Federal Office Research Articles

International Auditing Standard (700) and its Role in Improving the Auditor's Report1

To ensure that the auditor's report achieves its main objective, careful attention must be given to its content and language. The report should be easily understandable to users of financial data and align with the objectives of professional bodies supported by studies and research. The adoption of International Auditing Standard (700) by professional bodies plays a crucial role in shaping the auditor's report. In the context of Iraq, where this research was conducted in the Federal Office of Financial Supervision and external audit offices, auditors' compliance contributes to the consistency of financial report data. The study aimed to clarify the concept of the auditor's report, identify the factors influencing its quality, and examine the impact of implementing International Auditing Standard (700) on enhancing the auditor's report in the Iraqi setting. A total of 100 questionnaires were distributed, and 90 valid responses were collected for statistical analysis, indicating a response rate of 90%. The data was analyzed using the SPSS program to extract research results based on the sample responses. The research yielded several conclusions, the most important of which is that the auditor's responsibility is to express an opinion on the financial data based on the audit work conducted in accordance with international auditing standards. In light of these findings, the researcher recommends that the management, as the primary party responsible for presenting the financial data fairly, carefully review the reports before sharing them with stakeholders to ensure accuracy, completeness, and absence of errors or omissions

Article: The German Supply Chain Law: A First Step Towards More Corporate Sustainability

The German supply chain law ( Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz, abbreviated: LkSG) which enters into force on 1 January 2023 is part of the developing legal framework for human rights in global supply chains. Like the French vigilance law, it represents a new generation of supply chain laws which impose mandatory human rights due diligence obligations. The LkSG requires enterprises to exercise a number of due diligence obligations – from conducting risk analysis to undertaking preventive measures or remedial actions. The law is based on public enforcement via a competent authority, the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control (BAFA). The BAFA monitors and enforces compliance with the due diligence obligations. Non-compliant enterprises can be fined with up to 800,000 Euros and, in some cases, up to 2% of the annual turnover. Whilst the LkSG is an important step towards achieving greater corporate sustainability, it also has limitations. It was a political compromise and, as such, it does not include a new civil liability for non-compliance. Moreover, by default, it only applies to the enterprise’s own business area and its direct suppliers, whereas indirect suppliers are only included where the enterprise has substantiated knowledge that an obligation has been violated. Supply chain law, Germany, Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz, LkSG, business, human rights, home state laws, human rights due diligence, UN Guiding Principles

A segurança do paciente e o erro sob a perspectiva do pensamento complexo: pesquisa documental

Abstract Objective To analyze the concepts related to Patient Safety and Error expressed in Brazilian official documents, from the perspective of complex thinking. Method Documentary research on the websites of the Federal Official Gazette, Ministry of Health, and Patient Safety of the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency. The descriptors Patient Safety and Medical Error were used in the period from 1999 to 2020. The excerpts were treated following the Content Analysis technique, developed in three stages: pre-analysis; exploration of the material; and treatment of results. Results Of the total of 498 documents, nine were selected and originated the categories: Meaning of patient safety and Concepts related to the meaning of error. Final considerations Patient safety refers to protection, risk minimization and harm prevention, continuous improvements, good practices, and quality of care. An error refers to an incident, adverse event, and harm. To prevent an error, it is necessary to recognize and understand it as an event inherent to health services. Thus, rationality protects us from error and illusion, allows thought advancement, accepts self-criticism and argument contestation, expands understanding and development of knowledge.

