., one of the communities hardest hit by a late-April plague of Southeastern tornadoes.   

Within minutes, a single massive twister had mowed a diagonal stripe of ruin from the southwest corner of the college town to the northeast corner, indiscriminately wrecking upscale neighborhoods, commercial areas and public housing projects. A University of Alabama study estimated it would take $224 million to rebuild the 5,144 housing units that were damaged or destroyed, according to the Tuscaloosa News.

What the tornado did not wipe out: Tuscaloosa's ability to satiate devotees' cult-like mania for Alabama Crimson Tide football.

The Associated Press reports that the city, though still rebuilding, is ready to host the Tide's opening game Saturday morning against Kent State. A handful of storm survivors may have to move out of hotel rooms -- and a few relief workers may have to check out -- to make room for the 130,000 to 150,000 people expected for the game.    

But for the most part it will be business as usual. Depending on their route into town, fans may not even see signs of destruction, the wire service reports.

They will gather at the massive Bryant-Denny Stadium, which looms over the center of the city. The stadium holds 101,821 fans and is fronted by a wide plaza called The Walk of Champions which offers solemn tribute to the school's national championship-winning coaches -- including, naturally, the late legend locals still respectfully refer to as "Coach Bryant" -- with "Coach" as a sort of honorific, like the "Mahatma" before "Gandhi."

The stadium, on the southwestern edge of the University of Alabama campus, was not damaged by the April 27 tornado. Tide fans' relief was similar to that felt by antiquities experts when they learned that Egyptian protesters had spared Cairo's National Museum in January.

Expect Saturday's opener to be a raucous celebration of Tuscaloosa's rebirth, with visiting Kent State serving as a hapless sacrifice to the weather gods: Odds-makers have Bama as a 38-point favorite.

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 --Richard Fausset in Atlanta

Photo: A University of Alabama football jersey hangs from the rubble in the Alberta City neighborhood of Tuscaloosa in the aftermath of April's devastating tornado. Credit: David Bundy / Associated Press

 
President Obama on Wednesday declared a major disaster area in New York state because of Hurricane Irene, while residents of neighboring New Jersey faced fresh flooding as rivers were pushed to their limits by runoff from northern regions.

The president's declaration means federal aid to help recovery efforts in the hardest-hit areas will be expedited. Four days after Irene made landfall in North Carolina, four towns or villages in New York are still under water and 4,800 people remain in shelters. Six people died in the state.

According to the Associated Press, a total of at least 44 people have died in 13 states as a result of Irene, which was downgraded to a tropical storm as it hit New York City on Sunday morning.

In New Jersey, the death toll rose overnight to seven after officials found the body of a man who apparently had been sucked down a utility hole while clearing debris from a drainage basin, according to the Star-Ledger.

On Tuesday evening, thousands of people were under mandatory evacuation orders in cities along the Passaic River, which crested overnight and poured water into Paterson, Little Falls, Lincoln Park and  other towns. "I saw just extraordinary despair," Gov. Chris Christie said at a news briefing after visiting some affected areas.

Flood water reached the reception desk at a Ramada Inn in Wayne, N.J., prompting police to order the hotel's guests -- many of whom had heeded orders to leave their homes -- to evacuate the hotel. Some refused. "Where am I supposed to go? There's nowhere," Mimoza Dhurim, whose home was flooded, told the Star-Ledger. The guests were allowed to stay.

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-- Tina Susman in New York

Photo: Rescue workers save a man stranded by flood waters on Tuesday in Paterson, N.J. Credit: Michael Nagle / Getty Images

Though Hurricane Irene ravaged much of the Eastern Seaboard, it also provided a bit of relief in one place: the Great Dismal Swamp.

A wildfire has been burning in the unforgiving forested marshland in southeastern Virginia since early August, charring more than 6,300 acres at the national wildlife refuge.

But when Hurricane Irene tore its way through North Carolina and Virginia, it drenched the area with about 15 inches of rain and helped douse some of the stubborn fire.

The blaze went from being about 35% contained to 90% contained over the weekend, said Catherine Hibbard, spokeswoman for the multi-agency effort fighting the blaze, officially known as the Lateral West fire.

“We’re very thankful, but it’s a double-edged storm,” Hibbard said. “It caused a lot of damage, but it’s good that it dumped a lot of water on this fire.”

