NATIONAL BRIEFS

WASHINGTON: Stopgap spending bill advances

A stopgap spending bill needed to avert a government shutdown on Friday advanced in the Senate as lawmakers prepared to head for the exits to campaign for the midterm elections. The procedural vote yesterday 83-15, puts it on track to pass the Senate Wednesday, and the House could clear it for President Barack Obama before the budget year ends at midnight Thursday.

MISSOURI: Driving while texting laws tested

A new study by a branch of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety finds that texting while driving laws have had no immediate benefit in reducing crashes. The study looked at data from four states with texting bans and found that in California, Louisiana, Minnesota crashes actually increased. Institute spokesman Russ Rader said that might be the result of drivers moving their phones out of public view while they text and looking away from the road longer. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood criticized the report as misleading. He said the bans must be enforced and be obeyed.

PENNSYLVANIA: Pastor suspected in wives' death

A retired pastor was ordered Tuesday to stand trial on charges he killed his wife and staged a car accident to cover it up, a case that has investigators re-examining his first wife's death. Arthur Burton "A. B." Schirmer, 62, of Reeders, Pa., should face trial on charges of homicide and evidence tampering, a judge in Tannersville ruled. Authorities had initially concluded that Betty Schirmer, 56, died in July 2008 in an early-morning car crash, but police reopened the case after the suicide of a man whose wife was allegedly having an affair with A. B. Schirmer. Forensics experts concluded from photos of the blood-soaked passenger seat that Betty Schirmer was bleeding before the crash. Prosecutors allege her husband, who spent nearly four decades as a pastor at eastern Pennsylvania churches, hit her with some sort of object. Investigators are looking again at the 1999 death of Schirmer's first wife, Jewel, who was reported to have died in a fall down a flight of stairs.

TENNESSEE: Boy saves brother; fire kills others

A fire was burning around him, but Devon Byrd, 12, said he didn't wake up until he heard his sister screaming. The boy said he jumped out of bed early Tuesday and found his brother Andon, 6. He kicked out a bedroom window with his bare feet and they escaped the raging fire that killed his mother, her boyfriend, his two half-sisters and the girls' grandmother. Devon talked to The Associated Press hours after the mobile home fire in Atoka, 25 miles northeast of Memphis. Firefighters arrived after 2:30 a.m. to see the double-wide mobile home engulfed. Devon's mother, Desiree Mary Vinas Byrd, 31, went back into the home to get her two daughters. Firefighters pulled her out alive but she died at the scene. The victims were identified as sisters Jaylan Vinas, 1, and Rylan Vinas, who would have turned 3 today; their mother; their father, Chris Akins, 28, Desiree's boyfriend; and Akins' mother, Sharon Hasara, 48.

CONNECTICUT: Home invasion testimony ends

One of two men charged with killing a woman and her two daughters in a 2007 home invasion told another inmate he killed the mother after being pressured to do so by the other suspect in the case, a prison officer testified Tuesday before both sides rested. Jeremiah Krob recounted the conversation in New Haven Superior Court at the trial of Steven Hayes, who along with Joshua Komisarjevsky is charged in the killings of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11.