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Decree of the Polish Committee of National Liberation of 31 August 1944 concerning “the punishment of Fascist-Hitlerite criminals guilty of homicide and of ill-treatment of the civilian population and prisoners of war, and the punishment of traitors to the Polish Nation,” commonly referred to as the August Decree or sierpniówka, was formally instituted with the purpose of prosecuting and punishing the perpetrators of crimes committed during the German occupation. In practice, however, it gradually evolved into a convenient instrument for the ruthless suppression of both actual and alleged opponents of the communist system.

Abstract The article endorses the view that the royal decrees for the Jerusalem temple inserted in Ezra-Nehemiah (and First Esdras) are not genuine, and explores the historical conditions in which they were composed. It points to similarities between the topical content of Antiochus III's decree issued in 200/198 BCE (Josephus, Ant. 12.138-144) and that of the Persian decrees, and argues that the latter were based on the former. They were composed in the context of the Maccabean crisis, when it was claimed that Jason cancelled the privileges (political and fiscal) which Antiochus had granted (2 Macc 4:7-15), as a legitimizing precedent to Antiochus' decree. Moreover, the Persian decrees were used to explore the economic aspect of the relationship between the local community and imperial ruler in Hellenistic times (taxes and euergetism), and to provide a template for he ideal (Hellenistic) imperial king.

The President of Romania is elected through universal, equal, direct, secret, and freely expressed vote. In order to run for this office, the individual must be a Romanian citizen and at least 35 years of age. The election of the President is validated by the Constitutional Court of Romania, and the mandate commences upon the taking of the Oath of Office. The current duration of the presidential mandate is five years, with the same individual being entitled to a maximum of two consecutive terms. The President of Romania’s duties are generally consistent with those of a semi-presidential republic. During their mandate, the President is not allowed to belong to any political party. Among other responsibilities, the President of Romania also serves as the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces.

El trabajo analiza la producción legislativa de las instituciones centrales del Estado en el período 1979-2023. Cuantifica sus dimensiones y su acusada volatilidad, deduciendo de estos rasgos algunas tendencias del comportamiento de la clase política y del funcionamiento del sistema constitucional. The work analyzes the legislative production of the State’s central institutions from 1979-2023. It quantifies the dimensions and pronounced volatility thereof, deducing from these characteristics determined trends in the behavior of the polit­ical class and the functioning of the constitutional system.

In the 150 years since Schöll's seminal work, the Prytaneion Decree has been studied frequently. Of the groups of honourees mentioned in the decree, the agonistic victors have received the least attention. Most scholars have simply attributed them, without further discussion, to the sphere of war or to the sphere of religion. In this article, athletics is understood as a sphere of action with its own logic: the passages on athletes in the decree are examined in detail and situated within the debate in classical Athens about whether victors of the Panhellenic Games should be honoured by the polis and to what extent. The strange duplication in the decree, which first regulates honours for agonistic victors in general and, in a second paragraph, honours for hippic victors, is related to some texts that viewed hippic victories more critically than gymnic ones. A precise dating of the decree is not possible, but there were several events in the fifth century that might have created the desire among Athenians for a general regulation of sitêsis for athletes.

According to Directive 2014/95/EU on disclosure of non-financial information from 2017 onwards, large companies (exceeding 500 employees) headquartered in Member States will be required to provide a series of social, environmental, and governance statements. The Directive was transposed into Italian law by Legislative Decree 254 of 30 December 2016.The aim of this paper is to evaluate the information gap for Italian companies and,consequently,the adjustments required by the new Directive on non-financial information. In order to analyze the level of non-financial and diversity disclosure, we created an assessment model called “Non-financial information score”, which records the required information as a percentage. We apply it to a sample of 223 large companies.The results (with an average NFIscore of about 49%) show that, in spite of what has previously emerged in the European debate about the application of the Directive on the part of large companies, an information gap remains, although the implementation of the directive should help to fill it in the coming years.In this sense, the potential contribution of the EU directive to non-financial disclosure in Italy appears to be greater than we had expected. Thus, in accordance with the literature, this paper appears to confirm the role of regulation in improving the quality of disclosure of non-financial information.

Paul Flicek and colleagues provide an update on the European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA), a service of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and the Center for Genome Regulation (CRG). The authors describe the EGA policies and infrastructure, how access decisions are made, methods for data submission and future plans for expansion of this database. The European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA) is a permanent archive that promotes the distribution and sharing of genetic and phenotypic data consented for specific approved uses but not fully open, public distribution. The EGA follows strict protocols for information management, data storage, security and dissemination. Authorized access to the data is managed in partnership with the data-providing organizations. The EGA includes major reference data collections for human genetics research.

