Y-chromosomal STR haplotypes in a population sample from continental Greece, and the islands of Crete and Chios

Eight Y chromosome short tandem repeat (STR) polymorphisms (DYS19, DYS385, DYS389I, DYS389II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, and DYS393) were analyzed in the sample of 117 unrelated Albanian males living in Kosovo. A general STR allelic frequency pattern in the Albanian population from Kosovo corresponds to other European populations. Fourty six haplotypes were observed in single copy. The most frequent haplotypes were (DYS19-DYS385-DYS389I-DYS389II-DYS390-DYS391-DYS392-DYS393) 14-11/11-13-29-24-11-13-13 (10.26%), 14-14/17-12-28-24-10-11-12 (9.40%), 13-16/18-13-30-24-10-11-13 (9.40%), and 14-17/17-13-31-24-10-11-13 (9.40%).     

Autocracies and Terrorism: Conditioning Effects of Authoritarian Regime Type on Terrorist Attacks

Although empirical research has generally demonstrated that democracies experience more terrorism than autocracies, research suggests that this depends upon complex institutional differences that go beyond the democracy‐autocracy divide. This study examines these differences, linking institutions to strategies of coercion and co‐optation. Using zero‐inflated negative binomial regression estimations on Geddes’ (2003) autocratic regime‐type data for 161 countries between 1970 and 2006, we find that single‐party authoritarian regimes consistently experience less domestic and international terrorism relative to military autocracies and democracies. This finding is robust to a large number of specifications, underscoring the explanatory power of regime type for predicting terrorism. Our explanation for these findings is that party‐based autocracies have a wider range of coercion and co‐option strategies that they can employ to address grievance and dissent than do other, more strategically restricted, regimes.     

Terrorism and Party Systems in the States of India

The incidence of domestic terrorism varies dramatically across the states of India. This study demonstrates that important state-level differences in political party systems help to explain different levels of terrorist activity within the Indian states. Analysis of statistical data on terrorist attacks as well as other political, social, and macroeconomic indicators of the twenty-seven Indian states and the Delhi municipality from 1998 to 2006, determines that Indian states characterized by multiparty electoral competition, a diffusion of legislative seat distribution among parties, and minority party government are more likely to experience terrorist attacks than states with stable, two-party systems and majority party rule. These party system features increase the likelihood that terrorism will occur because they nurture the political conditions under which terrorism is likely to flourish and because they impair government ability to craft coherent and effective responses to terrorism.     

Population data for Y-chromosome STR haplotypes from Piedmont (Italy)

Eight Y-chromosome STR loci (DYS19, DYS389-I, DYS389-II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393 and DYS385) were analysed in a sample of 236 unrelated males from four towns of Piedmont (Trino, Biella, Cavaglià, Postua). One hundred and fifty six different haplotypes were observed and 55 of them were not previously observed in the Y-STR Haplotype Reference Database (http://www.ystr.org/).     

Transnational Terror and Human Rights

Do terrorist attacks by transnational groups lead governments to restrict human rights? Conventional wisdom holds that governments restrict rights to forestall additional attacks, to more effectively pursue suspected terrorists, and as an excuse to suppress their political opponents. But the logic connecting terrorist attacks to subsequent repression and the empirical research that addresses this issue suffer from important flaws. We analyze pooled data on the human rights behavior of governments from 1981 to 2003. Our key independent variable of interest is transnational terrorist attacks, and the analysis also controls for factors that existing studies have found influence respect for human rights. Repeated terrorist attacks lead governments to engage in more extrajudicial killings and disappearances, but have no discernable influence on government use of torture and of political imprisonment or on empowerment rights such as freedom of speech, assembly, and religion. This finding has important implications for how we think about the effects of terrorism and the policy responses of states, non-governmental organizations, and international institutions interested in protecting human rights.     

When cinema borrows from stage: theatrical artifice through indexical explicitness in The Cook,the Thief,His Wife and Her Lover and Dogville

ABSTRACT

Framed within the debate on the different nature of theatrical and filmic communication, the study considers two avant-garde films by Greenaway, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, and von Trier, Dogville, as examples of texts that travel from one medium to another and show closeness to the theatre. This is revealed not solely through the artificiality and the enclosure of the setting and the mise-en-scène, but also at the level of the discourse understood as the ensemble of images, music, gestures, and dialogue. The two films exhibit an unnaturalness unusual in cinema, a medium in which the editing realises a seemingly realistic representation of characters and events. The discussion focuses on how such a sensation of artificial non-realism is achieved in the films. It is argued that it derives from the marked explicit relation between the various levels of communication in the two films, the verbal and the visual, as well as between the dialogue contributions by the different participants in the narrative, characters, and narrator. The construct adopted for the analysis is indexicality, which is interpreted in a broad sense and that, as is discussed, contributes to the “monstrative” dimension of the films in terms of the explicitness of the communication.     

Counterterrorism Killings and Provisional IRA Bombings, 1970–1998

Counterterrorism strategies involving the killing of terrorists are a prominently used but controversial practice. Proponents argue that such strategies are useful tools for reducing terrorist activity, while critics question their effectiveness. This article provides empirical insight into this strategy by conducting a series of negative binomial regression and Tobit estimations of the impact of killing Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) terrorists as well as members of the Catholic community on counts of PIRA bombings and targeting activity in Northern Ireland for the period 1970–1998. We consider the impact of discriminate and indiscriminate killings (where only PIRA militants are killed versus those in which both militants and civilians are also killed) on subsequent PIRA improvised explosive device (IED) attacks. Our findings illustrate that while total and discriminate counterterrorism killings have little to no effect on PIRA IED attacks, indiscriminate counterterrorism killings increased PIRA bombings overall and prompted the Provisional IRA to specifically target civilians in IED events. We conclude by discussing the scholarly and policy implications of these findings.     

Y-chromosomal STR haplotypes in Sicily

Eight Y-chromosomal short tandem repeats (STRs)-DYS19, DYS389-I, DYS389-II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393 and DYS385-were typed in a population sample (n=255) of unrelated Sicilian males from nine different towns on the main island and from the island of Pantelleria.