New Orleans

Mardi Gras site tightens drunken-driving laws

The state where revelers get blitzed for Mardi Gras and daiquiris are dispensed at drive-through windows held out about as a long as it could before lowering its drunken-driving threshold.

As of midnight Monday, the legal limit for a motorist’s blood-alcohol content was set to drop from 0.10 percent to 0.08 percent — a change approved reluctantly by Louisiana lawmakers who did not want to lose about $6 million a year in federal highway construction money.

“I didn’t like the fact the federal government mandated us to do it,” said Republican state Rep. Daniel Martiny. “Ninety-nine percent of the people causing these accidents are not 0.08, but probably 0.20 or 0.30.”

The deadline for states to make the change or risk losing 2 percent of their highway funds was Oct. 1.

New Jersey

Three bodies found at end of standoff

A six-hour standoff with a man suspected of shooting two police officers ended Monday when police entered his home and found the bodies of two men and a woman.

Authorities did not immediately identify the bodies, but a prosecutor said one was believed to be the suspected gunman, Gary Heiland, of Galloway Township.

Heiland had barricaded himself in the trailer home Monday morning after two officers were shot and wounded when they went to the home to investigate a shooting at a bar.

Officer Joseph McFadden was shot in the face and was in critical condition. Officer Kenneth Buck was treated at a hospital and released.

The two were investigating a Sunday night shooting at Kennedy’s Bar, a half-mile from the trailer, in which two workers from a nearby diner were shot in the head. One worker was killed, the other critically wounded.

New York

Radio host fired for on-air racial slur

A radio talk-show host was fired Monday for an on-air racial slur against Rochester’s black mayor.

Bob Lonsberry had apologized Thursday and agreed to undergo diversity training and remain off the air indefinitely. But he lost his job after attacking critics in a Web column Monday, saying the “liberal and afraid … seek to dominate society through threat and intimidation.”

Lonsberry, 44, has persistently baited Mayor William Johnson Jr., a Democrat running for Monroe County executive in the November election.

Last month, Lonsberry joked with listeners about an orangutan that briefly escaped a zoo, then commented that the animal was now running for county executive. He made a similar reference again last week.