Background/Purpose. This study investigates the impacts and challenges of Decree No. 86/2018/ND-CP on foreign cooperation and investment in Vietnam’s higher education, aiming to enhance internationalization while addressing local educational needs. Materials/Methods. The analysis draws on empirical data from the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), scholarly literature, and hypothetical stakeholder interviews, including 50 university administrators, 30 rural educators, and 10 MOET staff. The study evaluates the decree’s effects on foreign direct investment (FDI), enrollment trends, curriculum localization, and regulatory oversight. Results. Decree No. 86 has significantly increased FDI in education, with USD 78.9 million invested in 2019, including USD 5.28 million in higher education, reflecting a 58% rise from previous years. It has standardized the education market and reduced brain drain by promoting international-standard programs domestically. However, enrollment rates remain stagnant at 28% since 2010, with only 15% of rural students accessing international programs due to high costs (USD 5,000–10,000 annually) and urban-centric program locations. Curriculum localization challenges persist, with Western-designed programs often misaligned with Vietnam’s socioeconomic needs (r=0.3 correlation between FDI and enrollment growth). Regulatory oversight is limited by insufficient staffing and digital infrastructure, with only 200 inspectors for over 100 institutions. Conclusion. Decree No. 86 has advanced Vietnam’s internationalization of higher education but requires reforms to address enrollment stagnation, enhance curriculum relevance, and strengthen regulatory frameworks. Recommendations include allocating USD 10 million annually for scholarships targeting 5,000 disadvantaged students by 2025, establishing a national task force for curriculum localization by 2026, and investing USD 5 million in regulatory capacity by 2027 to ensure equitable and sustainable educational progress.

A massive amount of sensitive personal data is being collected and used by scientists, businesses, and governments. This has led to unprecedented threats to privacy rights and the security of personal data. There are few solutions that empower individuals to provide systematic consent agreements on distinct personal information and control who can collect, access, and use their data for specific purposes and periods. Individuals should be able to delegate consent rights, access consent-related information, and withdraw their given consent at any time. We propose a smart-contract-based dynamic consent management system, backed by blockchain technology, targeting personal data usage under the general data protection regulation. Our user-centric dynamic consent management system allows users to control their personal data collection and consent to its usage throughout the data lifecycle. Transaction history and logs are recorded in a blockchain that provides trusted tamper-proof data provenance, accountability, and traceability. A prototype of our system was designed and implemented to demonstrate its feasibility. The acceptability and reliability of the system were assessed by experimental testing and validation processes. We also analyzed the security and privacy of the system and evaluated its performance.

PurposeThis paper examines “how” an organisation, over time, responded, and “what strategies” were mobilised, to conform to a specific audit society-inspired model introduced in Italy by the Decree 231 (D231). D231 requires implementing an internal control and audit model and performance accounting to oversee business activities and prevent misconduct.Design/methodology/approachA case study approach was adopted for in-depth analysis of the response strategies (i.e. avoidance and compromise) and related initiatives, which were mobilised in ITAGAS, a public organisation leader in the methane gas distribution sector in Italy. Participant observation, interviews and document analysis were the primary data sources. Theoretically, our analysis is informed by insights drawn from the institutional complexity perspective (Thornton et al., 2012; Pache and Santos, 2013a, b) and Oliver’s (1991) model concerning strategic responses to institutional pressures.FindingsAdopting D231 generated institutional complexity in our case organisation. The analysis highlights two phases: the voluntary and compulsory adoption of the D231 model. The voluntary adoption occurred via a compromising strategy that involved forms of “selective coupling” (Pache and Santos, 2013a), which allowed the organisation to strategically adopt only those structures/practices that were seen as appropriate and consistent with its organisational logics. The compulsory phase was characterised by broader adoption of the D231 model through symbolic conformity. The case organisation adopted “avoidance” strategies (Oliver, 1991) and “co-habiting means-ends” decoupling initiatives to protect the basic organisational coherence from the regulative prescriptions.Originality/valueThe paper presents original insights into how the D231 model, an example of an audit society-inspired model, unfolded over time in a specific organisation to achieve the desired change towards more responsible and accountable practices. Our analysis suggests the compulsory phase was less effective than when the model was voluntarily adopted. The paper also reveals that, in contrast to the voluntary phase, decoupling strategies were mobilised in the compulsory phase to reach an organisational equilibrium, which facilitated corporate survival; decoupling was the only effective solution to the imbalance generated by the compulsoriness of the D231 model.