FIDE Laws of Chess - Article 3

Article 3 saw a little bit more work, although this was mainly in the area of tightening up definitions.
Section 3.1 contains definitions of 'attack' as well as a prohibition on capturing your own pieces. There was some discussion about what defines 'attacking a square', as whether pinned pieces can capture on a square (normally they can't) or give check (in this case they do), needs to be taken into account. In the end we modified the wording slightly, without changing the assumed meaning.
There was also the regular discussion about how best to define the Knight move. It was noted that definitions seem to change from language to language, and this can sometimes cause difficulties. The familiar "moves in an L shape" definition in English may have no equivalent in Chinese or Japanese. In the end we left it as is.
Section 3.7 deals with how the pawn moves, and there was some work done here. The definition of en-passant  was tidied up to remove the use of the word 'attack' and instead to use the physical location of the respective pawns. ( 'occupying a square on the same rank and on an adjacent file').
Promotion was also covered in this section, and although we left the wording unchanged it is still something that may be revisited. The difficulty is that this section defines what promotion 'is', not how it is supposed to occur. So the definition starts with 'When a pawn reaches the rank furthest from its starting position' which is perfectly fine. But in the absence of any further laws concerning promotion, this also becomes the defined method of promotion (ie You must physically move the pawn to the 8th rank to effect promotion). This then cause difficulties (especially at Blitz) when players simply remove the pawn from the 7th and put a piece down on the 8th. We had intended to work on something to repair this, but due to circumstances beyond our control, we did not have the time to do so. Nonetheless I may still try and put something together before Istanbul.