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In Flanders (Belgium), approximately 1014 accident locations are currently considered as 'dangerous'. These 'dangerous' accident sites are selected by means of historic accident records for the period 1997-1999. More specifically; a combination of weighting values, respectively 1 for each light injury, 3 for each serious injury and 5 for each deadly injury (1_3_5), is used to rank and select the most dangerous accident locations. In the first part of this paper a sensitivity analysis is performed to investigate the influence of the number of passengers on the ranking of the accident locations. Secondly, the use of Bayesian ranking plots in order to visualize the probability that a location will be ranked as dangerous, based on estimates from a hierarchical Bayes model is evaluated. Results show that giving weight to the severity of the accident instead of to all the injured occupants of the vehicle does have important consequences for the selection and ranking of dangerous accident locations. Government should therefore carefully decide whether to rank accident locations by means of the severity of the accident or the severity of the injured occupants. Secondly, probability plots can provide policy makers with an graphical instrument to select dangerous road locations on a statistically sound basis.

Introduction: In this paper a sensitivity analysis is performed to investigate how big the impact would be on the current ranking of crash locations in Flanders (Belgium) when only taking into account the most serious injury per crash instead of all the injured occupants. Results: Results show that this would lead to a different selection of 23.8% of the 800 sites that are currently considered as dangerous. Conclusions: Considering this impact quantity the researchers want to sensitize government that giving weight to the severity of the crash can correct for the bias that occurs when the number of occupants of the vehicles are subject to coincidence. Additionally, probability plots are generated to provide policy makers with a scientific instrument with intuitive appeal to select dangerous road locations on a statistically sound basis. Impact on industry Considering the impact quantity of giving weight to the severity of the crash instead of to all the injured occupants of the vehicle on the ranking of crash sites, the authors want to sensitize government to carefully choose the criteria for ranking and selecting crash locations in order to achieve an enduring and successful traffic safety policy. Indeed, giving weight to the severity of the crash can correct for the bias that occurs when the number of occupants of the vehicles are subject to coincidence. However, it is up to the government to decide which priorities should be stressed in the traffic safety policy. Then, the appropriate weighting value combination can be chosen to rank and select the most dangerous crash locations. Additionally, the probability plots proposed in this paper can provide policy makers with a scientific instrument with intuitive appeal to select dangerous road locations on a statistically sound basis. Note that, in practice, one should not only rank the crash locations based on the benefits that can be achieved from tackling these locations. Future research is also needed to incorporate the costs of infrastructure measures and other actions that these crash sites require in order to enhance the safety on these locations. By balancing these costs and benefits against each other, the crash locations can then be ranked according to the order in which they should be prioritized.

Ukraine's security services said on Tuesday that they foiled a plot to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Two colonels in the State Guard of Ukraine, which counts the protection of top Ukrainian officials among its duties, were identified as part of a group allegedly working with Russia's FSB security agency to assassinate President Zelenskyy, Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) head Vasyl Malyuk, and military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov.
This marks one of the highest-profile attempts on Zelenskyy's life since Russia commenced its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It is also the first time that high-ranking officials were part of such a plot, according to Kyiv. It is unprecedented that "such a high-ranking official of the state security department has become [the] enemy's moles," SBU spokesman Artem Dehtiarenko told Politico.
News of the alleged plot comes on the heels of months of internal turmoil in Kyiv, including frequent firings and arrests of top and senior officials over corruption and espionage charges, as well as Zelenskyy's decision to fire Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine's Armed Forces (AFU) and the second most popular public official in the country, Valery Zaluzhny.
These developments, when viewed against the backdrop of Ukraine's dwindling battlefield prospects, point to a degree of internal Ukrainian vulnerability that should alarm Western policymakers.
The details of this particular assassination attempt are still unclear, and the full extent of Russian involvement has yet to be established. But if — as asserted by Ukraine's own security agency — Russian operatives were able to enlist the help of at least two high-level Ukrainian officials to organize a sweeping, multi-stage plot to kill three of Ukraine's senior-most public servants including the President, it suggests a larger phenomenon of extensive Russian intelligence penetration in the Ukrainian bureaucracy and military that will prove difficult to fully diagnose, let alone uproot.
Indeed, this problem will likely grow even more severe as the growing threat of the AFU's collapse along the front lines creates new incentives for Ukrainian officials at all levels to consider collaborating with Russia. The May assassination plot could thus be an early warning sign of a wider internal dysfunction that, if left unchecked, may eventually snowball into a challenge to Ukraine's political stability.
These developments are not indicative of a Ukrainian state that is winning or confident in its impending victory, but are instead symptomatic of a harried wartime government riven by internal weaknesses that are being exploited by Russia with increasing effectiveness.

