On Wednesday, the US Senate [official website] voted 71-26 [JURIST report] to ratify the treaty. US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the treaty [JURIST report] in Prague in April. The agreement, reached [JURIST report] in February, is the first nuclear agreement between the two nations in nearly 20 years. The US State Department began negotiating [JURIST report] the treaty with Russia in 2009. Nuclear disarmament between the US and Russia, whose nuclear arsenals comprise 95 percent of the world's nuclear weapons, languished during the Bush administration. The treaty is considered a key part of easing tensions between the two countries, which reached a high point after the 2008 Georgia conflict [BBC backgrounder].

In September, an American scientist and his wife were indicted [JURIST report] for conspiring to sell nuclear weapons information to an individual they believed worked for the Venezuelan government. Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni and his wife, Marjorie Mascheroni, were arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation [official website] and appeared before the US District Court for the District of New Mexico. The defendants used to work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and possessed classified nuclear weapons knowledge. According to the indictment, between March 2008 and August 2009, Pedro Mascheroni, who is a naturalized US citizen, negotiated a deal with an undercover FBI agent he believed to be a Venezuelan official in which he would help the country develop a nuclear weapon in exchange for over $700,000.

[w]hile today's strong statement from foreign policy leaders in the United States and Europe is encouraging, both should be prepared to take further concrete action should conditions in Minsk not change dramatically and immediately. ... If the government of Belarus fails to take fully restorative action in the next two weeks, the European Union should renew full sanctions against the Lukashenka regime, which had been suspended in 2008. The current situation is much worse than that in 2006, when the E.U. and U.S. together imposed sanctions against the regime.

Last week, Belarus conducted a presidential election that critics allege did not meet international standards. On Monday, Belarusian police arrested hundreds of demonstrators [JURIST report], including seven of the nine presidential candidates, who were protesting the results of Sunday's presidential election. The official results declared incumbent Alexander Lukashenko [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] the winner of the presidency for a fourth term. Hundreds of activists were arrested after protesting Lukashenko's 2006 presidential win, including opposition candidate Alexander Milinkevich [JURIST reports]. While Lukashenko has since sought to improve his country's ties with western nations, the US State Department [official website] has historically criticized Belarus' human rights record [2009 report; JURIST report]. The UN General Assembly Third Committee and the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights [JURIST reports] have similarly denounced Belarus for human rights abuses.

Joe Miller seeks an interpretation of election statute AS 15.15.360 that would disqualify any write-in votes that misspell the candidate's name. We do not interpret the statute to require perfection in the manner that the candidate's name is written on the ballot. Our prior decisions clearly hold that a voter's intention is paramount.

The lawsuit follows the close 2010 midterm election results between Senate incumbent Lisa Murkowski and Republican candidate Joe Miller. According to the State of Alaska Division of Elections [official website], Murkowski leads [unofficial results] with over 100,000 write-in votes in comparison to 90,740 votes for Miller. Earlier this month, Superior Court Judge William B. Carey upheld the division of election's actions, striking down Miller's challenge to the election results. In November, a federal judge halted certification [AP report] of the election results pending the Supreme Court's decision.