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A U.S. District Court judge in Los Angeles has ruled that the federal government may not indefinitely jail noncitizens who have been ordered deported because of crimes, but whose home countries will not take them back. The ruling Thursday by Chief Judge Terry J. Hatter immediately affects 130 legal immigrants from such countries as Vietnam, Cambodia, and Cuba who have served time for their crimes and are now being held at U.S. detention centers from Lancaster to San Pedro.

As state officials grapple with a chronic teacher shortage and Latino parents demand more Spanish-speaking educators, a privately funded effort is quietly carving into both issues. The $3.2-million Alianza project, launched this month at Cal State Long Beach, will train immigrants who were teachers in Latin America and want to teach in the United States.

Mexico's largest food retailer has acquired a long-vacant commercial property in the San Fernando Valley community of Arleta with what Los Angeles officials say are plans to open a major supermarket and retail center. Under a deal announced Monday, Mexico City-based Grupo Gigante took over 12.6 acres at the former Gemco property at Van Nuys Boulevard and Beachy Avenue in a purchase and lease agreement.

More than 40 homes and the Saticoy County Club were without heat and hot water after a high-pressure natural gas line snapped under a landslide near Saticoy on Sunday morning. The 8:55 a.m. rupture, which sent dirt and debris hundreds of feet into the air for nearly an hour, was Ventura County's third gas-main break caused by a landslide in the past three weeks. "It is inconvenient for our customers, and it's costly for us," said Vic Sterling, Southern California Gas Co.'

In Yuri Posokhov, San Francisco Ballet's Ukrainian-born, Bolshoi-trained leading man, American dance seems to have its hands on that rare commodity, a true danseur noble. Refinement, nuanced attention to detail and an impeccable technique are the hallmarks of that elusive breed of male dancers--the princes of classical ballet.

In a bold overhaul of the rules governing foreign ownership of U.S. communications firms, the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday proposed scrapping the 60-year-old limits on foreign ownership in cases where other countries open their markets to U.S. companies. The new rules, likely to be adopted following a comment period, are designed both to help pry open foreign telecommunications markets and to spur investment and competition in the burgeoning domestic communications industry.

Local authors Margaret Jones, biographer of country singer Patsy Cline, and Kathryn Phillips, author of "Tracking the Vanishing Frogs," have been on the campaign trail sharing the contents of their important works at bookstores and via radio interviews. Jones just returned to her Ojai home after a five-city tour, which took her to New York, Kentucky and Tennessee in behalf of "Patsy: The Life and Times of Patsy Cline" published by HarperCollins.

It has never been possible for Polish President Lech Walesa to separate his public and private lives, despite a longstanding tradition in Poland of doing so. As a Solidarity leader in the 1980s, his Gdansk apartment was also union headquarters, where journalists and political activists shared the same cramped space with Walesa, his wife and their eight children. During his internment in 1982, his wife, Danuta, was thrust into the role of chief spokesperson. A year later, Danuta and the Walesas' eldest son, Bogdan, traveled to Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize because Walesa was afraid he would not be allowed to return to Poland if he left to collect the prize himself.

Lilly Waken's husband and two young daughters left home for a party and never came back. Frantically she called police, she called hospitals--then she learned her Arab husband had bought three one-way tickets to Damascus, Syria. That was 18 months ago, and Waken hasn't seen her children since. Her husband returned to Miami once--without the children--for a divorce hearing.

The slayings of two Japanese college students in San Pedro has set off an international furor. We asked the following foreign exchange students if they think their home country is safer than America, particularly Los Angeles and Southern California. WU HAI-YUN From Taiwan, graduate student in management information systems, West Coast University, Orange County I feel Southern California is safer than Taiwan, unfortunately.