In Flanders (Belgium), approximately 1014 accident locations are currently considered as 'dangerous'. These 'dangerous' accident sites are selected by means of historic accident records for the period 1997-1999. More specifically, a combination of weighing values, respectively 1 for each light injury, 3 for each serious injury and 5 for each deadly injury, is used to calculate the priority score for each accident location. In this paper, a sensitivity analysis is performed to investigate how big the impact is on the current ranking of accident sites when alternative ranking criteria are used. More specifically, we only take into account the most serious injury per accident and use a valuation of casualties based on direct costs, indirect costs and validation for human suffering to give weight to the accidents. This valuation results in the weighing values 1_7_33 when the most severe injury respectively concerns a light, serious or deadly injury. Additionally, we generate probability plots, based on estimates from a hierarchical Bayes model, in order to visualize the estimated probability that a location will be ranked as dangerous. Results showed that combining these ranking criteria will have a big impact on the selection and ranking of dangerous accident locations. In particular, when selecting from the 5326 accident locations with minimum 3 accidents, the 800 most dangerous accident sites using the 1_7_33 values, 40,6% of these locations will differ from the current selection. Considering this impact quantity, we want to sensitise government to carefully choose the criteria for ranking and selecting accident locations without stating that the criterion used in this paper should be preferred to the currently used ranking method.

Radial temporal rings (earrings, head pendants) serve for some direct aesthetic
purposes, but also for ethnic identification, status-ranking and have a symbolic-sacred
value. The article addresses one of the least studied group in this category of jewelry.
Dents on the inside of the handle here are replaced by some cast ornitomorphic figures.
A typological correlation analysis made it possible to highlight 3 insulated variants
and 4 types. The defining feature is the iconography and semantics of the image
associated with a certain layer of mythology. The motives of Iranian and Byzantine art
are traced (some motives find analogies in Volga Bulgaria). Some of the images go back
to the Perm beast style and Finno-Ugric mythology. One variant has some contrast
versions for the explanation of its semantics: Oriental, Christian and Scandinavian (the
plot "Odin and crows"), transformed through the Perm animal style. All this complex
picture can find an explanation in the geopolitical and cross-cultural situation of the
bearers of this jewelry at the end of the 9 th — mid 10th centuries. These items were
found on the lands of the late Romenskaya and final Luka-Raykovetskaya cultures
(Vyatichi, Severians, Radimichi, Drevlyane, and in borderlands populated by the Tivertsi
and White Croats).

