Nation in brief: Help needed with sandbagging

Officials in Fargo and Minnesota issued urgent pleas for volunteers to help with sandbagging as a storm on Sunday increased the threat of flood in an area already expected to be swamped by a record river crest.

“We need this help,” Cass County Sheriff Paul Laney said. “We need to stay calm, we need to stay cool, but we need to get serious and get this done.”

The National Weather Service said the Red River was about 3 feet above flood stage Sunday in Fargo and more water was on the way. The river was expected to crest between 39 feet and 41 feet in the Fargo-Moorhead area by Friday, a day earlier and a foot higher than projected.

City officials originally planned to fill more than 1 million sandbags but now believe they need nearly 1.9 million bags to protect neighborhoods that would be affected by the new projections.

The Minnesota National Guard said Sunday that more than 200 soldiers would be heading to the Red River Valley to help.

HOT SPRINGS, Va.

Resort employee sought in killings

Authorities in Virginia were searching Sunday for a resort employee suspected of shooting and killing two of his supervisors in the hotel kitchen while guests ate dinner in a nearby dining room.

Two kitchen workers were shot and killed around 8 p.m. Saturday at The Homestead luxury resort in the Allegheny Mountains, Bath County Sheriff Larry Norfleet said. No one else was injured, and hotel spokeswoman Carol Stratford said no guests were present at the scene of the shooting. She said she didn’t think guests heard the shots because a band was playing during dinner.

Suspect Beacher Ferrel Hackney fled the scene after the shootings, and authorities were using tracking dogs, a helicopter and road checkpoints in their hunt, the sheriff’s office said.

Hackney was supervised by victims Ronnie Stinnett and Dwight Kerr, and all three worked in a department responsible for washing dishes, picking up trash and cleaning the kitchen.

LITHGOW, N.Y.

Richardson buried near family home

A somber group of friends and family gathered in a small Hudson Valley town Sunday to say a final farewell to Tony Award-winning actress Natasha Richardson.

Liam Neeson, in a dark suit and sunglasses, was at the head of the casket as he and five other pallbearers carried his wife’s coffin into St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, near the home where the two married in 1994.

He and Richardson’s mother, actress Vanessa Redgrave, waved to the dozens of reporters crowded behind a police barricade on the dirt road leading to the tiny white clapboard church. The grieving family – including the couple’s two sons, Micheal, 13, and Daniel, 12 – then paused to allow the media to photograph them in front of the church before the service.

After a graveside service, the 45-year-old actress was buried in a nearby cemetery.

From wire reports