Nation in brief

'Quiet zones' can limit train noise

WASHINGTON - Federal Railroad Administrator Allan Rutter said Wednesday locomotive engineers must continue to sound horns at highway crossings unless communities create "quiet zones" by installing new crossing safety equipment or prove the risk is low for accidents at a crossing that has gates and flashing lights.

The FRA rule, which cannot go into effect for one year, is an attempt to balance motorist safety with the desire of communities near railroad tracks to get some sleep at night.

The battle over train horns dates to 1991 when then-Administrator Gil Carmichael overturned a series of "whistle bans" along the Florida East Coast Railway between Jacksonville and Miami. Numerous communities have attempted to ban horn blowing as population centers grow along rail lines.

Congress has backed the FRA in overturning horn bans, and many studies have shown that accidents go up in areas with horn bans. Under pressure from Congress and local communities, the FRA has established quiet zones in areas where crossings are guarded by new types of crossing protection.

Wednesday's rule formalized the procedures for communities to establish quiet zones or to keep the ones they have. In all cases, an engineer can sound a horn whenever he believes there is an emergency.

Horns would be sounded no more than 15 to 20 seconds before reaching a crossing, rather than in accordance with the current quarter-mile rule. The rule also set new standards for the minimum sound level and, for the first time, the maximum sound level that can emanate from a locomotive horn.

NEW YORK - Immigrant and ethnic minority groups sued Wednesday to stop the federal government from entering immigration data into a national crime database, saying the practice illegally targets immigrants under the guise of post-Sept. 11 security.

Congress authorized the database, the National Crime Information Center, in 1930 as a clearinghouse for local, state, federal and international criminal records. It typically is used for criminal records such as warrants and "rap sheets," according to the lawsuit.

But since Sept. 11, the lawsuit says, the Bush administration has entered immigration data, such as orders of deportation.

The lawsuit asks a federal judge to block entry of such records and to erase the thousands of civil immigration records that have been entered.

The Justice Department declined comment.

CINCINNATI - An Ohio law that bans a controversial late-term abortion procedure is constitutionally acceptable and the state can enforce it, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 to reverse a lower court's ruling against the law, which had been challenged before it could take effect in August 2000.

U.S. District Judge Walter Rice of Dayton ruled in 2001 that Ohio's law was unconstitutional because it wouldn't allow the procedure, called partial-birth abortion by opponents, to be used when it is safer for a patient.

Abortion provider Martin Haskell, who sued three years ago to challenge Ohio's law, will appeal Wednesday's ruling, said his lawyer, Alphonse Gerhardstein.

BUTTAFUOCO ARRESTED: Joey Buttafuoco, whose affair with a teenager led to his wife's shooting in New York, was arrested Wednesday and charged with insurance fraud for allegedly making phony repair estimates at his auto body shop. Prosecutors charged Buttafuoco with three counts of insurance fraud and one count of grand theft. He was being held on $50,000 bail.

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