The trouble with foreign fishing vessels and their crew: is a vessel in the hand really worth two in the sea?

Foreign fishing vessel (FFV) apprehensions in the northern Australian Fishing Zone (AFZ) represent a significant and growing problem not just for the government authorities charged with the detection, apprehension and arrest, investigation and prosecution of offenders but for the Federal Government and Australian taxpayers. Arrests in 2005 were more than double those reported for 2004. 1 In one two-week period in late March 2006, 23 FFVs were apprehended carrying a combined total of 197 crew. 2 While the apprehensions do, on the one hand, vindicate the decision to divert increasing Commonwealth funds towards the fight against illegal fishing, 3 they also raise a question for which there is no easy answer: What is to be done with the FFVs and their crews? Immediately consequent upon the boarding and seizure of a FFV, a number of issues – logistical, legal and social – arise. The nature of these issues is such that many agencies, companies and individuals are involved in dealing with them. With several different actors involved in the processing of FFVs and their crew, there is a risk that the extent of the combined drain on national resources has been overlooked. This Comment raises some of the issues which might flow from the arrest of a FFV and focuses on the costs involved in processing the FFV and crew. The review concludes by asking whether the arrest and seizure of FFVs is the best use of Australia's resources

Don\u27t Try This at Home: The FDA\u27s Restrictive Regulation of Home-Testing Devices

Over the past forty years, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has successfully restricted consumers\u27 access to home-testing applications based on the notion that it should protect individuals from their own reactions to test results. In the 1970s, the FDA briefly denied women access to home pregnancy tests that were identical to those used in laboratories. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it relied on concerns about consumer responses to HIV status results to justify a categorical ban on applications for HIV home-testing technology. More recently, it placed burdensome restrictions on direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing companies, such as 23andMe, based on fears that consumers would make irrational medical decisions after receiving genetic variant results. Although the FDA has the statutory authority to ensure the safety and effectiveness of medical devices, it has expansively interpreted the term safety to encompass considerations of how consumers might use test results provided by purely informative devices. This Note argues that courts should not give the FDA deference on its broad interpretation of safety in restricting home-testing devices. It documents the evolution of the expertise-based rationale for judicial deference, noting that courts typically provide scientific agencies, including the FDA, super deference because of the complicated nature of their work. Ultimately, courts should not defer to the FDA’s interpretation of safety because it did not use its scientific expertise when it considered how consumers might react to HIV home-testing and DTC genetic testing results. Further, the FDA should not have the authority to make decisions based on its view of safety because it should not have the power to make value judgments for consumers about whether they should seek their personal medical information

A Question of Evidence: A Critique of Risk Assessment Models Used in the Justice System

This report explores the problems with the present state of risk assessment in the justice field as we at NCCD see them. The critique offered here is the result of many conversations with others in the justice community as well as a review of predictive research conducted in other fields. We recognize that much of what is presented is contrary to current understanding and acceptance, but we hope that it clarifies what evidence is required for the designation of best practice

Reforming Buffalo\u27s Tax Foreclosure Process

The City of Buffalo holds an annual foreclosure auction to collect on delinquent taxes and fees owed by its residents. This is a way for the City to raise revenue that would otherwise go unpaid and for Buffalo citizens to buy buildings and lots at bargain prices. But the foreclosure process is imposing a high cost upon some of Buffalo’s most vulnerable citizens, creating an unnecessary burden on people trying to stay in their homes, and adding to the already existing epidemic of housing abandonment and blight

Best They Forget: Challenging Notions of Remembering and Forgetting

In Jeremiah 31:34 the LORD declares, “No longer will a man teach his neighbour, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest… For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (The NIV Study Bible, 1995, p.1170). It is not the intention of this paper to enter into a theological discussion as to whether or not God is capable of forgetting; however, at very least He chooses the metaphor of forgetting to display his forgiveness for his people. This seems to conflict with a commonly held negative stigma attached to forgetting. It has long been the case, specifically in the classroom, that remembering is considered a positive activity while forgetting is considered a negative one. It is the purpose of this paper to question this assumption by consolidating research done on multiple advantages of forgetting as well as many disadvantages connected to remembering. The discussion will begin with a glimpse at the direction our world could be moving towards in terms of collected memory, an emerging world which brings with it many problems that seem to be solvable only through intentional forgetting. Keeping in mind the theoretical disadvantages of complete memory, one must also recognize the flaws of memory today as well as the possible dangers that memory poses. Last, the research will be made applicable to the classroom and methods of forgetting will be proposed in order to benefit student-learning. This discussion is leading one towards the final conclusion that, at specific times, forgetting is beneficial, ethical, and necessary for advancing student learning