A killing in Tripoli (1843): principle and contingency and personal diplomacy
Abstract This article examines the trial in 1843 and 1844 of Giovanni Battista Caruana, a Maltese, for the murder of a Jew in Tripoli. He was found guilty but was not executed because the victim's impoverished wife agreed to accept compensation. The case took place against the background of the British government's increasing impatience with what they saw as uncontrolled Maltese and Ionian communities, leading to the enactment of the Foreign Jurisdiction Act of 1844. It also demonstrated the importance of the individual authority of the Consul, Hanmer Warrington, and the extent to which consuls' personal objectives and opinions weighed on the development of British policy, and the extent to which Warrington's concern to uphold the law coincided with that of the Pasha of Tripoli, so that the case led to a close identification between the local government and the British consular representative.
Words into Texts: Justice Politics and the Written Record at a Trial in Tunis in 1844
Paolo Xuereb, a Maltese migrant in Tunis in the mid nineteenth century, was tried for murder in the court of the Bey of Tunis. Two contemporary documents describing the trial exist. One is a translated (into English) “transcript” made by the US consulate, the other is an Arabic statement of the verdict and sentence validated by some of the principal Islamic legal authorities of the Beylicate. The article compares these two documents and finds that where their focusses coincide they are nearly identical in content. But the differences between the documents are striking: one is an account of the course of the trial, the other a statement of its legalities and conclusions. This rare coincidence of documentation is used to tease out the implications for historians of how testimony given orally at a criminal trial in an Islamic environment is changed and transmitted when it is recorded in written form.
Genotypic diversity in field isolates of Babesia bovis from cattle with babesiosis after vaccination.
OBJECTIVE
To determine whether particular genotypes of Babesia bovis were common to field isolates obtained from cattle properties in Queensland where the B bovis vaccine had apparently failed.


DESIGN
A comparative study of polymerase chain reaction genotypes in different populations of B bovis.


PROCEDURE
Two polymerase chain reaction assays were applied to analyse DNA extracts of B bovis vaccine (K, T and Dixie strains) and 27 field isolates from 24 properties where disease outbreaks had occurred despite the use of the vaccine. To evaluate the stability of the genotypes identified, 11 of the field isolates were inoculated into experimental cattle that had either been previously vaccinated with T strain or not vaccinated.


RESULTS
No particular genotype of B bovis was responsible for the problems observed in previously vaccinated herds. None of the isolates had genotypes identical to the vaccine strains used. No geographic trends among the genotypes were observed. Isolates that originated from the same property also had different genotypes. Blood passage of the 11 field isolates in either previously vaccinated or nonvaccinated cattle did not alter the original genotype.


CONCLUSION
No particular genotypes identified by the Bv80 and BvVA1 polymerase chain reaction assays could be associated with vaccine failures.