By Ken Ritter (AP)

VEGAS (AP) — Three people were killed and at least three injured in a gun battle between moving vehicles that ultimately crashed at a busy intersection on the Las Vegas Strip, police said.

Five vehicles were involved in the crash, including a taxi that burst into flames and killed two people around 4:30 a.m. Thursday at Flamingo and Las Vegas boulevards, said Sgt. John Sheahan.

People in a Maserati and an SUV were exchanging gunfire before the Maserati hit the taxi, he said.

The Maserati driver, the taxi driver and a taxi passenger were killed.

Three other vehicles were involved in the wreck, but Sheahan said the SUV was gone when police arrived.

At least three people were hospitalized, including a passenger from the Maserati.

A tourist who witnessed the aftermath of the crash told KLAS-TV the burning taxi looked like a fireball.

More people may be hurt, Sheahan said.

It’s the latest in a series of violent actions on the tourist corridor since the beginning of the year. Two people were critically wounded in a shooting at a parking garage Feb. 6, and a tourist was stabbed in an elevator at The Hotel at Mandalay Bay Feb. 16.

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EVANSTON, Ill. — Jared Berggren and Ben Brust each scored 12 points, and No. 19 Wisconsin shut down Northwestern 69-41 on Wednesday night for its fifth win in six games.

The balanced Badgers (19-8, 10-4 Big Ten) had five players with at least eight points and held the Wildcats to 29-percent shooting during a very businesslike performance. Brust, who missed the last two days of practice with a sore left knee, and Berggren also had eight rebounds apiece as Wisconsin enjoyed a 47-22 edge on the boards.

Reggie Hearn scored 13 for Northwestern (13-14, 4-10), which has dropped four in a row and six of seven. The Wildcats, who have lost four players to season-ending injuries, went 8 for 24 from 3-point range, but managed just seven field goals from inside the arc.

Wisconsin snapped a tie with No. 7 Michigan for third in the loaded Big Ten and moved within a game of fourth-ranked Michigan State for the second spot. The Badgers are now off until they host Nebraska on Tuesday, while the Wolverines and Spartans each play on Sunday.

It was the only scheduled meeting of the season for the Wildcats and Badgers, but Berggren and Co. will return to the area next month for the conference tournament at the United Center.

This trip was certainly a productive one.

Wisconsin opened the game with a 9-0 run and led 28-12 at intermission, holding Northwestern to 20 percent shooting and a season-low point total for any half. The Badgers also had a 23-8 rebounding edge at the break.

Traevon Jackson helped key the fast start with a nice block on a 3-point attempt by Dave Sobolewski. Brust caught the loose ball and sent it up the court for Jackson, who converted the easy layup during the Badgers’ opening spurt.

Jackson tacked on a nice pullup jumper at the halftime horn for Wisconsin, which held Ohio State to 38-percent shooting in an impressive 71-49 victory in its previous game.

Northwestern’s numbers at the break were bleak all-around. It had just one field goal inside of the arc, and Hearn went 1 for 2 in its only trip to the free-throw line with 1:27 to go.

The Wildcats looked a little better on offense at the start of the second half, closing to 31-19 on Tre Demps’ 3-pointer with 17:46 left. But the Badgers responded with an 8-2 spurt and led by 28 at the final buzzer.

Sam Dekker had 10 points for Wisconsin, and Jackson finished with eight points, seven rebounds and five assists.

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Jay Cohen can be reached athttp://www.twitter.com/jcohenap

The Associated Press

WATERFORD, Wis. (AP)  Racine County sheriff’s officials are adding extra patrols near Waterford schools after a possible child abduction attempt.

A 15-year-old girl walking home in Waterford Wednesday afternoon says a man got out of his car, started yelling and tried to grab her. The teen says she started screaming and broke free.

The girl told authorities say the man was driving an older model Buick Regal. WISN-TV reports the teen said the man was white, about 6 feet tall, 180 to 200 pounds with a scruffy brown beard.

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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The first widespread snowstorm of the season plodded across the Midwest on Thursday, as whiteout conditions sent drivers sliding over slick roads and some travelers were forced to scramble for alternate ways to get to their holiday destinations.

The storm, which dumped a foot of snow in parts of Iowa and more than 19 inches in Wisconsin’s state capital, was part of a system that began in the Rockies earlier in the week before trekking into the Midwest. It was expected to move across the Great Lakes overnight before moving into Canada.

The storm led airlines to cancel about 1,000 flights ahead of the Christmas holiday — relatively few compared to past big storms, though the number was climbing.

Most of the canceled flights were at Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway international airports. Aviation officials said Thursday night more than 350 flights had been canceled at O’Hare and more than 150 at Midway. Many people at O’Hare were taking the cancellations in stride and the normally busy airport was much quieter than normal Thursday evening.

