In the Nation
Chinese couple
regain daughter
NASHVILLE - A Chinese immigrant couple who lost custody of their baby daughter after putting her in what they said was temporary foster care with an American family yesterday won their seven-year legal battle to get her back.
The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a Memphis judge had wrongly taken away the parental rights of Shaoqiang He and his wife, Qin Luo He. The court said they had been penalized because they did not understand the U.S. legal system and thought they were giving up Anna Mae, now almost 8, temporarily so she could get health insurance.
The court gave no timetable for removing Anna Mae from the home of Jerry and Louise Baker in a Memphis suburb, the only family she has known, and returning her to her birth parents. Jerry Baker said his family was in shock. The Hes have had two more children since Anna Mae's birth.- AP
Immigration raids arrest 761 in Calif.
SANTA ANA, Calif. - Federal officials said yesterday that they had arrested 761 illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area in what they described as one of the biggest such sweeps in U.S. history.
The weeklong series of raids in the five-county region targeted those who were previously deported for crimes or had ignored final deportation orders.
The raids netted 338 illegal immigrants who were arrested at their homes and 423 who were identified in area jails since last Wednesday. Those already jailed will be transferred to federal custody when they finish serving their state sentences, said Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Those arrested were from 14 countries in all, including Mexico, Honduras, Ukraine, India, Japan, Poland and Trinidad. Of the 761 people arrested, more than 450 have already been deported, Kice said. - AP
Eight are arrested
in officer's '71 death
SAN FRANCISCO - Eight men were arrested yesterday in the 1971 slaying of a police officer that authorities say was part of a black power group's five-year campaign to kill law enforcement officers in San Francisco and New York.
Police said seven of the eight are believed to be former members of the Black Liberation Army, an offshoot of the Black Panther Party. A ninth suspect was being sought.
The Aug. 29, 1971, shooting death of Sgt. John V. Young, 51, at a San Francisco police station was one in a series of such attacks carried out from 1968 to 1973 by BLA members on both coasts, police said. - AP
Elsewhere:
A construction company said it would donate a new home to the family of Shawn Hornbeck, the Missouri boy who was abducted and held captive more than four years. The house will include office space for the foundation his parents started to help find missing children.
A federal judge has ordered Illinois officials to offer license plates with the motto "Choose Life," saying that the message was protected by the First Amendment.