Judgment on Foreign Soldiers' Immunity for War Crimes Committed Abroad (BGH)

On January 28, 2021, the German Federal Court of Justice, or Bundesgerichtshof (BGH), Germany's highest court of ordinary jurisdiction, delivered its judgment in Case 3 StR 564/19 pertaining to questions of universal jurisdiction over international crimes and the extent to which foreign soldiers would be barred from prosecution in Germany based on claims of (functional) immunity for war crimes committed abroad. The decision strikes at the heart of a debate where such exceptions to immunity (ratione materiae) are yet to be uniformly agreed upon at an international level; it also comes on the verge of a number of related judgments that are pending both in German and other European courts. In the present case, the BGH held that according to the general rules of international law, criminal prosecution in Germany for war crimes committed abroad would not be precluded based on the notion of functional immunity, “when the acts have been committed by a foreign, lower-ranking defendant in the exercise of foreign sovereign activity.” Neither the BGH nor Germany's supreme guardian of the “Basic Law,” the Federal Constitutional Court, or Bundesverfassungsgericht (BVerfG), has previously pronounced itself on questions of functional immunity in criminal proceedings.

Differences in the Anthropometric and Physiological Profiles of Hungarian Male Rowers of Various Age Categories, Rankings and Career Lengths: Selection Problems

Background: Little is known about the anthropometric and physiological profiles of lower-ranking athletes who aspire to rise to the pinnacle of their profession.Aim: The aim of this study was to create anthropometric and physiological profiles of Hungarian male rowers of different age categories (15–16, 17–18, and over 18 years), sports rankings and career lengths.Materials and Methods: Anthropometric and physiological profiles were created for 55 juniors, 52 older juniors and 23 seniors representing seven of the largest Hungarian rowing clubs. One-way independent analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare arithmetic means.Results: Rowers in older age categories were significantly taller (185.0 ± 5.0 cm vs. 183.0 ± 7.3 cm vs. 178.7 ± 7.2 cm) and heavier (81.1 ± 8.8 kg vs. 73.7 ± 8.4 kg vs. 66.8 ± 12.3 kg) than their younger peers, with significantly higher BMI values and larger body dimensions. Compared to younger athletes, rowers in older age categories also covered 2,000 m significantly faster (6.6 ± 0.3 min vs. 6.9 ± 0.4 min vs. 7.5 ± 0.5 min) while developing significantly more power (372.2 ± 53.0 W vs. 326.8 ± 54.5 W vs. 250.6 ± 44.6 W). Similarly, seniors and older juniors had higher values of maximal oxygen uptake and force max (by 6.2 and 7.0 ml/kg/min, and by 263.4 and 169.8 N). Within the older juniors, internationally ranked rowers had significantly greater body height (+ 5.9 cm), body mass (+ 6.1 kg), sitting height (+ 2.7 cm), arm span (+ 7.9 cm), limb length (+ 3.73 cm) and body surface area (+ 0.21 m2). They also rowed 2,000 m significantly faster (–0.43 min, p < 0.001) and had significantly higher values of power (+ 58.3 W), relative power (+ 0.41 W/kg), jump height (+ 4.5 cm), speed max (+ 0.18 m/s) and force max (+ 163.22 N).Conclusion: The study demonstrated that potential differences in anthropometric and physiological profiles are more difficult to capture in non-elite rowers, and that the final outcome may be determined by external factors. Therefore, athletes with superior aptitude for rowing are more difficult to select from among lower-ranking rowers, and further research is needed to determine specific training requirements to achieve the maximum rowing performance.

A new lithostratigraphic framework and unified nomenclature for the Nsuze Group of the Nkandla sub-basin, southern Kaapvaal Craton, South Africa

During the early 20th century the term Insuzi Series, later reclassified as the Nsuze Group of the Pongola Supergroup, was proposed for a volcano-sedimentary succession exposed in the upper Nsuze River valley in central KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Subsequently, however, there has been little consensus on lithostratigraphic frameworks within the type area, and limited correlation with the exceptionally well-defined stratigraphy within the main Pongola basin. Recent mapping, combined with newly acquired high-resolution aeromagnetic data, satellite imagery, and available published geochronological data suggest that previously published schemes within the Nkandla sub-basin require revision. Utilising important regional marker units, as well as the stratigraphic positions of distinct sedimentary facies within the otherwise volcanic Nsuze Group, a working model is proposed. Lithostratigraphic units are well represented in the Mhlatuze and Nkandla inliers with examples from these areas given prominence. Where exposed, potential correlates within the Nsuze nappe complex are discussed. Within the proposed scheme the siliciclastic Mantonga Formation forms the base of the Nsuze Group, nonconformably overlying basement granitoids of the Kaapvaal Craton within the Mhaltuze Inlier. Mafic volcanics of the Nhlebela Formation overlie the Mantonga Formation in the inlier. These two lower units are, however, not exposed elsewhere in the sub-basin. The sedimentary White Mfolozi Formation forms the base of the succession in the Nkandla Inlier. Diamictites and stromatolite-bearing carbonate lithologies unique to this unit are utilised for regional third-order correlations with the type-area in the White Mfolozi Inlier. Mafic volcanics of the Agatha Formation overlie the White Mfolozi Formation in all exposures, but are most extensively developed within the Mdlelanga syncline of the Nkandla Inlier. Sedimentary and volcaniclastic lithologies of the Mkuzane Formation cap the Nsuze Group in the Mhlatuze and Nkandla inliers. Thickness of this formation is, however, highly variable having been subjected to pre-Vutshini Formation erosion. Through detailed reinterpretation of the stratigraphy of the Nkandla sub-basin we present a third order, (formation) scale, lithostratigraphic scheme encompassing all the formational units of the currently accepted stratigraphy within the main Pongola basin. This working model has the potential for lower-ranking units to be identified and be placed at their appropriate stratigraphic levels in future.