Firefighters had been forced to battle not only the extremely difficult terrain, but also the particular nature of a swamp fire. Flames ignited patches of abundant marsh peat -- soil made of partially decayed organic material, such as trees and grasses. The peat smolders and leaves no visible flames to fight, even as it smolders underground.

Crews had been pumping water into the swamp from a nearby lake to flood the smoldering peat, but had trouble reaching certain hot spots.

The hurricane ended up dousing the more intense fires, but left other obstacles for crews, Hibbard said. The remaining hot spots have proved difficult to reach because of flooded roads and fallen trees.

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-- Stephen Ceasar

Photo: Burned and unburned areas of the Great Dismal Swamp after Hurricane Irene passed. Credit: Rob Ostermaier / Daily Press

This month, the National Climatic Data Center released a report saying that the fallout from extreme weather had cost the United States $35 billion so far this year. Because of Hurricane Irene, that number has just gone up.

The authors of the report have added Hurricane Irene to the list of nine disasters in 2011 that have cost the U.S. more than $1 billion each. However, they still aren't sure how much Irene will set the country back.

"While it will take several months to determine an accurate estimate of the damage from Hurricane Irene, there is no question it will rank as the 10th billion–dollar weather event of the year," they wrote in an addition to the report.

PHOTOS: In the path of the storm

 "This 10th U.S. billion-dollar disaster officially breaks the annual record dating back to 1980," they added.

The National Climatic Data Center may not be able to tell us how much Irene will cost, but other entities have tried to put a number on how much financial damage the storm left in its wake.

A spokeswoman for the Insurance Institute, an industry trade group, told the Los Angeles Times that she expected total losses to be somewhere between $2 billion and $5 billion, while catastrophe modeling company AIR Worldwide put it between $3 billion and $6 billion.  

But Peter Morici, former chief economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission, put the cost of damages significantly higher.

"Irene is testing flood-level records in New York City and in much of the Northeast, raising casualty loss estimates to $20 billion," he wrote in the Kansas City Star. "Add to those the loss of about two days of economic activity, spread over a week, across 25% of the economy, and an estimate of the losses imposed by Irene is about $40 million to $45 billion."

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-- Deborah Netburn

Photo: Chuck Bond of Mariaville Lake, N.Y., and girlfriend Laurie Williams of Cobleskill, N.Y., look at what's left of his brother's camp; it was washed away during Tropical Storm Irene. Credit: Hans Pennink / Associated Press

Russian space officials say they have identified what went wrong with the rocket that failed to reach orbit last week. Now the question is whether the explanation will allay enough fears to keep the International Space Station going.

A spokesperson for the Federal Space Agency (Roscomos) told Russian news agency Itar-Tass that the failure was caused by the rocket's third-stage engine. "It is a malfunction in the engine's gas generator," he said.

Even if you don't know much about rocket science, the announcement’s potential implications are interesting.

Space officials had said Monday that the immediate future of the International Space Station rested on whether the Russians could determine what went wrong with the rocket and then fix it before a November deadline.   

If not, warned NASA’s space station chief -– who also happens to be chairman of the international group that operates the space station -- the station might have to be abandoned. At least temporarily.

The rocket, which blew up over Russia's Altai region last week, was carrying supplies, not people, but a very similar rocket is used to take scientists to and from the space station. Nobody — not NASA and not Roscomos — wants to put an astronaut on what might be a faulty rocket.

"We're focused on keeping the crew safe. Our next focus is on keeping the ISS manned," Mike Suffredini, the aforementioned space station honcho, was quoted as saying in various media reports. "Flying safely is much, much more important than anything else I can think about right this instant."

The International Space Station has been continuously staffed for more than a decade, but NASA officials say it's not necessarily the end of the world (or the space station) if it goes astronaut-less for some time. At Monday’s news conference, Suffredini told reporters that the space station can be flown without a crew.

Still, he stressed that having a crew on board is always preferable, especially because crew members can respond to problems on the space station --  and attempt to fix them -- before any major damage is done.

NASA did not respond to the L.A. Times' request for comment as to whether this new revelation by Roscomos will affect whether the space station remains staffed or not.

It’s always possible that such a quick investigation could be unsettling to NASA, if not Congress.

