Belgium first country to ban cluster bombs News
Belgium first country to ban cluster bombs

[JURIST] Belgium has become the first country in the world to ban the manufacture and use of cluster bombs following passage of legislation [PDF text; bill summary in French] by a sound majority of its lower house of parliament. The legislation had already passed in the upper house of parliament last July. Human rights organizations such as Handicap International (HI) [advocacy website] and Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] have campaigned against the lethal weapons, which kill and maim thousands of civilians each year in places like Kosovo and Iraq.

According to an HRW report [text], approximately 85 companies in 34 countries produce over 200 varieties of cluster munitions [HI backgrounder], including artillery projectiles and aerially delivered bombs. At least one Belgian company, Forges de Zeebrugge [corporate website] manufactures the weapons. UPI 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.