NIJ Developing Non-Lethal Devices

The research arm of the US Department of Justice is working on two portable non-lethal weapons that inflict pain from a distance using beams of laser light or microwaves, with the intention of putting them into the hands of police to subdue suspects.

The two devices under development by the civilian National Institute of Justice both build on knowledge gained from the Pentagon's controversial Active Denial System (ADS) - first demonstrated in public last year, which uses a 2-metre beam of short microwaves to heat up the outer layer of a person's skin and cause pain. - National Institute of Justice

They sound like a worthy alternative to guns, but I highly doubt guns will be taken out of the hands of the police.

Guantanamo

Washington - The Bush administration is facing a long, hot summer of fierce litigation over who is, and who isn't, an enemy combatant in the war on terror.

Judges at the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., are gearing up for an anticipated influx of habeas corpus petitions filed on behalf of terror suspects being held at the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, prison camp.

The action was prompted by the US Supreme Court's June 12 ruling that foreign detainees at Guantánamo have the right to force the US government to prove the legality of their ongoing detention to a neutral judge. Many of the detainees have been held at Guantánamo for more than six years. - Christian Science Monitor

The writ shouldn't have to be suspended at all.

100 Pinochet Soldiers/Police Detained

SANTIAGO, CHILE — Nearly 100 former soldiers and secret police members from Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship were ordered detained Monday in the biggest mass arrest of suspects in abuses during the period, judicial sources said.

Investigating Judge Victor Montiglio ordered the detentions in an inquiry into the kidnapping and killing of 42 people during Operation Colombo early in the 1973-90 dictatorship, during which 119 Pinochet opponents died. Many of the dead were leftists.

Some of those ordered held Monday worked for Pinochet's Directorate of National Intelligence, or DINA, which ran torture centers where hundreds of people were killed or "disappeared" during one of the darkest periods of contemporary Latin American history. - Los Angeles Times

Recap of what happened: Pinochet installed Milton Friedman esque capitalism in Chile after many years of socialist rule. Chaos resulted.