WASHINGTON —Safety investigators have sent government agencies a wake-up call about sleep apnea, a disorder that's showing up in a wide range of transportation accidents. The National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday that commercial truck and bus drivers and merchant ship pilots should be screened for sleep apnea. The board made similar recommendations for airline pilots and train operators earlier this year.

Among the incidents cited in letters to the Coast Guard and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration: In January 2008, a motorcoach careened down a mountainside, killing nine people and injuring 43 others. The driver had sleep apnea. In November 2001, a train engineer drove through a stop warning in Clarkston, Mich., striking another train and killing two crew members. He was found to be a very high risk for sleep apnea, but he had not been diagnosed.

WASHINGTON — Moving up the effective date of tough new regulations to protect credit card customers from sudden interest rate increases could be a double-edged sword, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

It would benefit consumers by providing them with better safeguards sooner against abusive practices, the Fed chief said. But it could cut consumers' voice out of the regulatory process and lead to companies having troubles implementing the new protections, Bernanke wrote Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee. Upset by the behavior of credit card companies, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the committee's chairman, has introduced legislation that would move up enactment of the credit card protections to Dec. 1. Key provisions currently are slated to take effect on Feb. 22. Frank was irked that some lenders pushed through rate increases ahead of the new rules.

NEW YORK — Wells Fargo & Co. on Wednesday reported a $2.6 billion third-quarter profit as the company's retail banking operations, including the loan business it acquired with the purchase of Wachovia Corp., offset its rising loan losses. San Francisco-based Wells Fargo joined other big banks in reporting continuing heavy losses from failed loans. Well Fargo said credit losses climbed to $5.1 billion, or 2.5 percent of its loan portfolio. That is up from $2 billion a year ago and $4.4 billion in the second quarter.

Unlike its retail banking peers, however, Wells Fargo was profiting from it traditional banking operations, which includes the big mortgage business it took on when it bought Wachovia at the height of the credit crisis a year ago. Wells Fargo reported interest income of $5.57 billion after accounting for $6.1 billion in credit losses, which includes the loan losses and adding more money to its loan loss reserves.

INDIANAPOLIS — Eli Lilly & Co. said Wednesday it turned a profit in the third quarter as sales volume on several drugs climbed, but its newest drug and key source of future revenue started slowly.

Indianapolis-based Lilly also raised its 2009 forecast for the second time since July.

Lilly said its worldwide revenue rose 7 percent with its top-seller, the anti-psychotic Zyprexa, bringing in $1.2 billion, or 3 percent more than it did the same quarter last year. Zyprexa sales were flat in the first quarter of 2009 and fell 3 percent in the second quarter.

The company's second-best seller, the antidepressant Cymbalta, showed 10 percent growth, while sales for cancer drug Alimta climbed 47 percent to $462 million.

Chicago-based Boeing Co. lost $1.6 billion in the third quarter, hurt by growing costs from two troubled plane programs that forced the airplane maker to slash its profit forecast.

The world's second-largest commercial plane maker after Europe's Airbus, Boeing has struggled to launch its new 787 passenger plane and a revamped version of its classic 747 jumbo jet. Production delays, parts shortages and last-minute fixes have cost the company billions in write-downs along with additional design and manufacturing expenses.

While sales edged up 9 percent during the quarter, profits took a big hit because Boeing booked charges of more than $3.6 billion for its two plane programs.