News In Brief

Suit charges US with failing to bar 'slave'-made imports

Thirty-five members of Congress filed suit Wednesday accusing the US Customs Service and Treasury Department of not enforcing a 54-year-old law banning importation of products made by ''slave'' labor.

The suit, joined by several Ukrainian-American groups and the Washington Legal Foundation, a conservative public-interest law group, was filed with the US Court of International Trade in New York.

It said officials have failed to halt the entry of some Soviet-made goods, despite a year-old finding by Customs Commissioner William von Raab that at least 36 such items were produced by forced or slave labor.