Aprielle Kugler said she was considering taking a bus to Des Moines on Friday morning to visit her boyfriend after she had two flights canceled out of O’Hare. Sitting on top of her luggage, the 18-year-old from Wisconsin said her mom shoveled more than a foot of snow out of the family’s driveway that morning to drive her to Chicago for her flight.

“It’s so ridiculous, it’s funny now,” Kugler said.

The storm made travel difficult from Kansas to Wisconsin, forcing road closures, including a 120-mile stretch of Interstate 35 from Ames, Iowa through Albert Lea, Minn. Iowa and Wisconsin activated National Guard troops to help rescue stranded drivers.

In Iowa, two people were killed and seven injured in a 25-vehicle pileup. Drivers were blinded by blowing snow and didn’t see vehicles that had slowed or stopped on Interstate 35 about 60 miles north of Des Moines, state police said. A chain reaction of crashes involving semitrailers and passenger cars closed down a section of the highway.

“It’s time to listen to warnings and get off the road,” said Iowa State Patrol Col. David Garrison.

Truck driver Roy Savage, 42, of Missoula, Mont., left the Twin Cities area of Minnesota late Thursday morning and headed south on Interstate 35. He said roads were clean and dry with a little wind, but as he got closer to the Iowa border winds picked up and road conditions went from dry to snow-packed. He decided to pull over at a truck stop.

Savage said driving in the snow is “no big deal. But when it gets to this point where the winds are this strong and conditions are not safe, it’s definitely best to pull over and wait it out.”

Along with Thursday’s fatal accident in Iowa, the storm was blamed for traffic deaths in Nebraska, Kansas and Wisconsin. In southeastern Utah, a woman who tried to walk for help after her car became stuck in snow died Tuesday night.

On the southern edge of the storm system, tornadoes destroyed several homes in Arkansas and peeled the roofs from buildings, toppled trucks and blew down oak trees and limbs in Alabama.

The heavy, wet snow made some unplowed streets in Des Moines nearly impossible to navigate in anything other than a four-wheel drive vehicle. Even streets that had been plowed were snow-packed and slippery.

Airlines were waiving fees for customers impacted by the storm who wanted to change their flights. They were monitoring the storm throughout the night to determine if more cancellations would be necessary on Friday.

The cancellations were getting a lot of attention because the storm came just a few days before Christmas. But Daniel Baker, CEO of flight tracking service FlightAware.com, called it “a relatively minor event in the overall scheme of things.”

By comparison, airlines canceled more than 13,000 flights over a two-day period during a February 2011 snowstorm that hit the Midwest. And more than 20,000 flights were canceled during Superstorm Sandy.

Before the storm, several cities in the Midwest had broken records for the number of consecutive days without measurable snow.

In Madison, Wis., where more than 19 inches of snow fell, college student Elle Knutson stayed in her apartment most of the day Thursday. The University of Wisconsin at Madison canceled final exams in anticipation of the storm.

Knutson, 21, a senior, went outside for about 10 minutes, walking to a friend’s apartment to drop something off.

“It was awful,” she said.

In the Des Moines suburb of Urbandale, Kristin Isenhart, 38, said her three kids, ages 9, 5 and 3, were asking about going outside to play after school was canceled for the day.

“They are thrilled that it snowed,” she said. “They’ve asked several times to go outside, and I might bundle them up and let them go.”

As far as the region’s drought, meteorologists said the storm wouldn’t make much of a dent. It takes a foot or more of snow to equal an inch of water, said Brian Fuchs, a climatologist at the National Drought Mitigation Center.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people lost power in Arkansas, Iowa and Nebraska as heavy snow and strong winds pulled down lines. Smaller outages were reported in Alabama, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Illinois and Louisiana.

“The roads have been so bad our crews have not been able to respond to them,” said Justin Foss, a spokesman for Alliant Energy, which had 13,000 customers without power in central Iowa. “We have giant four-wheel-drive trucks with chains on them, so when we can’t get there it’s pretty rough.”

Blake Landau, a cook serving eggs, roast beef sandwiches and chili to hungry snowplow drivers at Newton’s Paradise Cafe in downtown Waterloo, Iowa, said he has always liked it when it snows on his birthday. He turned 27 on Thursday.

“It’s kind of one of those things where it’s leading up to Christmas time,” Landau said. “We don’t know when we get our first snowfall, and I hope we get it by my birthday. It’s nice to have a nice snowy Christmas.”

___

Beck reported from Omaha, Neb. Associated Press writers Scott Mayerowitz in New York; Carrie Antlfinger in Milwaukee; Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Mo.; Jason Keyser and Sara Burnett in Chicago; Barbara Rodriguez in Des Moines; and Ryan J. Foley in Iowa City, Iowa contributed to this report.