Rüstungsaltlasten in deutschen Küstengew?ssern – v?lkerrechtliche Bergungs- und Sanierungspflichten

“Nervengas auf dem Meeresgrund” oder “Gefahr aus der Tiefe”. Solche und ?hnliche Titel kennzeichnen Ver?ffentlichungen zum Thema Rüstungsaltlasten in Nord- und Ostsee. Dies ist ein Zeichen der immer noch hohen Brisanz dieses Themas. In jüngster Vergangenheit sorgte die Verifikation der Verklappung von ca. 90 t Tabun-Granaten südlich von Helgoland für Aufsehen. Fakt ist, dass sich erhebliche Mengen Weltkriegsmunition in Nord- und Ostsee befinden. Leider mangelt es bisher nicht nur an einer Aufkl?rung des von den Rüstungsaltlasten ausgehenden Risikos seitens der Naturwissenschaft, sondern auch an einer rechtswissenschaftlichen Aufkl?rung eventuell bestehender Bergungs- und Sanierungspflichten. Im folgenden Beitrag werden einige einschl?gige v?lkerrechtliche Vertr?ge mit Schwerpunktsetzung im Seerecht auf das Vorliegen entsprechender Pflichten geprüft und gezeigt, dass Pflichten zur Bergung der Altmunition bestehen.     

Norfolk Island and Its Tax Haven

The first Pacific Islands offshore financial centre was born in 1966 on Norfolk Island. This paper analyses the historical trajectory of Norfolk Island's tax haven in terms of its dialectical tensions with the Australian federal government — tensions between self-determination and subordination which emerge from Norfolk's anomalous status as a self-governing external territory of Australia. Promoters of Norfolk Island's tax haven have seen its potential to become a major global offshore financial centre blocked by the Australian federal government. Yet, at major critical junctures (in 1976, 1991 and 2000) the Australian federal campaigns that threatened Norfolk's residential tax haven disintegrated in the face of concerted local opposition, although the danger has never entirely disappeared. The island's political economy and external relations are likely to remain inextricably bound to its tax haven.     

Over the Top: Dutch Right-Wing Extremist Parties in the Elections of 1994

In 1994 three elections were held in the Netherlands. For a time it seemed that the right-wing extremist parties were destined to break out of their marginal position. However, after these three elections, in terms of electoral support they ended up where they had started. The variation in electoral support for these parties can only in part be attributed to developments within the parties and the (negative) publicity these developments incited in the media. An alternative explanation based upon protest voting and the theory of first and second-order elections appears more promising.     

Heroin impurity profiling. A harmonization study for retrospective comparisons

Three laboratories present a harmonised system for the retrospective comparison of south west Asian heroin. It consists of an improved gas chromatographic (GC) profiling method and a computerised data retrieval. The investigations of the GC were necessary with a view to improve the reproducibility of the system. The necessity of a strict quality control is emphasized. The peaks of the GC profile were investigated for abundance, intensity, GC behaviour (reproducibility) and correlations; 16 of them were selected for describing the heroin profile in the database. The results from intra-lab profile comparisons are reported. The reproducibility of the analysis was good and the variation between the samples was large, thus, allowing conclusions with a high degree of certainty. The criteria of similarity were defined. The system is successfully running in all three labs.In connection with inter-laboratory comparison, the aspects of method harmonisation and standardisation are discussed. It appeared that the GC method is a very subtile one, urging for a strict standardisation between the three labs. Despite a long cooperation between three well-equipped and experienced labs, a more or less serious loss of reproducibility was noticed in the inter-lab results in comparison with the intra-lab results. The loss could for the greater part be attributed to the (limits of the) GC technique; a number of compounds, necessary for making the discrimination between samples, showed difficult chromatographic behaviour, leading to insufficient inter-lab reproducibility. Using the actual variables, improvements in performance can hardly be expected in the near future. The loss of reproducibilty implies that the number of false positive matches in a database search increases. This may strongly reduce the value of a relatively large, international database. The study shows that so far, the best option for international comparison is the analysis in a central laboratory. The idea of local determination at a large number of national labs and the use of a common database is not a realistic aim for this type of analysis.