Asia Pacific news

This column provides a country-by-country analysis of the latest legal developments, cases and issues relevant to the IT, media and telecommunications' industries in key jurisdictions across the Asia Pacific region. The articles appearing in this column are intended to serve as ‘alerts’ and are not submitted as detailed analyses of cases or legal developments.     

The legal geographies of transnational cyber-prosecutions: extradition,human rights and forum shifting

This article describes legal and human rights issues in three cases of transnational online offending involving extradition requests by the United States (US). These cases were selected as all suspects claimed the negative impacts of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) were sufficient to deny extradition on human rights grounds. We demonstrate how recent developments in UK and Irish extradition law raise human rights and prosecutorial challenges specific to online offending that are not met by established protections under domestic and internationally sanctioned approaches to extradition or human rights law. In these cases, although the allegedly unlawful conduct occurred exclusively online and concurrent jurisdiction enables prosecution at both the source and location of harm, we demonstrate why national courts hearing extradition challenges are extremely reluctant to shift the trial forum. We conclude by discussing the implications of the new geographies of online offending for future criminological research and transnational criminal justice.     

Asia Pacific news

This column provides a country-by-country analysis of the latest legal developments, cases and issues relevant to the IT, media and telecommunications’ industries in key jurisdictions across the Asia Pacific region. The articles appearing in this column are intended to serve as ‘alerts’ and are not submitted as detailed analyses of cases or legal developments.     

Citizen Satisfaction: A Multicriteria Satisfaction Analysis

Governments across Europe face the challenge of responding to public demand for more valuable, responsive, and efficient and effective services. In this article we will evaluate the public services in Greece. More specifically, this article refers to a citizen's satisfaction web survey for Citizens’ Service Centers. The analysis of the data is based on the MUSA (Multicriteria Satisfaction Analysis) method. MUSA is an ordinal regression model which is based on the principles of multicriteria decision analysis. The method is an instrument to evaluate quantitative global and partial satisfaction levels and to determine the weak and strong points of citizens Service Centers. Furthermore the results of this study will help the Citizens Service Centers to develop more effective services.     

Dépendance et luttes politiques au Kenya, 1975–1977: Ia bourgeoisie nationale à l'assaut du pouvoir d'État

Rural West Africans confront a challenging array of circumstances in pursuit of their livelihoods, which are negotiated through repertoires of knowledge, skill, wisdom and information that are held individually, communally or as the prerogative of experts. Of some significance is timing: finding the most effective or propitious moment for action. On the farm, anticipating the beginning and progress of the rains is crucial and sought through the empirical observation of natural phenomena, or as in northwest Nigeria additionally through agricultural star calendars and almanacs by Muslim clerics. Furthermore, some clerics use divination to identify propitious moments for their clients whereby they may achieve success in non-farm jobs and businesses that are an integral part of rural livelihoods. Taking action to achieve particular outcomes on and off the farm raises issues about local people's understanding of the physical world and their place within it, and the power of religion and the supernatural. An appreciation of such matters would appear to be crucial for those from the scientific and technological North who may be attempting to transform African societies.     

Malawi

Democracy in Malawi is relatively new, due to the late introduction of a multiparty system in the mid‐1990s. Now it has all the systems in place but has been slow to make them effective.     

Pregnancy,Cesarean, and Pheochromocytoma: A Case Report and Literature Review

A 43‐year‐old full‐term pregnant woman (gravida 2, para 1, medical history of gestational diabetes mellitus) developed a sudden and malignant hypertension with hemoptysis, sweat, and tachycardia during a scheduled C‐section. A dead newborn was delivered and was successfully resuscitated. The mother died after resistant cardiac arrest. Autopsy and pathological analyses revealed an acute pulmonary edema and a necrotic and hemorrhagic voluminous tumor of the left adrenal gland, which was a pheochromocytoma. Pheochromocytoma is a rare tumor of the adrenal glands which secretes catecholamines. In pregnant women, its symptoms can mimic gestational hypertension, preeclampsia or eclampsia, and gestational diabetes mellitus. The gestational diabetes mellitus was presumed to be a symptom of the pheochromocytoma, and cardiopulmonary failure the result from the necrosis of the tumor provoked by gravid uterus compression. From a medico‐legal point of view, the tumor could not have been suspected during the pregnancy.     

The Royal Navy,Intelligence and the Spanish Civil War: Lessons in Air Power, 1936–39

This article discusses the Royal Navy (RN)—Royal Air Force (RAF) feud concerning the use of air power in the round through an investigation of each service's appreciations of the lessons being learned about air power during the Spanish Civil War. It reveals that despite such bodies as the Joint Intelligence Committee existing, for the processing of operational and strategic intelligence, there was very little that was joint about the way air power lessons were being used to inform RN and RAF interwar preparations for future conflict. Not only were the RN and RAF rivals, which dragged out the process and skewed the results so that they became useless for planning, but in that non-joint age each service could use the results for its own separate purposes and avoid any synergy among the services for operational and strategic effectiveness.