ST. PAUL (AP) - A railroad company has agreed to temporarily halt a plan to employ a battery of tests on its employees - including an optional blood test - after a court hearing.

...many as 4,000 black job applicants Amtrak turned away. The suit was filed by 13 black members of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees who build and maintain railroad tracks for Amtrak's engineering department in the Northeast corridor...

The Federal Railroad Administration said Tuesday it will launch an investigation into why the Unites States' second-largest railroad reported no cases of carpal tunnel syndrome among workers last year, only to disclose later that 125 employees had claimed that their jobs gave them the neuromuscular condition.

The derailment and fire involving a chemical-laden freight train in Baltimore last month is just the latest in a pattern of rail accidents on the rise since 1997 - about the time that a string of multibillion-dollar rail mergers left the industry financially strapped.

BACKUS - Harlan John Sherman, 90, Backus, died Sunday, Feb. 24, 2002, at St. Joseph's Medical Center in Brainerd.