600 suspected militants detained in Pakistan terror crackdown News
600 suspected militants detained in Pakistan terror crackdown

[JURIST] Approximately 600 suspected Islamic militants have been arrested in a week-long, nationwide effort by Pakistani security forces. Pakistan officials say that those arrested include 295 people belonging to banned militant groups and 300 others including clerics, prayer leaders, and those believed to have incited anti-Western and sectarian hatred through sermons and literature. Those arrested under the Anti-Terrorism Act [JURIST report] may be detained for up to one year without indictment. President Pervez Musharraf [Wikipedia profile] has been accused of conducting the raids to appease Western allies, but government officials maintain the raids are not related to the recent bombings in London [JURIST report]. AFP has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Bank of England granted political independence

On May 6, 1997, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown announced that the Bank of England would be granted political independence for the first time in the three-hundred year history of the Bank. This policy was statutized in the subsequent Bank of England Act of 1998 gave the Bank independent control of British monetary policy effective June 1, 1998. Read the Bank of England Act of 1998.

Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese laborers from US

On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States and prohibiting courts from bestowing US citizenship on Chinese. Connecticut Senator Joseph Hawley spoke out against the Act in these words: Let the proposed statue be read 100 years hence, dug out of the dust of ages and forgotten as it will be except for a line of sneer by some historian, and ask the young man not well read in the history of this country what was the reason for excluding these men and he would not be able to find it in the law. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its successors were abolished in 1943 at the insistence of President Franklin Roosevelt.