The US and Russia have reached an agreement for the first nuclear weapons reduction treaty since 1991, officials said Feb. 1. The landmark treaty, which will replace the recently expired Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), will include significant reductions in both the number of deployed nuclear weapons as well as the number of nuclear-delivery systems. US Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller is in Paris to finalize the treaty after an agreement in principle was reached last week between US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco Feb. 2 vacated and remanded the 22-year sentence for so-called "millennium bomber" Ahmed Ressam, finding that a district court's failure to follow sentencing guidelines resulted in an inappropriately lenient term. Ressam, a supposedly al-Qaeda-trained terrorist, was sentenced in 2005 upon conviction of plotting to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on New Year's Eve 1999. The court found that guidelines require a minimum 65-year term. The prosecution offered Ressam a reduced term in exchange for cooperation against other terrorist suspects, but Ressam failed to properly collaborate with government officials. (Jurist, Feb. 3)

A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver upheld an injunction against some points of an Oklahoma anti-immigrant law, but did permit the state to enact a provision whereby businesses would have to check their employment roster against a state list of eligible workers through a pilot program. The Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act of 2007 also requires that firing a US citizen or "legal" immigrant, while simultaneously employing an undocumented immigrant, be recognized as an unfair trade practice, giving the fired employee cause for legal action. The panel found that federal law preempted this provision, but split on whether mandatory electronic verification of employee status conflicts with voluntary use of a federal database.

In Mexico's first major demonstration of 2010, on Jan. 29 thousands of unionists and campesinos marched from the Angel of Independence in Mexico City to the city's main plaza, the Zócalo, continuing a tradition of annual protests against the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the federal government's neoliberal economic policies. The demonstration was focused on the high cost of living, and the demands included an emergency pay raise to counter the effects of the world economic crisis. Another goal was to show support for the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), whose 44,000 active members were laid off when President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's administration suddenly liquidated the government-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) the night of Oct. 10.

US federal magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth in Columbus, Ga., surprised observers on Jan. 25 by sentencing three activists to six-month prison terms for trespassing on the US Army's Fort Benning base; the maximum sentence for the offense. Nancy Gwin of Syracuse, NY, Father Louie Vitale of Oakland, Calif., and Ken Hayes of Austin, Tex., were arrested on Nov. 22 as part of an annual protest outside the base against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), which has trained many of the hemisphere's worst human rights violators. A fourth defendant, Michael Walli of Washington, DC, refused to appear for the trial, and Judge Faircloth issued a warrant for his arrest. Walli had told the court during his November arraignment that he would not pay any bail and that he would not voluntarily return for the trial. "I walk out and it's goodbye," he told the judge.

The Nigeria-based Socio-Economic Rights & Accountability Project (SERAP) has submitted a letter to International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo requesting an inquiry into the spate of religious violence that erupted in the city of Jos in January. SERAP lawyers argue that the ICC should investigate alleged unlawful killings and other human rights abuses that took place in violation of the ICC's Rome Statute.

Canadian citizen Maher Arar on Feb. 1 asked the US Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that he cannot sue the US government for damages based on his detention in the US and his detention, interrogation, and torture in Syria after he was mistakenly "renditioned" as a terrorist. Arar is attempting to challenge the US government's policy of "extraordinary rendition" under the Torture Victim Protection Act and the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution.

President Barack Obama is set to boost funding for nuclear weapons programs next year, even as his administration promotes nonproliferation and pledges to reduce the world's stockpile of nuclear arms. The new White House budget request seeks more than $7 billion for the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), an increase of $624 million from FY 2010.