The nation in brief

Court: Slain teen’s kin can sue U.S. agent

PHOENIX — A federal appeals court Tuesday ruled that a U.S. Border Patrol agent who fatally shot a Mexican teen on the other side of the border doesn’t have immunity and can be sued by the boy’s family for violating his civil rights.

The ruling came almost two years after the agent’s attorney argued he was immune from a civil lawsuit because the U.S. Constitution didn’t extend to 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, who was in Mexico when agent Lonnie Swartz shot him about 10 times through a border fence.

The Border Patrol has said Elena Rodriguez was throwing rocks at Swartz, endangering his life, in the Mexican border town of Nogales near the international border fence when Swartz shot him from Nogales, Ariz., in 2012.

The central question in the case is whether Elena Rodriguez was protected by the U.S. Constitution.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its decision that the agent “violated a clearly established constitutional right and is thus not immune from suit.”

However, in a similar case out of Texas, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a teen boy who was also fatally shot by an agent in a 2010 rock-throwing incident was not protected by the Constitution. The conflicting opinions could mean the Elena Rodriguez case will end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Immigrant’s murderer gets 3 life terms

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — A Kansas man who opened fire a suburban Kansas City bar, killing an immigrant from India and wounding two other men, was sentenced Tuesday in federal court to three consecutive life prison sentences for what federal prosecutors said was a hate crime.

Adam Purinton, 53, of Olathe, was sentenced for the Feb. 22, 2017, shooting at a restaurant that killed Srinivas Kuchibhotla, a citizen of India who had stopped at the bar with a co-worker, Alok Madasani, both 32. Purinton pleaded guilty to federal hate crime charges in May in a deal that allowed him to avoid the death penalty.

Witnesses said Purinton was asked to leave the bar after he verbally harassed Kuchibhotla and Madasani, at one point yelling, “Get out of my country.” He later returned with a handgun and fired several times at the two men, killing Kuchibhotla and wounding Madasani..

Study tracks Zika-affected babies’ health

NEW YORK — One out of every seven babies born to U.S. mothers who were infected with Zika during pregnancy developed some kind of health problem, according to the first study to take long-term look at those children.

The new research looked for conditions that became apparent only later, said Margaret Honein of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one of the authors.

The study, released Tuesday, looked at 1,450 children who were at least 1 year old and whose mothers were infected with Zika while pregnant. Most were in Puerto Rico, but the count included American Samoa, the Marshall Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Micronesia.

Of those children, 6 percent had birth defects, such as abnormally small heads, damaged brains or eye irregularities. That’s about 30 times what’s seen in children generally. The number rose to 14 percent when the researchers also counted later-developing problems possibly caused by Zika, including seizures, developmental delays and difficulty swallowing or moving.

Most people infected with Zika don’t get sick. In others, it can cause a mild illness. But infection during pregnancy can lead to severe brain-related birth defects.

Most Zika infections are spread through the bites of infected mosquitoes, but can also be spread through sex or blood transfusion.

Over year, 700,000 visitors overstay visas

SAN DIEGO — More than 700,000 foreigners who were supposed to leave the United States during a recent 12-month period overstayed their visas, the Homeland Security Department said Tuesday.

Overstays accounted for 1.3 percent of the 52.7 million visitors who arrived by plane or ship during the latest period, an improvement from the overstay rate of 1.5 percent a year earlier.

The latest annual figures illustrate how visa overstays are a big driver of illegal immigration. An estimated 40 percent of the roughly 11 million people in the country illegally stayed past their visas.

There were 701,900 visa overstays from October 2016 through September 2017 among visitors who arrived by plane or ship.

The total number of overstays is much larger, but has not been quantified because it doesn’t include how many people leave by land.

Canada again occupied the top slot for overstays, followed by Mexico, Venezuela, the United Kingdom and Colombia.

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