Woman found dead in bird-filled trailer

Philadelphia

Police investigating the death of a morbidly obese woman found her disabled mother living in their squalid mobile home in Stroud Township with more than 60 caged birds, a few of them dead.

Judith Kresge, who cannot walk, sought help from a friend Dec. 24 after getting no response to repeated calls to her daughter's bedroom, police said Wednesday. The friend found Wendy Kresge's body and called police.

Wendy Kresge, 45, who weighed more than 500 pounds, died of natural causes, the Monroe County coroner's office said. The home is about 80 miles north of Philadelphia.

Boston

Passenger has baby on flight to Boston

There were 124 passengers on Northwest Airlines Flight 59 when it left the Netherlands. There were 125 when it landed in Boston.

Phil Orlandella, a spokesman for Logan International Airport, said a Ugandan gave birth to an apparently healthy girl over the Atlantic on Wednesday during the eight-hour flight from Amsterdam.

Orlandella said two doctors on the flight assisted in the birth. He said that after landing, the mother and baby, named Sasha, were taken to Massachusetts General Hospital.

He said that for customs purposes, the baby was considered a Canadian citizen because she was born over Canada's airspace.

Washington

Chief justice urges raise for judges

Chief Justice John Roberts said Wednesday that Congress should be as generous to judges as it has been to itself, by approving an inflation-related increase in their pay.

"I must renew the judiciary's modest petition: Simply provide cost-of-living increases that have been unfairly denied," Roberts said in his annual year-end report on the federal judiciary.

Alone among federal employees, judges will not receive a cost-of-living allowance in 2009. Members of Congress are getting a 2.8 percent boost, worth $4,700. But they refused to give an identical increase to judges.

Federal trial judges are paid $169,300 a year. Appellate judges make more, ranging up to Roberts' salary of $217,400. Lebec, Calif.

Runaway rig rams I-5 vehicles; 11 hurt

A runaway big rig smashed into 11 other vehicles on a foggy highway in mountains northwest of Los Angeles on Wednesday, injuring 11 people, authorities said.

California Highway Patrol Officer Scott Jobinger said the truck driver reported that his brakes failed as he drove on a downhill stretch of Interstate 5.

Eleven people were hospitalized, including four who suffered major injuries, Jobinger said.

At the time of the crash, heavy fog blanketed the mountain pass about 70 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

Seattle Times news services