South African President Nelson Mandela has signed into law a new constitution for his country, legally entrenching racial equality and consigning apartheid to history. Meanwhile, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission granted an amnesty today to a white apartheid-era policeman serving a life sentence for 11 murders.

This news from Charleston, South Carolina: two former Ku Klux Klan members pleaded guilty to conspiring to burn a rural black church and a migrant labor camp last year.

In Israel, the Israeli army scuffles with Arab students in Hebron.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch Asia is saying that scores of Burmese students who were detained after recent street protests are still being held incommunicado by the military government.

The subversion trial of independent labor activist Muchtar Pakpahan in Indonesia will open in a court this week. He has been moved from his detention cell.