Mapping trends in educational-leadership research: A longitudinal examination of knowledge production, approaches and locations

The field of educational-leadership research has broadened over the last 50 years, with diverse knowledge-production traditions (e.g. functionalist and critical); audiences (e.g. practitioners, researchers and policymakers) and preferred sites of publication. In this article, we trace how the objectives, methods, claims and relative significance of educational-leadership research, and the identities and epistemological assumptions of educational-leadership researchers, are changing over time. We systematically and manually analysed trends in educational-leadership research through keyword searches across all journal publication sites over 50 years, exploring researchers’ contributions, epistemological positioning and journal choices. We also explored the balance between empirical and conceptual scholarship, geographical location and use of theory. We found that critical educational-leadership research is common across the international field but is more likely to be published in high-ranking generalist education journals or lower-ranking educational-leadership-focused journals. Our research contributes a novel, robust and, significantly, relatively wide-ranging empirical basis to identify key trends, gaps and silences within the field of educational-leadership research over time. Our research enables better understanding of the areas that are potentially under-researched and the ways the field might be creating and reproducing power dynamics in research.

World War II in Film

World War II was unprecedented both in its magnitude and its horror. The massive conflict—which lasted six years, spread across thirty countries, and involved some seventy million combatants—left more dead, both civilian and military, than any other war in history. As if the brutality of the Blitz, Bastogne, Guadalcanal, the siege of Leningrad, the bombing of Dresden, the D-Day invasion, and countless other instances of death and carnage were not enough, there were Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and, of course, the unfathomable evil of the Holocaust. The nature of that evil, the stark polarization of the world between the Allies and Axis powers, the storytelling potential of men and women confronting the dangers of combat or the challenges of life on the home front, and the propagandistic capacities of the film medium all help to explain the powerful pull that World War II has exerted on filmmakers. Yet another factor is the sheer diversity of the contexts in which the war unfolded. There were the multiple theaters of war in Europe, the Pacific, and North Africa; the expansion of naval and aerial warfare in addition to land combat; new and frightening technologies of destruction culminating in the apocalyptic power of the atom bomb; widespread social changes resulting from the war; the exploits of antifascist Resistance movements; and the multiple dimensions of the Holocaust. These varied and numerous facets of the war seem almost to demand some form of cinematic representation—the result being an enormous, and still growing, number of films dealing with World War II. That the war’s beginning coincided with the maturation of the global film industry—and, ironically, with what has often been called Hollywood’s greatest year, 1939—only underscores the seemingly inevitable association of this war with its renderings on screen. Recent scholarship on World War II has shifted its emphasis from those in high command to the subaltern perspectives of the rank and file; a similar pattern has gradually emerged in film. To be sure, some earlier productions also emphasized the perspectives of common soldiers—two famous examples are The Story of GI Joe and Ballad of a Soldier. But this tendency has become more prevalent in recent years, so that once popular movies about generals (e.g., Patton and Tora, Tora, Tora) have given way to films that focus on enlistees and lower-ranking officers, such as Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, Dunkirk, and The Pacific, among others. Moreover, films today increasingly depict the participation of women and racial minorities in the war (as in Pearl Harbor and Fury). Black fighting units especially have received more attention in such films as Red Tails, The Tuskegee Airmen, and Miracle at St. Anna. These and other patterns of historical continuity and change in films of World War II receive attention in the scholarly studies reviewed in this essay. And, not surprisingly, the scholarship about World War II films is immense. To keep the list of citations manageable, the focus here is primarily on feature films, with categories including broad-based overviews, studies of individual directors, and discussions of such issues as genre, gender, race, the Holocaust, and the war’s depiction in different national cinemas. These categories are intended not to be comprehensive, but rather to indicate the range of scholarly work already completed, and to suggest pathways for yet further explorations of a seemingly infinite subject.

