An amendment to the FY 2007 Department of Defense Appropriations bill which would prohibit the US military from using cluster bombs in proximity to civilians was defeated in the Senate by a vote of 70-30 on Wednesday. The Cluster Munitions Amendment , introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) , would [...]

US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) said Wednesday that negotiations in Congress to implement comprehensive immigration reform will be streamlined to focus on border security and worksite enforcement. Both houses of Congress have passed immigration reform bills and the two versions must be reconciled and voted on before a final bill can be presented [...]

Military Commissions Act of 2006, White House, September 6, 2006 . Read the full text of proposed bill . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

FM 2-22.3, Human Intelligence Collector Operations, US Army, September 6, 2006 . Read the full text of the manual . The major revisions are here . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Back from their summer recess, US House and Senate lawmakers are considering bills this week that address the legality of the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program , which involves warrantless wiretapping by the National Security Agency . The House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security Wednesday considered a bill proposed by US [...]

The Belgrade District Court announced Wednesday that a new presiding judge has been named in the trial of 13 suspects charged with the March 2003 assassination of former Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic . Judge Nata Mesarovic will fill the presiding judge position, vacated by Judge Nata Mesarovic last week without comment, when the trial [...]

Twenty-eight days after initially detaining five British Muslim men among almost two dozen others arrested early last month in connection with an alleged terror plot to blow up US-bound planes over the Atlantic, Scotland Yard has formally charged two of the still-jailed suspects, Donald Douglas Stewart Whyte and Muhammed Usman Saddique, with "preparing an act [...]

US District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer Wednesday sentenced former Illinois Governor George Ryan to 6 1/2 years imprisonment after dropping 2 of the 18 counts against him, holding that there was not enough evidence to convict Ryan on those charges. Defense attorneys stated that a term of 2 years or less was appropriate due to Ryan's [...]

US President Bush on Wednesday presented the Military Commissions Act of 2006 , proposed legislation that would authorize military commissions for terror detainees and enemy combatants. The Bush administration agreed to work with Congress to authorize military commissions for terror detainees after the US Supreme Court ruled in June in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that military [...]

Leading Wednesday's international brief, a spokesperson for the International Criminal Court (ICC) has told the Ugandan paper Daily Monitor that the ICC would make no move to cooperate with demands by Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels wanting a cancellation of ICC indictments in exchange for surrendering to authorities. Since the demands on Tuesday, the ICC [...]