Chess champ Fischer wants to take up Iceland asylum offer News
Chess champ Fischer wants to take up Iceland asylum offer

[JURIST] Iceland has offered a residency permit to Bobby Fisher, the US chess champion now detained in Japan and wanted for extradition to the US who beat Russian Boris Spassky in a famous international chess match in Reykyavik in 1972. Fischer accepted the offer Friday, although it's still unclear whether he'll be allowed to take it up. Fischer is wanted in the US for illegally playing a re-match against Spassky in Yugoslavia in 1993, when it was under international sanctions. He has been in detention in Japan since July, when he tried to board a plane to the Philippines using an invalid passport. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has more. FreeBobbyFischer.net has background coverage and updates.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Dreyfus convicted of treason

On December 22, 1894, Jewish French army officer Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason in a court-martial trial that prompted worldwide allegations of anti-Semitism. Dreyfus was later cleared. Learn more about the case of Alfred Dreyfus and read an English translation of the famous public letter J'Accuse...! by novelist and Dreyfus partisan Emile Zola.

US passed Embargo Act, banning foreign trade

On December 22, 1807, the Embargo Act was passed at the urging of US President Thomas Jefferson. The act barred trade with any foreign nations in an effort to avoid American entry into the Napoleonic Wars of Europe. However, the act proved unenforceable and was replaced with the Non-Intercourse Act, which barred trade with France and Great Britain. Learn more about the Embargo Act of 1807 from Monticello.org