Justice Samuel Nelson and the Seneca Indians

Justice Samuel Nelson and the Seneca Indians Laurence M. Hauptman (bio) Scholars examining the career of Justice Samuel Nelson, who served on the Supreme Court from 1845 to 1872, have considered the jurist's record on the bench to be mediocre.1 According to historian Frank Otto Gatell, Justice Nelson "did not leave a deep impression on the history of the court."2 Political scientist Carl B. Swisher concluded that Nelson was a "stable, sound, and unspectactular judge"; that he "was not a man of deeply philosophical bent or soaring imagination"; and that he exhibited an "unwillingness to stretch the law to make it conform to local moral sentiment."3 Indeed, Nelson has largely been viewed through the lens of his concurring opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857).4 Consequently, scholars have labeled him a "doughface justice," castigating him, along with Justice Robert Grier of Pennsylvania, for being the only two Northern jurists on the bench who voted with the majority in the case.5 In assessing Nelson's overall importance, scholars examining the justice's service on the Taney-led and Chase-led Courts have failed to analyze or even mention two of his most important opinions: Fellows v. Blacksmith (1857) and The New York Indians (1866). In the first of these cases, Nelson favored the Tonawanda Senecas; a decade later, the justice favored the treaty rights of the Seneca Nation of Indians.6 The cases permanently affected the Tonawanda Senecas and the Seneca Nation of Indians, two separate, federally recognized governments that today occupy four reservations in western New York State: Allegany, Cattaraugus, Oil Spring, and Tonawanda. After the Revolution, the Senecas, original members of the Iroquois Confederacy, occupied approximately six million acres of lands. Their vast territory was attractive to land speculators, promoters of canals and turnpikes, New York politicians pushing for Empire State development, and Americans seeking access to the Great Lakes and Ohio Country. As a result, from the time of the federal Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1784 onward, [End Page 7] the Senecas faced unrelenting pressures to cede all or select parcels of their land. Despite specific assurances made by the Washington administration in the federal Treaty of Canandaigua in1794 to guarantee the Seneca land base, dispossession continued. In the federal Treaty of Big Tree in 1797, federal officials recognized ten, later eleven, Seneca reservations totaling 202,000 acres. However, because of the nefarious actions of state and federal politicians in collusion with the Holland and later Ogden Land Companies, the Senecas continued to be dispossessed and threatened with removal to the Indian Territory well into the 1850s.7 The question arises about why Nelson favored the Senecas' position in his opinions in 1857 and 1866. After all, Nelson had been a loyal member of Martin Van Buren's Albany Regency, the fledgling Democratic political machine that dominated New York politics in the 1820s, and which in the 1830s had pushed for Indian removal from New York State. Even Nelson's appointment to the United States Supreme Court in 1845 was tied to Jacksonian politics after three Whigs had been rejected by the Democratic-controlled Senate.8 However, Nelson was to write the Court's opinion in Fellows v. Blacksmith. and convince all of his fellow jurists, including five appointed by Presidents Jackson and Van Buren, to vote with him. He even persuaded Justice James Moore Wayne, a Georgian who had actively been a proponent Click for larger view View full resolution Table 1. Seneca Land Losses in Treaties During Justice Nelson's Lifetime* [End Page 8] Click for larger view View full resolution Scholars mostly remember Samuel Nelson as a "dough-face" for his concurring opinion in Dred Scott v. Sand-ford (1857) and have failed to consider two of his seminal opinions favoring the Tonawanda Senecas and the Seneca Nation of Indians. of removal of Creeks and Cherokees, to support his opinion.9 Justice Nelson's favorable response to the crises facing the Senecas was conditioned by a myriad of factors. He selectively drew inspiration and ideas from four separate sources. First, Nelson's residence in Cooperstown, New York, and his connections there to the family of James Fenimore Cooper...

Transferred, Preserved, and Destroyed

During the 1950s, the Province of Manitoba microfilmed and then destroyed thousands of files created by the federal Department of the Interior’s Dominion Lands Branch (DLB). These records, dating from about 1870 to 1930, were transferred from the federal government to the province in the immediate post-war period. They were drawn from a group of more than 5.6 million files occupying 11,640 square feet of office space in downtown Ottawa. During the Second World War, the civil servants responsible for the DLB files were pressured by their superiors to destroy the files in order to free up space and filing cabinets. DLB officials, although not trained archivists, took their responsibility as custodians of the records seriously and sought to prevent the wholesale and indiscriminate destruction of the files. They were supported by archivists who considered the DLB files to be valuable historical documents on the colonization of Western Canada. Eventually, the conflict between preservation and destruction was resolved by dispersing the records; some were transferred to the western provinces and territories, while the remaining files were deposited in the Public Archives of Canada. The first files to be transferred were those related to lands in Manitoba. This article clarifies the provenance of the DLB’s Manitoba files and argues for their enduring value as records of the history of settler colonialism in the province while also revealing the role of non-archivist civil servants as custodians of government records in the mid- 20th century.

