The question is whether the military commissions can prosecute additional terrorism defendants for conspiracy. That charge is useful for trying people suspected of participating in a terrorist group. But while conspiracy is considered a crime under U.S. law, it is not a war crime by international law. “There is still no resolution of this basic constitutional question...” said professor Vladeck. “The court let this one conviction stand, but in the process, it didn’t actually settle the fight.”   read more

The rising number of Syrian refugee students comes amid a heated presidential campaign. Trump called Clinton's plan to expand the refugee program and accept 65,000 Syrian refugees the "great Trojan horse of all time." Nearly 30 states have vowed to deny entry to Syrian refugees. Resettlement agencies worry inflamed rhetoric about refugees will trickle into the classroom. One report found 50% of Muslim students surveyed were subjected to mean comments because of their religion.   read more

Election day in the U.S. cannot come soon enough for the Mexican peso, especially if Hillary Clinton is the winner. The peso reached its low point for the year shortly after Clinton was diagnosed with pneumonia. But it has recovered ground from that low amid the feeling that Clinton outperformed Trump in three presidential debates. Trump has hammered Mexico not only for illegal immigration, but also for U.S. jobs lost. Not to mention Trump's threats to make Mexico pay for the border wall.   read more

The board took note of a strong support network for Slahi, and a letter from a former prison guard in favor of his release. "Before my assignment to Guantánamo, I had heard that the men I would be guarding were the worst of the worst and that they would likely hate me and everything the United States and I stood for," the letter said. "I expected to find angry and brutal men. In no way did I experience that with Mohamedou." The anonymous guard said he would welcome Slahi into his home.   read more

"They are not pieces of art. They are spiritual objects deeply important for tribal identity," Udall said. "Theft not only robs the tribes of a sacred object, it robs them of a piece of their spiritual identity." The Paris auctions have presented a diplomatic dilemma for years between the U.S. and France. EVE auction house in Paris halted one sale after facing immense pressure from top U.S. officials — including Interior Secretary Sally Jewell — who produced evidence of its theft.   read more

In a sweeping accord reached on Saturday in Rwanda, companies including Honeywell and DuPont were among the most active backers of a move away from a profitable chemical. The firms were driven less by idealism than by intense competition,. Some environmentalists say the move provides a template for other industries to follow. The chemical industry’s response stands in stark contrast to the foot-dragging, and in many cases the outright obstruction of climate regulations, by the big oil companies.   read more

The lawsuit challenges the FBI's preposterous claim that U.S. intelligence preceding the war in Iraq is not a matter of public interest. The Times said Hage met with an adviser to Pentagon officials and laid out Iraq's position that it did not have weapons of mass destruction and that it would consent to an investigation and search by U.S. troops. Hage said that ''the Iraqis were finally taking [U.S. invasion] seriously and they wanted to talk." The U.S. invaded Iraq anyway.   read more

Today in Slovakia, Hussein al-Marfadi describes permanent headaches and disturbed sleep, plagued by memories of dogs inside a blackened jail. In Kazakhstan, Lutfi bin Ali is haunted by nightmares of suffocating at the bottom of a well. In Libya, the radio from a passing car spurs rage in Majid Mokhtar Sasy al-Maghrebi, reminding him of the CIA prison where earsplitting music was just one assault to his senses. And then there is the despair of men who say they are no longer themselves.   read more

Its founder president, Ashok Chauhan, was charged with fraud in the 1990s by authorities in Germany, where he ran a network of companies. He returned to India and was never extradited. A plastics company in the U.S. also sued Chauhan in 1995 for failing to pay $20 million in debts. "They are a subsidiary of a conglomerate of companies," said Barmak Nassirian of the American Association of State College and Universities. "This is by no means reassuring, if you ask me."   read more

The aviation measure will be voluntary for the first six years, and even countries that commit to it voluntarily will be allowed to opt out on relatively short notice. Some environmental groups said the plan did not go far enough, forecasting that it would fall short of the goal originally set by the aviation organization to offset all of the growth in emissions from air travel after 2020. The measure also exempts many smaller countries that do not have large international air carriers.   read more

Al-Ajmi, who was blacklisted as a financer of terror by the U.S. and UN, has organized Twitter campaigns to help fund ISIS's systematic murder and displacement of Assyrian Christians, according to the lawsuit. Because Kuwait is not a signatory to the Hague Convention, St. Francis could not serve al-Ajmi through a centralized authority as it can in other nations. In her ruling, Judge Beeler granted the plaintiff's request to use an alternative method to serve al-Ajmi with the suit: Twitter.   read more

Defendant-intervenor Friends of Animals' legal director Michael Harris said, "This is an important victory for African elephants." The species "has taken a huge loss this past year, largely due to poor conservation management practices. Zimbabwe is one of the worst wildlife managers on earth," he added. "It is about time the United States took action to protect these elephants from Americans seeking to take advantage of Zimbabwe's poor conservation practices in order to take a blood trophy."   read more

WHINSEC trains foreign military leaders on U.S. Army doctrine, with courses on intelligence and command. But some past attendees used their training to commit atrocities in their home nations. Judge Ikuta wrote: "Because disclosing the names of WHINSEC students and instructors would give rise to a 'clearly unwarranted' invasion of privacy, those names are therefore exempt from disclosure..." In his dissent, Judge Watford said that protecting identities takes a back seat to public interest.   read more

"Nightmare speculation" does not justify a policy meant to keep out Syrian refugees, the court ruled Monday. Gov. Mike Pence had adopted the policy, vowing not to let any refugees fleeing the Syrian Civil War into his state. States have no power to suspend grants of asylum, however, so Pence instead ordered state agencies to withhold federal grant money from local resettlement agencies that provide refugees with social services. Meanwhile, Donald Trump picked Pence as his running mate.   read more

The U.S. government is no longer responsible for stewardship of internet-management functions, a move that internet-freedom advocates championed as essential to tamping down the misperception of the U.S. as the internet's overlord. Advocates of the transition said keeping the U.S. in its management role would have given countries like China, which censors online criticism of its government, an excuse to divide its networks from the web and crack down more deeply on its citizens' online conduct.   read more

The White House rushed Friday to correct a diplomatic blooper after an official transcript listed Jerusalem as part of Israels. The mix-up came in a transcript of President Barack Obama's eulogy at the funeral for former Israeli President Shimon Peres. The White House press office routinely issues transcripts of Obama's speeches and includes the location of the speech at the top. A transcript released shortly after the funeral listed the location as "Jerusalem, Israel."   read more