E‐government in China

The article analyses e‐government progress in China. It provides a brief overview of benchmarking studies and their evaluation of China, plus a contextual analysis of e‐government initiatives in China and of the changing official position witnessed in the past two decades. It then takes stock of e‐government in China in the first quarter of 2004. On this basis, it considers the significance of contemporary e‐government activity for Chinese governance. The argument is that e‐government is currently having no more than a limited impact on the Chinese public sector. However, there are strong grounds for optimism about future development. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pursuing justice,respecting the law

Conclusion In the 1980s, despite the rise of terrorist attacks worldwide, the international community failed to respond cooperatively. When U.S. citizens were the focus of attacks, even friendly countries had little incentive to risk the safety of their citizens or the tenets of their foreign policy to prosecute terrorists. In response, the United States passed statutes providing for extraterritorial jurisdiction over acts committed abroad against U.S. citizens and then engaged in a series of dramatic seizures to enforce these measures. Unfortunately, these abductions were generally not defensible under international law and, in any event, could not be used when a terrorist was located within the territory of a major friendly country. In large part unexpectedly, however, the statutes have rendered such extraordinary measures unnecessary while still remedying what was a visible failure of international criminal cooperation.Even without threatening international abductions, the United States can use the Hostage Taking Act and the Terrorist Prosecution Act to demand extradition and to undertake independent investigations of violations of federal laws. These efforts put pressure on governments that have custody over terrorists. The international and the diplomatic consequences of neither extraditing nor prosecuting have proven sufficient to encourage U.S. allies to prosecute terrorists themselves. Surprisingly, therefore, the statutes have turned out to be effective because they encourage prosecutions of terrorists abroad, thereby remedying a failure in international cooperation and helping to ensure a consistent, strong, international response to acts of terrorism despite the continued inability of the United States to obtain custody of those attacking its citizens.This is a revised version of a paper presented at an international workshop on Principles and Procedures for a New Transnational Criminal Law, organized jointly by the Society for the Reform of Criminal Law and the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, Freiburg, Germany, May 21–25, 1991.Class of 1993, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.     

Reviews

Laszlo Csaba (ed.), Privatisation, Liberalisation and Destruction (Recreating the Market in Central and Eastern Europe). Aldershot and Brookfield, NY: Dartmouth Publishing Company Ltd, 1994.

Iliana Zloch‐Christy, Eastern Europe in a Time of Change: Economic and Political Dimensions. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994, xvii + 143 pp.

J. Michael Waller, Secret Empire. The KGB in Russia Today. Oxford: Westview, 1994 x + 390 pp., £42.50 h/b, £13.50 p/b.

James M. Goldgeier, Leadership Style and Soviet Foreign Policy. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994, x + 169 pp., £29.00.

Vladimir Andrle, A Social History of Twentieth‐Century Russia. London: Edward Arnold, 1994, xi + 289 pp., £40.00 h/b, £14.99 p/b.

Graeme Gill, The Collapse of a Single‐Party System: The Disintegration of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994, xi + 255 pp., $35.00 h/b, $14.95 p/b.

John J. Stephan, The Russian Far East: A History. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994, xxiii + 481 pp.     

Evaluation of the (hu)MANid program for sex and ancestry estimation in a diverse,contemporary CT scan-based sample

Human remains from forensic and bioarcheological contexts are often fragmentary, requiring methods for estimating a forensic profile that are based upon limited skeletal features. In 2017, Berg and Keryhercz created an online application, (hu)MANid, that provides sex and ancestry estimation from mandibular morphoscopic traits and linear measurements. In this study, we examine the utility of the (hu)MANid application in a diverse, urban US adult sample (aged 20–45; n = 143) derived from computed tomography (CT) scans. We secondarily conduct a preliminary analysis of the program's utility in a sample of adolescents (aged 15–17; n = 40). Six morphoscopic, and eleven morphometric traits were recorded as directed by the literature associated with the (hu)MANid program. Percent correct classification and posterior predictive values were calculated for the sex and ancestry estimations output by the program; chi-squared tests were employed to compare self-reported and predicted ancestry. In the adult sample, sex was accurately predicted for 75.52% of the sample. Ancestry prediction, however, was less favorable ranging from 19.3% to 50% correct. For the adolescent sample, correct sex estimation (45%) did not surpass what could occur by chance alone, though ancestry prediction fared better than in the larger adult sample (percent correct prediction overall average: 47.5%, range 35.71%–71.43%). The (hu)MANid application shows utility for use with CT scan-derived adult samples for sex estimation, but caution is warranted for ancestry estimation and use with samples that may not have reached full adult maturity.     

Using Blogs in Teaching Negotiation: A Technical and Intercultural Postscript

This article reexamines an earlier experiment in the use of blogs in teaching negotiation when undertaken in a different cultural environment. I briefly examine two core factors — technical competence and cultural preferences in communication — as well as a student preference to reserve the use of social media for purely social and informal communications. Parallels are also drawn with the technical and cultural contexts of developments in online dispute resolution.     

IN SAFE HANDS: A Review of Mobile Phone Anti-theft Designs

Anti-theft designs relating to mobile phones are reviewed. The physical and electronic design of handsets includes visual deterrents, owner-identification, and handset tracking options. The systems design of phone networks includes the blacklisting of stolen phones. Other measures include biometric-locking of handsets, and designs that encourage ‘safe’ phone use and transportation. Characteristics that promote anti-theft designs are proposed and form the acronym ‘IN SAFE HANDS’: identifiable, neutral, seen, attached, findable, executable, hidden, automatic, necessary, detectable, and secure. The set of characteristics is presented as a heuristic device to aid designing-out crime from frequently stolen electronic goods.

Indigenous Australia and health rights

Over the last decade, there has been a significant shift in public policy in relation to indigenous Australians. The new policy frameworks have been marked by an antipathy towards a policy discourse based on a human rights framework. This has also been associated with a shift from an approach based on "self-determination" to one founded on the idea of "mutual obligation". This article describes these developments in detail and considers the implications for human rights discourse.