Toward a contemporary tradition for menarche

A cultural tradition to acknowledge a girl's first menstrual period is proposed in order to overcome the negative connotation of the event. Three basic questions regarding such a tradition are addressed: Who would participate? What would it mean? What type of activity should it be? A research team consisting of a psychologist, a nurse, and a social worker suggests answers based on their interviews with mothers and daughters, as well as their collection of menarche anecdotes from women psychologists.     

Fatal bromethalin poisoning

Bromethalin is a neurotoxin found in some rodenticides. A delusional 21-year-old male presented to a hospital with altered mental status the day after ingesting a bromethalin-based rodenticide. He died 7 days after his self-reported exposure to c. 17 mg bromethalin (equivalent to 0.33 mg bromethalin/kg). His clinicopathologic course was characterized by altered mental status, obtundation, increased cerebrospinal fluid pressure, cerebral edema, death, and diffuse histologic vacuolization of the white matter in the central nervous system seen on microscopic examination at autopsy. The presence of a demethylated form of bromethalin in the patient's liver and brain was confirmed by gas chromatography with mass spectrometry. Clinical signs and lesions observed in this patient are similar to those seen in animals poisoned with bromethalin. This case illustrates the potential for bromethalin ingestion to result in fatal human poisoning.     

The Curious Incident of Mr Cameron and the United Kingdom Defence Budget: A New Legacy?

During 2015 Prime Minister Cameron found himself under intense domestic and international pressure over his apparent reluctance to maintain United Kingdom defence spending at the NATO target level of 2 per cent of GDP. Most commentators attributed this reluctance to the inevitability of defence cuts if the government wished to meet its deficit reduction targets. However, the aftermath of the general election saw a sudden decision to maintain UK defence spending at the NATO target level. This u‐turn is one of the more curious episodes in recent British defence policy. In this article we explore the reasons why, at a time of continuing cuts and austerity measures and against all the political signals, a decision was made to meet the 2 per cent target, and what this means for the UK's defence policy. In doing so, we analyse why most commentators assumed that defence cuts were inevitable, the domestic and international factors that explain the government's apparent u‐turn and what this revised defence budget settlement meant for the new 2015 National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review.     

Post-liberation Politics in Africa: examining the political legacy of struggle

This article examines the politics of African states in which insurgencies or liberation movements have taken control of the government. It analyses the impact on governance of reforms introduced by these post-liberation regimes, their relations with traditional authorities and civil society and relationships within and between competing guerrilla movements. It interrogates the nature of the state that emerges from this process. The ‘post-liberation’ state label is argued to be both meaningful and useful, as part of a larger project of exploring and explaining the post-colonial African state, highlighting debates about representation, citizenship and nation building. While post-liberation regimes have advantages in implementing state building projects, they are also subject to contestation when the new state institutions and regime incumbents become too exclusivist or predatory.     

‘We have not made anybody homeless’: regulation and control of urban life in Zimbabwe

In May and June 2005, thousands of Zimbabweans were brutally displaced from urban areas. But ‘Operation Murambatsvina’ was not simply an unpredictable ‘tsunami,’ rather it provides a moment in which long-held prejudices and assumptions which shaped the developmental state became visible, reflecting not just the internalisation of the Rhodesian, modernist world-view, but also its imbrication with local understandings of home and home-ness. To see Murambatsvina as simply a politically expedient move is to miss the deep resonance of the political rhetoric, the ways it was embedded in the state, and how it is shaped by norms of citizenship. Contextualised against Harare's urban politics, the clearances reveal a long-standing set of policies designed to regulate and control urban life, forming part of a broader crisis of the post-colonial developmental state.