Washington, D.C.

New regulations allow longer trucker shifts

The government says a new requirement that truck drivers rest two more hours between shifts will save as many as 75 lives annually by reducing fatigue-related accidents.

Safety groups and the truckers’ union dispute that. They say the benefits from that change will be offset by another: allowing the drivers to spend up to 11 straight hours behind the wheel, one more than now permitted.

The changes, announced Thursday by Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, are the first for truck drivers since 1939. Mineta said they could lower the cost of moving freight by 1 percent and mean a yearly economic benefit of almost $100 billion in increased productivity.

Drivers will have to rest at least 10 hours between shifts, two hours more than now, while also getting the chance to stay on the road an hour longer. The changes take effect Jan. 4.

Virginia

Father kills three sons, self, according to police

A father killed his three sons with a shotgun, then killed himself, police said Thursday.

Robin Edwards, 37, picked up the boys from a baby sitter Wednesday and said he was taking them to school. His estranged wife called police when she learned the boys weren’t at school.

Prince William County police found the bodies of Edwards and the boys in two rooms of their Nokesville house. Edwards and his sons Bradley, 9, Ryan, 7, and Kyle, 5, all died from shotgun wounds.

Edwards had recently separated from his wife, Debra, who moved to Fairfax County.

Washington, D.C.

Ranks of armed pilots to swell with training

The federal government is making available $8 million to step up firearms training for commercial pilots who want to carry guns in the cockpit, officials said Thursday.

The Transportation Security Administration offered no estimate on how many pilots could be trained with the money, which is supposed to cover instruction through Sept. 30.

The first 44 pilots allowed to carry guns were sworn in as federal flight deck officers Saturday after a week of classes, drills and testing at a federal law enforcement training center in Glynco, Ga.

Training a single pilot costs $6,200.

According to one estimate, about a third of the 100,000 pilots in the United States will volunteer to carry guns and complete the training in the next five years.

Virginia

Judge: Moussaoui can see secret information

A judge ordered the government Thursday to immediately give terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui its top-secret plan for allowing him limited access to a senior al-Qaida prisoner.

The government attempted to submit the material to the court and keep it from Moussaoui for the time being. The plan was offered as a substitute for allowing Moussaoui to interview captive Ramzi Binalshibh via video hookup.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who in January had approved the direct video questioning of Binalshibh, said Moussaoui must see the substitute proposal now. The government, which is still appealing Brinkema’s January order, said Moussaoui only could see a final version of its alternate proposal later, indicating it may intend to change the plan before Moussaoui would see it.

Charged as a conspirator with the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers, Moussaoui has contended that Binalshibh could demonstrate he was not part of the attack plot.

Washington, D.C.

Archives officials find unredeemed bonds

A find by the National Archives suggests the United States might have shortchanged the investors who financed the Louisiana purchase 200 years ago this week.

President Thomas Jefferson’s purchase from France is recorded as having cost $15 million — $230 million in today’s dollars. The archives has found three apparently unredeemed $2,000 bonds that the Treasury sold to finance the Louisiana Purchase from a cash-strapped Napoleon.

The bonds, then called “stock certificates,” were not canceled or stamped, so the Treasury may never have reimbursed the money that Dutch investors paid for them — a $6,000 saving to the American taxpayer, $86,000 in today’s change.

New York

Neighbor sentenced for 2-year-old’s killing

A man was sentenced Thursday to five to 15 years in prison for killing a 2-year-old girl with a stray bullet as she watched a Winnie the Pooh cartoon with her parents.

Kashawn Jones, 23, received the maximum sentence for second-degree manslaughter in the January 2002 death of Amy Guzman.

Jones had testified that he had planned to kill himself, then changed his mind and was trying to get the bullet out of the high-powered rifle when it discharged out his third-floor window. He lived a block away from the Guzmans in Yonkers.

Prosecutors argued that he had fired the gun deliberately for target practice. He was convicted in February.

The bullet went through a metal sign, a wall in the Guzman apartment and the headboard of her parents’ bed before hitting Amy in the head.