On the political consequences of privatisation: the case of Teléfonos de México

This article examines the political consequences of the most important single privatisation in Mexico, that of the national telecommunications company, Telmex. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, diverse observers of Mexico claimed that, as the government pursued a dramatic privatisation programme as part of a broader plan to liberalise the economy, democratic growth would be encouraged. This argument is challenged in the case of the Telmex privatisation. It is shown how privatisation generated new resources that were channelled to lubricate corporatist relations and that the so‐called new unionism emerging from the telephone workers’union did not represent a departure from, but a culmination of, traditional state‐labour relations in Mexico.     

A mixed DNA profile controversy revisited

Semaan et al. (J Forensic Res, 2020, 11, 453) discuss a mock case “where eight different individuals [P₁ through P₈] could not be excluded in a mixed DNA analysis. Even though … expert DNA mixture analysis software was used.” Two of these are the true donors. The LRs reported are incorrect due to the incorrect entry of propositions into LRmix Studio. This forced the software to account for most of the alleles as drop-in, resulting in LRs 60–70 orders of magnitude larger than expected. P₁, P₂, P₄, P₅, and P₈ can be manually excluded using peak heights. This has relevance when using LRmix which does not use peak heights. We extend the work using the same two reference genotypes who were the true contributors as Semaan et al. (J Forensic Res, 2020, 11, 453). We simulate three two-donor mixtures with peak heights using these two genotypes and analyze using STRmix?. For the simulated 1:1 mixture, one of the non-donors’ LRs supported him being a contributor when no conditioning was used. When considered in combination with any other potential donors (i.e., with conditioning), this non-donor was correctly eliminated. For the 3:1 mixture, all results correctly supported that the non-donors were not contributors. The low-template 4:1 mixture LRs with no conditioning showed support for all eight profiles as donors. However, the results from pair-wise conditioning showed that only the two ground truth donors had LRs supporting that they were contributors to the mixture. We recommend the use of peak heights and conditioning profiles, as this allows better sensitivity and specificity even when the persons share many alleles.     

Hearing silenced voices: developing community with an advisory committee

This article focuses on the challenges and effects of adhering to community participation as a principle of community development and the related issue of reflecting diverse representation in prevention and health promotion planning. As a requirement of funding agencies, the consequences of upholding these principles in light of the resources made available are explored. Information is drawn from a case study of an advisory committee with diverse membership. A participatory evaluation of this committee illustrates the difficulties encountered when a community agency initiated a health promotion project to address the needs of women who are non‐verbal and at risk of sexual assault. Suggestions are made as to how these difficulties may be overcome. The advisory committee is a common means for community development but also has the potential to be a model for increased communication and understanding.