Thousands of birds died on impact after apparently mistaking a Wal-Mart parking lot and other areas of southern Utah for bodies of water and plummeting to the ground in what one wildlife expert called the worst downing she’s ever seen.

Crews went to work cleaning up the dead birds and rescuing the survivors after the creatures crash-landed in the St. George area Monday night.

By Tuesday evening, volunteers had rescued more than 2,000 birds, releasing them into nearby bodies of water.

“They’re just everywhere,” Teresa Griffin, wildlife program manager for the Utah Department of Wildlife Resource’s southern region, told The Spectrum newspaper in St. George. “It’s been nonstop. All our employees are driving around picking them up, and we’ve got so many people coming to our office and dropping them off.”

Six-year-olds often times forget their own last names, but I remember Tuesday, September 11, 2001, like it was last week. I remember wearing my favorite jumper and my mother braiding my hair. I remember eating scrambled eggs off a yellow plate. And then I remember the radio anchor said, ‘Wow! Have you guys seen what’s on TV?’ My mother flipped it on, just in time to see the second plane collide with the South Tower. We saw the fireball burst from the building. The six-year-old that I was screamed and covered my ears. That day at school, few of us understood that our lives had changed. Many of my fellow first-graders thought it was something from a movie, a big joke. But I remember walking past the teacher’s lounge, and hearing them all crying and praying, and I knew it was no joke. It was real.

Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina (CNN) — Hurricane Irene had coastal North Carolina and metropolitan New York in its sights late Friday, staying on an unusual track that could bring deadly storm surge, heavy rainfall and misery to millions.

With winds near 100 mph, Irene churned toward an anticipated 7 a.m. landfall between Beaufort and Atlantic Beach, North Carolina.

But the storm — which is shutting down hundreds of airline flights, Broadway shows and the New York subway system — won’t be content to curve away from the mainland after striking North Carolina.

Instead, a somewhat weakened Irene will head for the Jersey shore, New York and southern New England, dangerous conditions in tow

From how to score a cocktail to where to scatter grandma’s ashes, this is your ticket to the real Magic Kingdom.

1. There are dead bodies in the Haunted Mansion

The Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland is one of the scariest places in the park, but not for the reasons you’d expect. In his 1994 book “Mouse Tales,” former Disney employee David Koenig tells the story of a tourist group that requested a little extra time on the ride so they could hold a quick memorial for a 7-year-old boy.

SALT LAKE CITY — In her dream, Debra Brown pedals out of a Utah prison on a powder blue bicycle, riding past razor wire that for the last 17 years has kept her from proms and graduations and the birth of seven grandchildren.

On Monday that dream figures to become a reality — even though the bike will be awaiting the 53-year-old outside the walls of Utah State Prison, where family members plan a parking lot reunion.

TOKYO — Japan has asked nuclear superpower Russia to send a special radiation treatment ship used to decommission nuclear submarines as it fights to contain the world’s worst atomic crisis since Chernobyl, Japanese media said late on Monday.                                                     
Japanese engineers at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant have been
forced to release radioactive waste water into the sea. At the same time
they are resorting to desperate measures to contain the damage, such as
using bath salts to try to locate the source of leaks at the crippled
complex 150 miles north of Tokyo.

Washington (CNN) — House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan said Sunday he will unveil a Republican budget for 2012 this week that proposes dramatic changes to Medicare, Medicaid and other political lightning rods.

The plan, to be released Tuesday, calls for a controversial overhaul of Medicare, the health care program for seniors, and would impose deep cuts in Medicaid, which provides health benefits to low-income Americans, Ryan told “Fox News Sunday.”

(CNN) — If the moon looks a little bit bigger and brighter this weekend, there’s a reason for that. It is.

Saturday’s full moon will be a super “perigee moon” — the biggest in almost 20 years. This celestial event is far rarer than the famed blue moon, which happens once about every two-and-a-half years.

“The last full moon so big and close to Earth occurred in March of 1993,” said Geoff Chester with the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington. “I’d say it’s worth a look.”

(CNN) — For most of us, setting the clock forward in the spring is a sad occasion, a sign that we’re losing an hour of sleep.

Daylight saving time begins Sunday at 2 a.m. in most of the U.S. — except for Hawaii and Arizona.

But for some genetically blessed people, a loss of one hour of sleep is not a problem. In fact, sleeping fewer than the recommended seven or eight hours is the norm. They naturally feel refreshed and ready to go — at 4 a.m.

(CNN) — A 25-year-old man was declared dead Friday afternoon after being swept out to sea off a northern California beach while trying to photograph a tsunami launched by the massive earthquake near Japan, according to a Del Norte County, California, official.

The man’s identity was withheld as authorities tried to contact his family, said Joey Young, a spokesman for the emergency operations center of Del Norte County.