Nation in brief: Tax revenue surge has eased deficit

The federal deficit has improved significantly in the first three months of the new budget year, helped by surging tax revenue.

In its monthly budget report, the Treasury Department said Friday that the deficit from October through December totaled $80.4 billion, the smallest imbalance for the first three months of a budget year since 2002. The budget year starts Oct. 1.

Tax collections are running 8.2 percent higher than a year ago, while government spending is up by just 0.7 percent. Last year’s spending totals were boosted by significant payments to help the victims of the Gulf Coast hurricanes.

For the year, analysts are still forecasting that the deficit will worsen from last year’s total of $248.2 billion, which had been the lowest in four years.

The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that the deficit for the 2007 budget year will rise to $286 billion, an increase of 15.2 percent from last year, but that figure could be lowered when the CBO releases its revised estimate later this month.

Los Angeles

Two killed in crash of business jet

A small business jet crashed while taking off from Van Nuys Airport on Friday, killing two people, officials said. A witness said the door of a nose compartment on the plane was open as it took off.

The plane had been carrying only its two crew members when it went down about 11 a.m., said Joe Miller, a dispatcher with Sun Quest Executive Air Charter, which operated the plane.

The plane’s left-hand nose baggage door was “wide open” as it took off, and the jet was veering side-to-side at a low speed, said witness Steve Purwin, a corporate jet pilot with 25 years experience.

Little remained of the twin-engine Cessna Citation but smoldering debris in a field near the San Fernando Valley airport. No nearby structures appeared to be damaged.

The plane had been leaving the airport in the Los Angeles suburbs, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said. It was headed to Long Beach, about 25 miles south of Los Angeles.

Los Angeles

Couple sue state over name change

Mike Buday isn’t married to his last name. In fact, he and his fiancée decided before they wed that he would take hers. But Buday was stunned to learn that he couldn’t simply become Mike Bijon when they married in 2005.

As in most other states, that would require some bureaucratic paperwork well beyond what a woman must go through to change her name when marrying.

Instead of completing the expensive, time-consuming process, Buday and his wife, Diana Bijon, enlisted the American Civil Liberties Union and filed a discrimination lawsuit against the state of California. They claim the difficulty faced by a husband seeking to change his name violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

“Diana and I feel strongly about gender equality for both men and women,” Buday said. “I think the most important thing in all of this is to bring it to a new level of awareness.”

Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU in Southern California, said it is the first federal lawsuit of its kind in the country. “It’s the perfect marriage application for the 17th century,” Rosenbaum said. “It belongs in the same trash can as dowries.”