The Right to Access to a Lawyer at Police Stations: Making the European Union Directive Work in Practice
Recent EU Directives provide for a range of procedural protections for suspects and accused persons, going beyond the more broadly articulated standards set out in the European Convention of Human Rights. These reforms are to be welcomed, but their implementation poses a range of challenges for Member States. Drawing on recent empirical research, this article focuses on one measure, the right to legal assistance during police custody. It discusses the range of complex and often inter-related factors that operate to help or to hinder the process of ensuring that the right is ‘practical and effective’ and not merely ‘theoretical and illusory’. Member States do not share a common procedural tradition and alongside ensuring sufficient financial and human resources, effective implementation will require shifts in the legal and occupational cultures of police, prosecutors and the criminal bar.
The Hybrid Nature of Banking Supervision
Independence and accountability, standards in information sharing, nature of supervisory sanctions, compliance with fair trial rights: Several are the profiles relevant under a criminal law perspective, that emerge as critical from the analysis carried out so far on the US and, above all, on the EU banking supervisory systems.
Denitrification of PVA-immobilized denitrifying photosynthetic bacterium, Rhodobacter sphaeroides
Abstract A newly isolated denitrifying strain, Rhodobacter sphaeroides NII2 was immobilized in polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) gel, and the properties of the cells in the gel were examined. The immobilized cells had low or almost no denitrification activity, but the cells were activated by incubation in light with culture medium for denitrification containing 0.5% nitrate and no other nitrogen source. Cells grown in the dark were activated by incubation at an earlier stage and to a higher rate than the light-grown cells. The activation was markedly enhanced in the PVA gel with a low cell concentration. The immobilized cells consumed nitrate with a temporary accumulation of NO 2 and evolved nitrogen gas. The immobilized cells could use various organic compounds as electron donors for denitrification. Thus, the immobilized cells were applied to a continuous treatment of synthetic wastewater using an aparatus devised by this laboratory. The results showed an efficient removal of NO 3 -N from the test water.