ОЦЕНКА ЭФФЕКТИВНОСТИ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫХ ЗАКУПОК В РОССИИ

The article analyzes the approaches of the scientific community and federal executive authorities to assessing the effectiveness of public procurement, characterizes existing assessment models, identifies similarities and differences between the theoretical proposals of scientists and the practical implementation of federal departments, and identifies their shortcomings. The author has proposed a new, unified system for assessing public procurement for all government customers, based on a block structure of indicators.

Impact of Ethical Leadership on Employee Performance in the Public Sector: Does Leader-Member Exchange Matter?

This study assessed the impact of ethical leadership on employee performance in the public sector using leader-member exchange as a mediator. Data for this quantitative study was gathered using a structured questionnaire administered to Nigerian federal public officials in some selected ministries. A conceptual model was drawn and put to the test using the PLS-SEM. Based on the results, all hypotheses were significant at p < 0.001. More importantly, ethical leadership positively and significantly impacts leader-member exchange and employee productivity. More so, leader-member exchange mediates the relationship between ethical leadership and employee performance. This study’s findings improve on earlier studies on ethical leadership and leader-member exchange relationships. Also, it suggests the importance of leaders’ moral behaviour and their relationship with subordinates in the workplace, by imbibing workplace ethics. This study has added to the continuing discussion on ethical leadership and its implications in the public sector in a developing nation like Nigeria.

Practices and Needs in Reintegration Programs for Violent Extremist Offenders in the United States: The Probation Officer Perspective

The number of violent extremists in prison and on probation in the United States is clearly increasing, highlighting the need for guidance and knowledge on how to best reintegrate this population. Using a mixed-methods approach comprised of interview and survey data, our study describes current resources, practices, and needs of federal probation officers managing individuals with a history of engagement in violent extremism. We identified three key issues relevant to the management of violent extremist releasees: mental health assistance, risk assessment tools, and recidivism rates.

Personality, workstation type, task focus, and happiness in the workplace

The current study adds to the emerging interest in workplace person-environmental associations by exploring the interaction between employee personality traits and office workstation type (open bench seating, cubicle, private office) in predicting on-task focus and happiness. To capture an ecologically valid assessment of such interactions, 231 federal office workers completed momentary and global, one-time surveys. While global focus ratings were highest for private offices workers, there were no differences between workstation types in momentary focus ratings. Open bench seating was more beneficial to momentary focus and happiness for employees high in extraversion, while detrimental to momentary focus for those high on neuroticism. These results illustrate the importance of considering personality when designing work spaces that improve employee focus and happiness.

Vote Aquí Hoy: The 1975 Extension of the Voting Rights Act and the Creation of Language Minorities

AbstractThe year 1975 marked a watershed year for Spanish-surnamed people in the United States and their relationship with the federal government. In that year Congress extended the Voting Rights Act to include a “language minority” category, requiring federal election officials to translate election materials under certain conditions. By validating language rights for language minorities, Congress expanded federal voting protections far beyond African Americans. Advocates for Spanish speakers took up the cause before Congress, which created a new federally protected category based on the long history of discrimination in education and society they collected in testimonies. These language protections catered largely to Spanish speakers, though the category also included Alaska Natives, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. The process of gaining a separate language minority status is explored in this article, which explains how Congress chose to create a law that included Spanish speakers by name.

