Washington – A bill to offer legal status to illegal-immigrant students who have graduated from high school was revived this week in the Senate, the firsteffort to advance a piece of broad immigration legislation that failed in June.
Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., who is an author of the student measure, said Wednesday that he would try this week to offer it as an amendment to the defense authorization bill now under debate.
The measure would provide a path to permanent legal status for illegal-immigrant students who came to the United States before they were 16, graduated from high school in good standing and agreed to serve in the military or attend college for at least two years.
Opponents rejected that bill as an amnesty that would reward immigrants who broke the law.
Additional nation/world news briefs:
TUCSON
U.S.’s “virtual fence” remains inoperable
Because of a software glitch, the first high-tech “virtual fence” on the nation’s borders remains inoperable, three months after its scheduled debut.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said he is withholding further payment to the prime contractor, Boeing Co., until the success of the pilot project stretching 28 miles near the border southwest of Tucson.
Nine 98-foot towers laden with radar, sensors and sophisticated cameras have been built in an area heavily trafficked by illegal immigrant and drug smugglers. The towers, each a few miles apart, are intended to deter or detect border crossers and potential terrorists and enhance the ability of Border Patrol agents to catch them.
More testing is expected by early October, Chertoff told the House Committee on Homeland Security this month in Washington.
SHANGHAI, China
Typhoon kills 9 as it pummels coastline
Typhoon Wipha weakened Wednesday as it swept across China, bringing torrential rains that destroyed thousands of houses and triggered landslides, killing at least nine people.
Authorities in Shanghai and nearby provinces evacuated 2.7 million people, mostly from coastal regions.
The storm was downgraded from a typhoon to a tropical storm after it hit land in southern Zhejiang province, south of Shanghai, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
The storm disrupted power to more than 100 communities, Xinhua reported.
PAILIN, Cambodia
Khmer Rouge leader to go before tribunal
Police arrested the top surviving Khmer Rouge leader Wednesday, serving 82-year old Nuon Chea with a warrant on charges related to his role in the 1970s regime blamed for the deaths of 1.7 million people.
Nuon Chea was then flown to the capital, Phnom Penh, where he is to appear before a U.N.-backed genocide tribunal.
Nuon Chea joined the Khmer Rouge in the 1950s in its formative stages as Cambodia’s underground communist party, later becoming its chief political ideologue and right-hand man to Pol Pot.
Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, who headed the former Khmer Rouge S-21 torture center, was charged July 31 with crimes against humanity and has implicated Nuon Chea in atrocities.