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 --Deborah Netburn

Image: A NASA handout image shows a close-up view of the unpiloted ISS Progress 41 supply vehicle photographed by an Expedition 27 crew member as it departs from the International Space Station in April. A similar vehicle, also unmanned, crashed back to Earth in Siberia after blasting off toward the station last week. Credit: EPA/NASA.

Americans don't seem to agree on much these days, whether it's politics, climate change or Lady Gaga's  gender-bending performance at the Video Music Awards. But there's one thing that an overwhelming majority of Americans appear to agree upon: They don't want to foot the bill for rebuilding Libya.

A CNN / ORC poll released Tuesday found that a stunning 73% oppose any U.S. financial aid to rebuild Libya's business and educational infrastructure, and 67% said the U.S. shouldn't be involved in "attempts to form a civilian government and restore order in that country." 

The poll also found that 62% of those polled are worried about what lies ahead in Libya, with 67% believing there will be widespread violence. And 49% said they are either "not too confident" or "not confident at all" that the U.S. and its allies can prevent Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups from establishing a new base of operations in Libya.

Given all that, and a pervasive feeling among Americans that the U.S. is already overextended in many ways inside and outside its borders, this will not come as a surprise: 

Fifty-four percent of those polled said they are either "not confident at all" or "not too confident" that a stable democratic government will be established in Libya.

The poll questioned 1,017 adults on Wednesday and Thursday and reports a sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

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-- Rene Lynch
twitter.com/renelynch

Officials in several states have stepped up their post-Irene rescue efforts, mobilizing to airlift  supplies into isolated areas cut off by raging, rain-soaked rivers and streams three days after the storm swept across the eastern portion of the nation.

From its landfall Saturday as a Category 1 hurricane to its dissolution into scattered rain storms in New England, Irene was blamed Tuesday for at least 42 deaths in a dozen states.

Millions of people remained without power, with many of them expected to lack electricity through the forthcoming holiday weekend despite feverish work by crews to repair downed power lines. The financial losses are expected to hit the tens of billions of dollars.

PHOTOS: In the path of the storm

Rescuers on Tuesday focused on rural regions, particularly Vermont, where a checkerboard of swollen streams flooded and isolated communities, prompting officials to begin ferrying supplies to those who have been cut off.

According to a posting on the website of the state’s Emergency Operations Center, at least 13 communities remained unreachable by vehicle due to road damage, and more than 200 roads were still impassable.

“The 13 isolated communities and another eight that have only limited access will be receiving food, water and other necessities from the state later today. These supplies will be trucked or flown in to communities, depending on accessibility, by the Vermont National Guard. The provisions were shipped in Monday night from the federal staging area in Massachusetts,” the agency said.

The need for air aid was also cited in New York, where at least 26 counties, perhaps as much as half of the state, were dealing with flooding, power outages, and closures of damaged roads and bridges, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office.

Officials were airlifting supplies into isolated communities there as well. The New York Department of Transportation reported that some areas were inaccessible for assessment and may remain so for the immediate future.

 
She was a Brownie troop leader, a room mother, a Sunday school teacher and almost the definition of an Orange County soccer mom -- until she shot her two small daughters to death in 1991 while they slept in their home in Laguna Niguel, Calif.

Kristine Cushing, then 39, said she was the victim of anti-depression medication, a debilitating heart condition and worry over the impending dissolution of her 17-year marriage to former Marine Corps fighter pilot John Cushing Jr. when she shot her daughters, ages 4 and 8, and then attempted to kill herself.

She was found not guilty by reason of insanity and spent four years in a mental hospital. In 2005, California authorities concluded that she posed no risk and granted her an unconditional release.

Fast forward to now: The Cushings are back together, living on Vashon Island in Washington state,  and an Oregon woman who married John Cushing four years after the killings has temporarily lost her legal bid to prevent her own teenage sons from living with the couple.

In his ruling, King County Superior Court Judge William Downing said Trisha Conlon, who only recently discovered that Kristine was living in the home, has not proved that Kristine Cushing poses an immediate threat to Conlon's two boys, ages 13 and 14, though he called for a full investigation to determine an appropriate final order.

John Cushing married Conlon in 1995, and the couple had two sons. But they divorced in 2005 and Cushing, unbeknownst to Conlon until recently, got back together with his first wife.