Specific Aspects of Immunotherapy for Multiple Sclerosis in Switzerland—A Structured Commentary, Update 2022

Multiple sclerosis (MS), particularly relapsing MS (RMS), has become a treatable disease in recent decades, and immunotherapies are now able to influence long-term disease course. A wide range of disease-modifying drugs are available, which makes the choice of therapy in individual cases considerably more complex. Due to specific regulatory aspects (partly diverging approvals by Swissmedic compared to the European Medicines Agency (EMA), and an independent evaluation process for the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) specialities list (SL)), we issued a consensus recommendation regarding specific aspects of immunotherapy for MS in Switzerland in 2019. Here, we present revised recommendations with an update on newly approved drugs and new safety aspects, also in reference to the risk of COVID-19 infection and vaccination.

FAMILY CAREGIVING FOR OLDER ADULTS IN LONG-TERM CARE DURING THE PANDEMIC: STRESS, SOCIAL SUPPORT, AND ADAPTATION

Abstract Older adults residing in long-term care (LTC) are especially vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic. Federal and local health officials have issued strict visitation guidelines, including family caregivers. Given that family caregivers are essential in the well-being for older adults in LTC, these measures have had an enormous impact. As little is known about the experiences of family caregivers, the purpose of this study was to explore how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted family caregivers’ roles, mental health, and adaptation. Semi-structured interviews (N=25) were conducted with family caregivers of older adults in LTC (Mean age= 59.7; 92% female) via phone/Zoom. An interview guide led the question asking process and participants were asked open-ended questions about the impact of COVID-19 related protocols on their caregiving, mental health, and sources of social support. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed in Nvivo, guided by Grounded Theory methods. The majority of participants (76%) identified as a child of their care recipient. Findings highlight that most participants experienced numerous changes to their caregiving tasks, such as assisting with activities of daily living (ADLs), limited monitoring for their loved ones, and a reduction of social support provided to the care recipient. Family caregivers also reported other changes in their roles that resulted in increased stress and mental health concerns. These concerns were discussed in detail, including ways in which family caregivers adapted to their new roles and managed their stress. Findings from this study will inform interventions geared to better support family caregivers, particularly during times of crisis.

Qualitative research in education

Since it entered education in the mid-20th century, qualitative research has been a well-established methodology among educational researchers. Its strength lies in its nature, scope, and methodological flexibility to understand education's cultural, social, political and moral phenomena. Between the 1970s and 1980s, the relevance and superiority of quantitative vs. qualitative research in education were debated in academic forums. The paradigm debate was so intense that it reached political discussions. In 2002, the National Research Council (NRC) of the United States of America recommended the Federal Department of Education the exclusion of qualitative research from federal funds because it was not considered scientific research. A similar situation was observed in England and Australia. Since then, qualitative research has continued to develop as a model of educational research with the support of private funds. This paper revisits qualitative education research and examines its developments to reposition itself as a legitimate model of scholarly research in a political-scientific era.

EVIDENCE IN THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT – THE ROLE OF FORENSIC EXPERTS: THE UKRAINIAN CONTEXT

Background: Ukraine faced unprecedented challenges for to the national justice system and the possibility of using international justice to bring the Russian Federation military, officers,and officials to justice after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation on 24 February 24, 2022. Since In March 2022, the ICC Prosecutor has started an investigation of into war crimes in Ukraine. In addition, joint investigative groups are carrying out activities. Cooperation between pre-trial investigation bodies of Ukraine through the Prosecutor General of Ukraine with and the International Criminal Court has been established. Therefore, the research of into possible problems in the criminal procedure of prosecution for war crimes is one of the priority areas for Ukrainian law enforcement practice and legal science. Methods: The present article is devoted to the peculiarities of the ICC international criminal justice, in particular the ICC jurisdiction in the territory of Ukraine (Ukraine has not ratified the ІСС Rome Statute), the ICC model of administration of justice, the rules of admissibility of evidence, the status of experts, and the features of expert involvement during ICC trials. Results and Conclusions: The authors found that several provisions of the joint Order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, and the Office of the Prosecutor General ‘On approval of the Procedure for interaction between bodies and units of the National Police of Ukraine, health care institutions and the bodies of the Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine in establishing the fact of the death of a person during martial law on the territory of Ukraine’ dated 9 March 2022 do not correspond to the Code of Criminal Procedure of Ukraine. The authors emphasise that the erroneous provisions of this bylaw could serve as a legal basis for avoiding criminal responsibility for war crimes.

