[JURIST] NASA Tuesday released an amended version of the Charter for the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, reflecting changes in personnel and support staffing designed to better protect its independence. Read the NASA press release, the amended Board Charter [PDF], and a confirmatory letter [PDF] from NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe to Board Chairman Admiral Harold W. Gehman, Jr.

[JURIST] The UN Security Council [official website] continued debate Tuesday on Iraq's compliance with Resolution 1441, hearing from representatives of approximately twenty countries, plus the Permanent Observer of the League of Arab States. Details [UN News Service report], a summary of statements and streaming video of the session are available from the United Nations. Debate is scheduled to resume at 10 AM ET Wednesday - JURIST will carry the proceedings live.

[JURIST] New and interesting papers on SSRN Tuesday included Protecting Human Rights in a Democracy: What Role for the Courts? [abstract], by Michael Perry of Wake Forest University School of Law [official website]; Bargains in the Information Marketplace: The Use of Government Subsidies to Regulate New Media [abstract] by Ellen Goodman [faculty profile] of Rutgers School of Law-Camden [official website]; and Exporting American Dreams:Thurgood Marshall and the Constitution of Kenya [abstract], by Mary Dudziak [faculty profile] of USC Law School [official website].

[JURIST] New and interesting Opinions issued Tuesday included Remsburg v. Docusearch [text], an online stalking and ID theft ruling from the Supreme Court of New Hampshire [official website]; Nordyke v. King [PDF text], a Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals [official website] panel holding on First and Second Amendment constitutionality of an Alameda County California ordinance prohibiting possession of firearms on county property; and Hoxha v. Ashcroft [PDF text], another Ninth Circuit ruling overturning a Board of Immigration Appeals finding that a Kosovar Albanian student who overstayed his US visa was ineligible for asylum.

[JURIST] Three Kosovo Albanians who were guards at a KLA prison camp in Kosovo arrived at The Hague Tuesday for trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia [official website]. Read the indictment [text] against them, originally issued on January 24 but only unsealed Tuesday. The ICTY issued a press release, including a statement by ICTY Prosecutor Carla del Ponte in which she lambasted NATO KFOR [official website] security forces in Kosovo for allowing a fourth indictee to escape: "The fourth co-accused, Fatmir Limaj, was able to leave Kosovo, last Friday February 14th, on a regular flight on a business trip. He was not on the run, he was not in hiding, he simply booked a flight ticket, and, as any ordinary citizen, was allowed to board his flight and leave. It was that easy. And it is outrageous. It escapes all understanding that Fatmir Limaj, a member of Parliament, a public figure, could be allowed to leave Kosovo with such ease, two and a half weeks after KFOR had been in possession of the Indictment and the arrest warrant."

UPDATE: As you may have seen on JURIST's Breaking Legal News, VOA is now reporting that the fourth Kosovo Albanian indictee has surrendered to Austrian authorities after learning of the arrests of his three co-indictees.

[JURIST] Paul Berman [faculty profile] of the University of Connecticut School of Law [official website] speaks Tuesday at a faculty workshop at Duke Law School [official website] on the collision between global interconnection and national sovereignty in the age of cyberspace. Read an abstract and download the text of his paper The Globalization of Jurisdiction.

[JURIST] A coalition of civil liberties and Arab American groups asked the US Supreme Court [ACLU press release] Tuesday to review a November ruling [text] by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Review Court that authorized the US Department of Justice to expand its surveillance powers under the USA PATRIOT Act. Read the petition for certiorari [PDF text].

[JURIST] William Donaldson [White House press release] was sworn in Tuesday as the new Chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission [official website], succeeding Harvey Pitt. Review remarks by President Bush and Chairman Donaldson [text] at the White House ceremony.

[JURIST] Today is the deadline for filing amicus briefs in the University of Michigan affirmative action cases, scheduled for oral argument before the Supreme Court on April 1. Harvard University announced Monday that it and seven other major universities (Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown, Penn, Chicago, and Duke) had joined in filing an amicus brief in support of the affirmative action admissions policies applied by the University of Michigan Law School [official website] and the undergraduate College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. Read the Harvard amicus brief [PDF text]. Get more information on the Michigan cases from the University of Michigan [case background] (which hosts an online collection of amicus briefs supporting affirmative action admissions) and the Center for Individual Rights [case background] (collecting amicus briefs opposing affirmative action admissions).

UPDATE: It now looks like last-minute amicus filers have one more day, as Washington DC litigators Goldstein & Howe report this morning that the Supreme Court is closed today (due to snow) and that therefore, per the Supreme Court Rules, today does not count as a day on which filings are due.