NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - A juvenile judge was wrong to terminate the parental rights of a surrogate mother before her baby was born, the Tennessee Supreme Court has ruled.
The Tennessee woman agreed in 2010 to be artificially inseminated by an Italian man after that man and his girlfriend learned they could not have children, according to court documents. The surrogacy contract was signed by the Italian couple, the Tennessee woman and her husband.
The Italian couple agreed to pay the Tennessee woman for pain and suffering as well as certain expenses such as legal fees, medical bills, lost wages and transportation. The couple eventually paid the surrogate mother approximately $73,000.
In November 2011, two months before the baby was born, the two couples jointly filed a petition to ratify the surrogacy agreement. The next month, a juvenile court judge in Nashville gave custody of the unborn baby to the Italian father and terminated the parental rights of surrogate mother and her husband.
However, less than a week after the surrogate mother gave birth, she filed a motion to regain custody of the baby girl. The juvenile court rejected her request and the Court of Appeals upheld that decision.
On Thursday, the Tennessee Supreme Court vacated a portion of the original custody order, ruling that Tennessee statutes “unequivocally prohibit the voluntary relinquishment of a biological birth mother’s parental rights prior to the birth.”
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PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) - Police in western Kentucky have used an online ad to arrest a dozen men charged with soliciting a prostitute at a hotel.
Twelve men were arrested on Wednesday and Thursday for solicitation of prostitution. Two of them face an additional charge of possession of marijuana. One woman was charged with prostitution.
The Paducah Sun (https://bit.ly/1mmyGdy) reports the McCracken County Sheriff’s Department placed an ad under the “escort service” category of a classified website similar to craigslist. A female detective fielded the calls from interested men and set up meetings at a local hotel. The men arrested were from Illinois, Tennessee and Kentucky.
Sheriff Jon Hayden said police conduct such operations when talk about prostitution starts picking up in the community. A sting in 2012 brought in 14 arrests.
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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - While Gov. Bill Haslam is keeping the door open to an expansion of the public pre-kindergarten program in Tennessee, any such move would remain a tough sell among some fellow Republicans in the Legislature.
Haslam stressed that a federal notice that Tennessee intends to apply for a share of federal money available for pre-K expansion doesn’t mean the state will necessarily follow through. The governor said this week he is still awaiting the results of a multi-year Vanderbilt study on the effectiveness of the program before making up his mind.
“We’re still waiting on the study from Vanderbilt University, but we thought it was worth it to put the application in,” Haslam said earlier this week.
Tennessee could qualify for up to $17.5 million per year under the competitive grant federal grant program that is required to decide on disbursing the money to the states by the end of the year.
Should Haslam ultimately decide to pursue more money for pre-K, he will have to persuade Republican Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey, a long-time critic of the program for 4-year olds. Ramsey called it “a liberal, feel-good program that’s not working.”
Ramsey acknowledged that the federal program would not involve state money, but questioned any expansion beyond children from low-income households.
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NEW YORK (AP) - Al Jazeera America is suing former Vice President Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, the former owners of the TV network that became Al Jazeera America.
The parties are fighting over money that is being held in escrow. The former vice president and Hyatt, the founder of Hyatt Legal Services, sued the network last month saying that it was improperly withholding tens of millions of dollars placed in escrow when Al Jazeera bought Current TV for $500 million.
Al Jazeera America says it is entitled to the money because Gore and Hyatt agreed to indemnify the network for claims made against Current TV, but didn’t live up to their promise. It accuses the pair of “misrepresentations” and says they received hundreds of millions of dollars from the sale.
Gore and Hyatt filed a lawsuit against the network in the Delaware Court of Chancery. The two men each owned 20 percent of Current TV.
The Qatar-owned news channel took over Current TV’s signal last August and hired U.S. TV news veterans including Soledad O’Brien and John Seigenthaler. It is available in almost 60 million U.S. homes.
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