Signing of Sudan peace agreement ends longest-running African civil war News
Signing of Sudan peace agreement ends longest-running African civil war

[JURIST] A peace agreement ceremoniously signed in Nairobi, Kenya, Sunday between the Sudanese government (official website here) and the southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement (official website here; profile here) formally ended a 21-year civil war, the longest-running internal struggle on the African continent. The deal outlines power and resource sharing plans intended to stabiize relations between the Muslim north and Christian south of the country. It does not, however, directly affect the situation in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, where government-backed militias have been accused of genocide agianst local refugee populations. From Khartoum, the Sudan Tribune provides the full text of several of the protocols underpinning today's agreement here; the SPLM website provides all the protocols in Word format here. AFP offers quotations from leaders speaking at the signing ceremony and onlines the key terms of the peace pact. Reuters has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.