Design of humanitarian supply chain system by applying the general two-stage network DEA model

PurposeThe recent COVID-19 outbreak and severe natural disasters make the design of the humanitarian supply chain network (HSCN) a crucial strategic issue in a pre-disaster scenario. The HSCN design problem deals with the location/allocation of emergency response facilities (ERFs). This paper aims to propose and demonstrate how to design an efficient HSCN configuration under the risk of ERF disruptions.Design/methodology/approachThis paper considers four performance measures simultaneously for the HSCN design by formulating a weighted goal programming (WGP) model. Solving the WGP model with different weight values assigned to each performance measure generates various HSCN configurations. This paper transforms a single-stage network into a general two-stage network, treating each HSCN configuration as a decision-making unit with two inputs and two outputs. Then a two-stage network data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach is applied to evaluate the HSCN schemes for consistently identifying the most efficient network configurations.FindingsAmong various network configurations generated by the WGP, the single-stage DEA model does not consistently identify the top-ranked HSCN schemes. In contrast, the proposed transformation approach identifies efficient HSCN configurations more consistently than the single-stage DEA model. A case study demonstrates that the proposed transformation method could provide a more robust and consistent evaluation for designing efficient HSCN systems. The proposed approach can be an essential tool for federal and local disaster response officials to plan a strategic design of HSCN.Originality/valueThis study presents how to transform a single-stage process into a two-stage network process to apply the general two-stage network DEA model for evaluating various HSCN configurations. The proposed transformation procedure could be extended for designing some supply chain systems with conflicting performance metrics more effectively and efficiently.

Executives in Politics

We study the involvement of corporate executives in U.S. politics over the last 40 years. First, we document that the share of business politicians in federal elected office increased from 13.3% in 1980% to 22.6% in 2018, with most of the increase occurring over the last two decades. Second, we find that business politicians enjoy an early fundraising advantage over their opponents, both because they are more likely to self-fund their campaigns and because they receive more campaign contributions from their firms. Third, the election of business politicians benefits their industries and firms, which experience positive abnormal stock returns when their executives win political office. We also show that business politicians, once elected, vote for policies that shift the balance of power toward corporate interests. Using close elections for identification, we show that this policy shift cannot be attributed solely to the changes in the underlying preferences of the electorate. Overall, our results indicate that corporate executives have become more involved in U.S. politics and that this involvement has benefited business interests and affected aggregate legislative outcomes. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance. Funding: The authors thank the Digital Age Management Research Area at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) and Centre for Applied Research on International Markets, Banking, Finance and Regulation (BAFFI CAREFIN) at Bocconi University for financial support. The Area and the Center played no role in study design, data collection and analysis, or preparation of the manuscript. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4595 .

Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox by Caroline E. Janney

Reviewed by: Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox by Caroline E. Janney Yael Sternhell (bio) Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox. By Caroline E. Janney. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Pp. 344. Cloth, $30.00.) In some ways Caroline Janney’s new contribution is a significant departure from her previous book, the influential Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation (2013), a synthetic and wide-ranging tome, which ambitiously argues that America’s reunification was a far more qualified and contentious process than most scholars have come to believe. This time around she has chosen to work on a different scale, training her eye on one body of men, Lee’s army, at a particular moment, the first few weeks following their surrender at Appomattox Court House. She takes a long and close look at this episode, seeking, in her words, to “slow down the pace” and take in the story “frame by frame” (3). The result is highly revealing. Janney’s research lays bare the confusion, inconsistencies, and uncertainty that pervaded the process of bringing the Civil War to an end. She begins with the very act of surrendering and shows the extent to which soldiers and officers in the Army of Northern Virginia actually refused to surrender and fled Appomattox in hopes of continuing the fight farther south. While this in and of itself is not a new insight, Janney’s careful reconstruction of the effort by men of all ranks to avoid making peace almost at any cost adds materially to existing knowledge. Janney also pays much attention to the mechanisms of surrender, in particular to the paroling of Confederates, which created as many problems as it solved. Were paroled soldiers free to come and go as they pleased? Did they enjoy protection from indictment for treason? If they hailed from loyal states like Maryland or West Virginia, could they simply go home? Each U.S. officer dealing with ex-Confederates seems to have interpreted the meaning of the term differently based on personal preferences and practical exigencies. Janney also zeroes in on the deceptively simple question of how Confederate soldiers actually got home. There was nothing simple, in fact, about hundreds of thousands of hungry and penniless men needing to travel from Virginia to points as remote as New Orleans and East Texas. Many expected that the government against which they had fought for four years would feed them and provide free transportation across the South. Federal officials from Ulysses S. Grant down to local provost marshals were exasperated by the boldness of rebels, who were behaving, as Janney puts it, “as if the rebellion had never happened” (120). And yet getting men home was a critical step in ensuring the war was truly over and preventing a new insurgency of guerrilla warfare. As with other aspects [End Page 580] of Federal leadership during those crucial weeks, the ambiguity regarding ex-Confederates’ legal status as American citizens, combined with the enormous challenges of dismantling the Confederacy, resulted in “policies that defied both logic and law” along with a fair amount of administrative chaos on every level (190). Ends of War also offers important conclusions about the origins of the Lost Cause myth, showing the prevalence of its core tenets among the men of Lee’s army and its explanatory power for soldiers trying to make sense of defeat. In Janney’s reading, Lee’s farewell address is a defiant document, both reflecting and enhancing a sentiment shared by privates and generals alike. “The immediate aftermath of Appomattox,” she writes, “confirmed that a deep and abiding commitment to the Confederacy had not ended with the surrender. In some ways, it had only begun” (6). Another focus of the book is Grant, who comes across as a perplexingly vacillating and irresolute leader. At times he acts as conciliator in chief, offering surrender terms that allow the culture of unrepentance to flourish and instill in ex-Confederates a sense of entitlement toward the federal government. At other times he appears as a pragmatic general, attempting to prevent additional loss of life and...

