Florida Lawsuit Asks US To Pay High Cost of Aliens

ILLEGAL residents cost Florida's governments $884 million last year in public services. Now the state wants the federal government to foot the bill.

Gov. Lawton Chiles (D) will use a new report outlining the cost of services for the state's 345,000 illegal aliens to support a lawsuit that will be filed in about three weeks in Miami federal court. The suit also seeks reimbursement for services for Cubans.

``[F]ederal immigration policy has created a nightmare for state and local governments in Florida forced to shoulder enormous burdens caused by that policy,'' Mr. Chiles said Sunday, the day the report of the governor's office and Florida Advisory Council on Intergovernmental Relations was released.

He has accused the Immigration and Naturalization Service of selectively enforcing the law. He said the INS releases Haitians, Nicaraguans, and others before their asylum status is determined.

INS spokesman Duke Austin was quoted in the Miami Herald questioning the report data. Stories saved in California

CALIFORNIA'S Board of Education has reversed itself and returned short stories by Pulitzer Prize winners Alice Walker and Annie Dillard to works used in a statewide school English test, officials said.

The decision should defuse a controversy over removal of Ms. Walker's ``Roselily'' and ``Am I Blue?'' and Ms. Dillard's ``An American Childhood'' from this year's tests that had led to censorship charges. News reports last month said state educators removed ``Roselily'' after protests by conservative Christians who called it anti-religious. State education officials said it was removed because its test use became known. ``Am I Blue?'' was removed because school board members considered it ``anti-meat-eating,'' while Dillard's story was called violent.

Religious conservatives pledged to continue to campaign against the inclusion in the tests of works they find offensive. Ladybugs invade Seattle

Droves of Asian ladybugs have invaded the Seattle-Tacoma area. ``This is the most severe I've seen in about 20 years. I saw a house in Puyallup that had over 100,000,'' said Terry Whitworth of Whitworth Pest Control.

A cool summer last year produced lots of tender foliage and a high population of aphids, fueling the ladybug boom, said Dan Suomi of the US Department of Agriculture.