Mass Media Occurrence as a Political Career Maker

Ample work in political communication showed that high-level politicians get more media attention than their lower ranking colleagues. With power comes media attention. More than hard work, charisma, or experience, it is the political function performed by politicians that is the crucial factor in explaining how much media attention they receive. But what about the opposite relationship: does media attention also generate power? In this paper, we examine the media path leading to power. Basically, two important career steps of politicians are assessed: becoming a party leader and becoming a minister; we test whether, compared to those who did not make a top career, the politicians who came to take these steps were more prominent in the media before they moved up and became elite politicians. We draw on the case of Belgium here and leverage on a longitudinal automated media content analysis (2000–2020) combined with a data set of 532 national/regional politicians and their careers. The study finds that media occurrences matters for being promoted to a top function in Belgium, more so for becoming a minister than for becoming a party leader. Furthermore, rejecting our initial idea based on political mediatization theories, the influence of media occurrence does not seem to increase through time for both functions.

Autobiographische Textüberlieferung im Alten Reich anhand phraseologischer „Cluster“

Summary There exists a group of texts among the autobiographical inscriptions of the Old Kingdom that, due to their close phraseological relationship, must go back to a common source, and which can be described as “Saqqara group” according to their place of origin. It dates back to the turn from the 5th to the 6th dynasty. This group can now be extended by additional autobiographies and furthermore differentiated. The classical creation of a stemma cannot be used, but instead different significant text sequences, which are called “clusters” here, are examined. The texts of this autobiographical cluster, starting from Saqqara, find their prolongation at the beginning of the 6th dynasty in El-Hawawish and it can be observed that they are transferred from higher-ranking officials at the end of the Old Kingdom to lower-ranking officials in the First Intermediate Period.

Reproductive Behavior of Different Species of the Genus Ovis (Ovis Linnaeus, 1758) During Hybridization

BackgroundThere are several mechanisms of species isolation and species conservation, one of which is the behavior of individuals during the mating season. Inter specific hybridization is used to create new breeding forms and breeds of farm animals. The aim of this study was to look into the reproductive behavior of males of cultured sheep breeds and their wild relatives during the mating period in order to identify consistent patterns of movements, elementary motor acts, and individual reactions.ResultsIt was found that the duration of the courtship display in the European mouflon was, with a high degree of confidence, longer than in the male domestic sheep. In mouflons, it was 246.5 ± 31.85 minutes, while in rams, it was 88.46 ± 9.23 minutes (p < 0.0001). Many patterns in purebred sheep were shorter, or absent. In wild species, there is a connection between sexual activity and time of day. The highest frequency of intromission in mouflons occurred in the time interval between 6–8 a.m. and 11 p.m.–4 a.m.; in rams, the dependence of sexual activity on the time of day was not observed. During the estrus period, the relationship between females changed. If there were several individuals in the group in the state of estrus at the same time, the dominant females hindered the reproductive success of the lower-ranking sheep.ConclusionsThe present study shows that the patterns of reproductive behavior in males of different species of sheep are similar. However, it was revealed that the species differ in the length of those patterns. A high variability in the strategies of sheep reproduction was observed. For future research, it would be beneficial to focus on the features of the reproductive behavior of female sheep depending on the genotype.

Data Portability between Online Services: An Empirical Analysis on the Effectiveness of GDPR Art. 20

Data portability regulation has promised that individuals will be easily able to transfer their personal data between online service providers. Yet, after more than two years of an active privacy regulation regime in the European Union, this promise is far from being fulfilled. Given the lack of a functioning infrastructure for direct data portability between multiple providers, we investigate in our study how easily an individual could currently make use of an indirect data transfer between providers. We define such porting as a two-step transfer: firstly, requesting a data export from one provider, followed secondly by the import of the obtained data to another provider. To answer this question, we examine the data export practices of 182 online services, including the top one hundred visited websites in Germany according to the Alexa ranking, as well as their data import capabilities. Our main results show that high-ranking services, which primarily represent incumbents of key online markets, provide significantly larger data export scope and increased import possibilities than their lower-ranking competitors. Moreover, they establish more thorough authentication of individuals before export. These first empirical results challenge the theoretical literature on data portability, according to which, it would be expected that incumbents only complied with the minimal possible export scope in order to not lose exclusive consumer data to market competitors free-of-charge. We attribute the practices of incumbents observed in our study to the absence of an infrastructure realizing direct data portability.

Social decision making, hierarchy and emotional contagion are interconnected by the basolateral amygdala

Decisions in social contexts might lead to choices favoring self- or others-interest, depending on the relationships between individuals. Prosocial and helping behaviors are evolutionary conserved across mammals. However, the neurobiological bases of choices that benefit others at a personal cost are not understood. Here, we revealed the role of the basolateral amygdala (BLA) in altruistic and selfish choices. We developed a two-choice social decision-making task in which mice could decide to share or not a positive reinforcement with their conspecifics. Preference for altruistic choices was more evident in males and if the conspecific was familiar. In particular, altruistic choices were associated with social dominance and affective state matching between individuals. Chemogenetic BLA neuronal silencing induced lower ranking hierarchy and less preference for altruistic choices. This provides a neurobiological comparative model of altruistic and selfish choices versus dominance hierarchy and emotional contagion, with relevance to pathologies associated with dysfunctions in social decision-making.