Who Must Go?: Drawing the Borders of White Supremacy in the Early Republic

Who Must Go?: Drawing the Borders of White Supremacy in the Early Republic Jeffrey Ostler (bio) Samantha Seeley, Race, Removal, and the Right to Remain: Migration and the Making of the United States. Williamsburg, Va.: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture; Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. xi + 354 pp. Figures, maps, notes, and index. $34.95. In this finely crafted, deeply researched, and highly original work, Samantha Seeley makes an important addition to a growing body of scholarship that is revealing essential connections between Indigenous and Black history in the early republic. Much of this work has focused on relations between Indigenous and Black people, especially in the South, where Native nations enslaved and incorporated Black people and where Blacks enslaved to whites crossed paths with Natives.1 Other work has examined evolving ideas and policies concerning the place of Indigenous and Black people in an aggressively expansionist United States.2 Seeley makes a significant contribution to the second area of inquiry, while also providing rich accounts of how Indigenous and Black people contested efforts to remove them beyond the boundaries of national belonging by pursuing what she terms “the right to remain.” When historians think of removal in the early republic what usually comes to mind is the expulsion of Native nations following the 1830 Indian Removal Act. Seeley takes a considerably broader perspective, observing that “removal was a capacious term,” applying, for example, to poor laws which required “self deportation” and the “forced relocation” of people prosecuted under the Alien and Sedition Acts. Most often, however, “state and federal officials . . . directed removal toward free African Americans and Native Americans,” using it to “draw the limits of belonging based on race” (p. 7). Seeley also proposes that removal has a deep history. Rather than seeing Indian removal as emerging in the mid to late 1820s, a commonplace in the scholarship, Seeley contends that it “moved as rapidly and with such devastation in the 1830s because its foundation had been prepared over the preceding decades” (p. 23). Similarly, although the American Colonization Society (ACS), which proposed to colonize (remove) free and emancipated Blacks to Liberia, was organized in 1816, this project “distilled a variety of ideas” that had circulated since the [End Page 382] 1770s (p. 208). The opposition of free Blacks to the ACS also had deep roots, resting on the work of “Black men and women” who had “formed institutions to insist on their right to remain in the United States” in the 1790s (p. 208). Seeley amplifies her argument for a long history of removal in her first chapter, “Removal and the British Empire,” which serves as an extended preface by sketching various initiatives to control populations reaching back to the sixteenth century. One such initiative was the transport of convicts and vagrants, criminalized by poor laws, to Europe and overseas colonies. Mimicking the metropole, North American colonists themselves enacted poor laws. Colonists also needed to eliminate Indigenous people and so in parts of New England and Virginia, they turned to war to remove them, killing some, forcing others to relocate elsewhere, and sending many into slavery. At the same time, to meet labor needs without draining England’s population, the British entered the slave trade, a project that Seeley notes entailed removal of Africans from their native continent. By the late eighteenth century, British policy shifted to controlling migration through restrictions on taking up western lands in the Proclamation of 1763 and, as movements to abolish slavery gained strength, through plans to colonize emancipated slaves, possibly in Florida, possibly in the Caribbean. In this way, Seeley observes, “[r]emoval and abolition were linked from the beginning” (p. 41). The bulk of Race, Removal, and the Right to Remain is divided into two parts. The first of these, consisting of three chapters, focuses on Indigenous removal and begins with the observation that the American Revolution “created a nation dependent on Native land for its own future” and that the Rrevolution “made removal a founding project” (p. 56). Taking the usual meaning of removal, it may appear that Seeley’s chapters will focus on the uprooting of Indigenous communities from their homelands and...

December 2022 Land Transportation News [Transportation Systems

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti joined city, federal, and airport officials to debut a critical component of the future of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) with the unveiling of the first automated people mover (APM) train car on 2 August 2022. LAX will be the first U.S. airport to feature the INNOVIA 300 APM vehicles, which showcase the latest technology to help revolutionize how travelers get to and from the fifth-busiest airport in the world.

The new approval procedure for clinical trials of medicinal products in the European Union-challenges for the pharmaceutical industry in Germany

In the European Union (EU), 27 May 2014 was asignificant date for clinical trials. Since that day, the EU Clinical Trials Regulation 536/2014 (EU-CTR) officially came into force. The new EU-CTR replaces EU Directive 2001/20/EC and fundamentally reforms the way clinical trials are applied for and conducted in Europe. For clinical trial sponsors, the responsible regulatory authorities, ethics committees, and all EU member states, the new EU-CTR brings profound changes. However, it has taken along time for the new regulation to be applied, as the establishment of the new Clinical Trials Information System (CTIS) of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has taken some time. Contrary to expectations, the establishment of this system could not be completed in 2016, but only with anotification from the EMA on 31 July 2021.Overall, Germany is well prepared for the new regulation. The German Medicinal Products Act (AMG) was adjusted at an early stage. Authorities and ethics committees have tested the cooperation in apilot phase from 2015 to 2021 and have shown that the cooperation in Germany works well in the evaluation of applications.However, initial experience from the application process shows that there are some fundamental problems with CTIS and that there is also aneed for further adaptation at the national level in Germany. This includes, for example, the integration of the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) approval or the harmonization of ethics committee requirements. It is important that Germany addresses these points at the national level to remain competitive.