Under the Radar: Airborne Arms Trafficking Operations in Africa

Airborne illicit arms traffickers from the former Soviet space are resourceful and adaptable international criminals who have built complex air trafficking networks by successfully cultivating strategic connections in a number of geographically distant states. This paper examines the airborne arms trafficking operations of networks from former Soviet states which transfer weapons and ammunition to areas of conflict in Africa, embargoed African states, or those descending into conflict. As such, these arms traffickers brazenly circumvent international regulations by obscuring their air cargo operations and securing impunity through subornation, fraud, and exploitation of lax regulations. Importantly, they rely on strategic connections in former Soviet states for a steady supply of arms, on states such as UAE for relaxed oversight and free trade zones for transit, product warehousing, and laundering of proceeds, and on carefully-cultivated connections with “big men” and/or local fixers in African states for speedy delivery and payment.     

秩序愿景——美国战略中的日本与中国

对于秩序的追求一直是对外交家与政治家的挑战。经历了一个世纪的冲突、革命与战争向世界大国之问基于共同利益的合作模式的演化，才有了今天自由主义的国际经济与政治秩序。但是，国际体系并不是一个自我约束的机制，秩序一旦建立，它的维系需要富有重大责任的主要大国积极而充分地参与到这一体系的有效合作中来。     

What attracts men who batter to their partners? An exploratory study

Men who batter, because of particular personality traits and sense of entitlement, may select partners whom they perceive will be dependent on them, meet their emotional needs, or be "objects" of physical attractiveness. During treatment intake, 181 offenders responded to the question, "What attracted you to her (your partner)?" We explored whether men who mentioned their own needs or her physical traits would engage in more frequent and severe violence and would have specific forms of personality disorder dimensions or personality traits. Six categories of attraction, including "her physical traits" and "his needs," were derived from the men's responses. The results showed that men who focused on their partners' physical attractiveness were more likely to be violent after treatment. Men who cited their own needs for their attraction had higher scores on borderline personality, alcohol abuse, and psychotic thinking and lower scores on compulsive-conforming.     

Operation of guardianship laws in the emergency ward

Enduring and workable legislative schemes typically include (a) a balanced approach to the rights and duties of all parties under their purview; and (b) consideration of all major consequences that may flow from the codification of underpinning doctrines. This column examines the 1999 amendments to the Guardianship and Administration Act 1986 (Vic) regulating patients' consent to medical treatment focusing on their application in modern emergency departments. The legislation needs to reconcile the human rights principle that humane and appropriate treatment is a fundamental right of all those who suffer from ill health and disease, with the principle that all patients (including those with impaired, but not totally absent, decisional capacity) have an absolute right to refuse life-saving treatment. Consent and refusal of treatment provisions should be based on the notion of reasonableness, including recognition that the mental and emotional states experienced by physically ill people may, in the short-term, adversely affect their decision-making capacity. Unless the consent legislation factors in the realities of modern emergency practice and resources, statutory thresholds for decisional competence, instead of affording protection, may result in much worse outcomes for vulnerable patients.     

Score-based likelihood ratios for handwriting evidence

Score-based approaches for computing forensic likelihood ratios are becoming more prevalent in the forensic literature. When two items of evidential value are entangled via a scorefunction, several nuances arise when attempting to model the score behavior under the competing source-level propositions. Specific assumptions must be made in order to appropriately model the numerator and denominator probability distributions. This process is fairly straightforward for the numerator of the score-based likelihood ratio, entailing the generation of a database of scores obtained by pairing items of evidence from the same source. However, this process presents ambiguities for the denominator database generation - in particular, how best to generate a database of scores between two items of different sources. Many alternatives have appeared in the literature, three of which we will consider in detail. They differ in their approach to generating denominator databases, by pairing (1) the item of known source with randomly selected items from a relevant database; (2) the item of unknown source with randomly generated items from a relevant database; or (3) two randomly generated items. When the two items differ in type, perhaps one having higher information content, these three alternatives can produce very different denominator databases. While each of these alternatives has appeared in the literature, the decision of how to generate the denominator database is often made without calling attention to the subjective nature of this process. In this paper, we compare each of the three methods (and the resulting score-based likelihood ratios), which can be thought of as three distinct interpretations of the denominator proposition. Our goal in performing these comparisons is to illustrate the effect that subtle modifications of these propositions can have on inferences drawn from the evidence evaluation procedure. The study was performed using a data set composed of cursive writing samples from over 400 writers. We found that, when provided with the same two items of evidence, the three methods often would lead to differing conclusions (with rates of disagreement ranging from 0.005 to 0.48). Rates of misleading evidence and Tippet plots are both used to characterize the range of behavior for the methods over varying sized questioned documents. The appendix shows that the three score-based likelihood ratios are theoretically very different not only from each other, but also from the likelihood ratio, and as a consequence each display drastically different behavior.     

Two arch criteria of the ilium for sex determination of immature skeletal remains: A test of their accuracy and an assessment of intra- and inter-observer error

Although the assignment of sex to immature skeletal remains is considered problematic, some traits have been considered useful for both forensic and bioarchaeological applications. One such trait is the arch criterion found in subadult ilia, which is defined relative to the greater sciatic notch-auricular surface area. In adults, the composite arch has also been described in relation to this area and has proven relatively successful in sex determination. This study offers an examination of the accuracy of the arch criterion and the composite arch in determining the sex of subadult skeletal remains, and an assessment of intra- and inter-observer scoring error. A sample of 97 skeletons of known sex and age (<15 years) from the Lisbon collection (Portugal) were selected and the traits were scored by three observers on orthogonal photos of each ilium. In general the agreement within (67.7–88.5%) and between (50.5–76.3%) examiners was poor and overall accuracy (26.7–52.6%) did not meet the expectations of that reported in previous studies. The authors suggest that this derives from great variation in morphology, difficulties in interpreting criteria and possibly a lack of association between the expression of the traits and sex. Careful examination of sex-related morphology in the immature skeleton and additional blind tests of so-called useful traits should continue to be carried out.     

Counteracting Identity Fraud in the Information Age: The Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act

The advent of the information age has created new challenges to the ability of individuals to protect the privacy and security of their personal information. One such challenge is that of identity theft, which has imposed countless hardships upon its victims. Perpetrators of this fraud use the identities of others to steal money, obtain loans, and generally violate the law. The Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act of 1998 makes the theft of personal information with the intent to commit an unlawful act a federal crime in the United States with penalties of up to 15 years imprisonment and a maximum fine of $250,000. The Act designates the Federal Trade Commission to serve as an advocate for victims of identity fraud. This article first examines the problem of identity fraud and the inadequacy of existing remedies, and then assesses the need for and likely impact of the Act, as well as issues relating to the effectiveness of its future enforcement.     

Assessing the potential of bacterial DNA profiling for forensic soil comparisons

A pilot study was undertaken to evaluate DNA profiling of the bacterial community in soil as an alternative to geological methods for forensic soil comparisons. Soil samples from three different ecosystems were compared, and the variation within and between ecologically different sites was determined by using terminal restriction fragment (TRF) analysis of 16S ribosomal DNA. Comparison of TRF profiles revealed that samples from within a specific ecosystem (e.g., a field) showed a significantly higher similarity to each other than to those from another ecosystem (e.g., a forest). In addition, some profile features were unique to specific ecosystems. These features may allow the determination of characteristic profiles that will facilitate identification of ecologically different sites, so that a given sample collected from a suspect could be identified as originating from, for example, a field, rather than a forest. The implications of these preliminary findings for forensic investigations are discussed.