Hurricane Irene tightens aim on East Coast

BUXTON, N.C. — A mon­strous Hur­ri­cane Irene tight­ened its aim on the East­ern Seaboard on Thurs­day, threat­en­ing 65 mil­lion peo­ple along a shore-hugging path from North Car­olina to New Eng­land. One of the nation’s top experts called it his “night­mare” sce­nario. The Cat­e­gory 3 storm with winds of 115 mph — the thresh­old for a major hur­ri­cane — would be the strongest to strike the East Coast in seven years, and peo­ple were already get­ting out of the way.