 Back in the days of yore, I used to talk about and rank pop culture a fair amount here.  So, with my fave comic book character getting another fantastic movie, tis time to rank again.  Spidey was always my favorite.  I used to collect multiple spidey comic books  every month pretty much for all of the 1980s and stopped only in the mid-1990s for two reasons: the increasingly expensive comic books were roughly a month's worth of diapers and it was diaper changing time; and clones.  The spidey series went deep into clones, and I did not like that very much.  Multiverses?  That is something else entirely.  When the first Tom Holland movie came out, I ranked the Spidey movies.  That was four spidey movies and a heap of appearances elsewhere ago.  I will start each category with the previous ranking and now how it has changed both due to re-watching and the addition of the new movies.  To be clear, there are now ten movies to rank: Tobey's S1, S2, S3; Andrew's S4, S5; Tom's S6, S7, S8, and Shameik's S9, S10.  Spoilers below the break.  I started with Villains last time: Vulture (6) > Dr. Ock (2)> Green Gobin (1) > Lizard (4) >  Sandman (3)  > Rhino (5) > Goblin (3)  > Venom (3)  >  Elektro (5)Since then, Spidey's Euro-trip added Mysterio, No Way Home brought back all of the oldies from S1-5, S9 brought in a new Doc Ock, Kingpin, and Prowler, and the newest movie gave us ... The Spot!  And depending on how you see him, Miguel O'Hara.  I am tempted to move Alfred Molina's Doc Ock up higher as he was great in No Way Home.  Elektro definitely gets more interesting in No Way Home.  None of the villains from the Spider-verse really compete with the top three.  I'd put Mysterio after Green Goblin as Jake was fun and interesting and sneaky, but not as compelling as Keaton's Vulture, Molina's Doc Ock, or Dafoe's Green Goblin.  So, after ten, we are at: Vulture (6) > Dr. Ock (2,8)> Green Gobin (1,8) > Spot (10) > Mysterio (7) > Dr. Ock/Kingpin (9) > Prowler (9) > Lizard (4)  >
Sandman (3) >  Lizard (4) >> Elektro (5,8) > Rhino (5) > Goblin (3)  > Venom (3).The next category was the Ladies:MJ (1-3) > Gwen 4-5, Liz/Michelle (Incomplete) > Gwen Stacy 3The Home series made a big dent here, but whether the Verse does or not depends on what this category is: best women co-leads or best love interests.  If the former, Gwen/Spider-woman kicks.  But if the latter, does the pining count as a relationship?  Hmm.    Of course, the ranking of Gwens as a separate category is easy: Gwen 9/10 >>>> Gwen 4-5 >> Gwen 3.  Spider-woman is one of the very best spidey's (oops, spoiler), and otherverse Gwen has so much heart, guts, and sweetness.  So, she's is definitely the best Gwen.  Michelle/MJ was just more interesting and more dynamic than MJ.  Given Gwen/SW's extra-abilities, she gets the nod.Gwen/Spider-woman (9/10) > Michelle/MJ (6-8) > MJ (1-3) > Gwen 4-5, Liz/Michelle (Incomplete) > Gwen Stacy 3Sidekicks Ned was terrific in the subsequent Home movies, and, no, Miles's roommate does not want to be the guy in the chair.  While there is a big team around Miles, there is no sidekick.  Gwen would kick all of our butts if we referred to her as such.High School/TeachersThe old ranking 6-8 > 1 > 3 pretty much holds up.  The teachers in the Home series have more to do especially in the Euro-trip (Martin Starr!) plus the most excellent Cap videos.  In Verse, the teachers barely make a dent.  So no change here. Action:The old action: Bridge (1) > Train (2) > Washington Monument (6)  >  Climax (4).The action sequences in Far From Home are fine, but nothing that is as memorable as the stuff above.  No Way Home has some terrific sequences--the bridge where Doc Ock and Gobby show up and the climax, but nothing as thrilling as the stuff above.  The Verse movies?  Cartoon action is not the same, but the climax of Into (9) is pretty terrific--that Doc Ock gets hit by a bus and the fight with Kingpin really are terrific.  In Across (10), I will have to watch again, as it had the space elevator sequence, which was pretty special, but nothing that ranks higher than the top three here.  Humor Old humor: Homecoming > Spidey 1 > Amazing 1This is where Spider-verses with all of their thought-balloons, Lego Spidey, many pointing spidey's come to the fore.  From how Miles keeps sticking to stuff (a recurring theme in many of the movies, so a great point of comparison) to the many funny universes in the multiverse to Spider-ham, Across is the funniest Spidey movie of all time, with Into second.  The canvas is just much vaster for funny stuff in an animated world.Thus:  Across (9) > Into (10) > Homecoming (6)  > Far from Home (7)  >  Spidey 1 > No Way (8) > Amazing 1JJJ
The old ranking: Spidey 1-2 >  The RestThe good news is JJJ is back for the second and third Home movies and in a very, very important way.  And he also shows up in the latest Verse movie.  I think I'd have to put the Home JJJ's ahead of the Spidey JJJ's because of centrality to the plot although the original Spidey JJJ is funnier.No Way Home (8) > Far From Home (7) > Spidey 1-2 > Into the Spider-Verse  > The restAunt MaysThe old post: Marisa Tomei > Rosemary Harris > Sally Field and then Ok, Rosemary Harris > Marisa Tomei > Sally Field. Hmmm, Marisa Tomei's Aunt May gains heft and comedic value in the third Home movie, sob. By being both Aunt May and Uncle Ben, she takes this competition. Lily Tomlin enters the fray in Spider-Verse as a very smart, knowing ally who is ahead of Miles and the rest pretty much all the time.  She does not get much screen time in the second Verse, but she makes a hell of an impression in the first one.Marisa Tomei > Lily Tomlin  > Rosemary Harris > Sally Field   Stan Lee Appearance
The previous ranking: Amazing 1 >  Homecoming > Spidey 1/2 > The RestSpeaking of crying, damn, no more Stan Lee's in these movies as his last appearance (see here for a nice ranking and links for all of them) was in Across (9).  He did appear in the first Home movie, but it was in Across that had the most important line he ever said in a Spidey (or MCU) movie: I did add Spidey 3 since the link above showed me a sweet movement with Stan concluding with one of his classic lines:  Enuf said...So, Across > Amazing 1 >  Homecoming > Spidey 3 > Spidey 1/2 > The RestBetty Brant
The previous post: Elizabeth Banks (1-3)  > Homecoming.  Does not change much as Angourie does not get that much to do except become Ned's love interest in Europe.  And Betty either not in or memorable in the Verses So:Spidey's 1-3 > Far > Homecoming.
Captain Stacey
Before: Amazing 1 > Spidey 3 Now, we have a new Captain Stacey who plays a central role in the new movie, but Denis Leary still rocks.Amazing 1 > Into the Spider-Verse > Spidey 3Best Music
The old ranking: 1/2 > 6 > the rest. I still like the soaring music from the first few movies, but Verse is way ahead of the rest on making music integral.  That Miles starts unsticking when he sings to himself, for example.So: 1/2 >9/10 > 6-8 > the rest.Fave Spidey
Old ranking: Tom Holland > Tobey Maguire > Andrew GarfieldI need the blog equivalent of a record scratch and change of direction that the Verse movies do because before we to the best Spidey category, we have to do something else that wasn't relevant before: the Best Peter Parker! We have many more contenders thanks to the Spider-Verse having damn near infinite Peters even as the central Spidey is not a Peter.  Jake Johnson's Peter B. Parker is so very funny, so very moving, the most-mentorish Peter there is.  Chris Pine's Peter Parker is delightful in a very short spot at the start of Into the Spider-Verse.  And, yes, Andrew Garfield makes a hell of a comeback in No Way Home, showing such depth and heart and hurt that he moves past Tobey.  Tom Holland's Peter is still the most teenage, has some of the best quips and attitude, shows heaps of heart in the three movies here plus his bits in the Avengers movies--his debut at the Berlin airport stole that scene.  Tom Holland > Jake Johnson >  Andrew Garfield > Tobey Maguire > Chris Pine And if you think that was complicated, the Fave Spidey is even more so.  Spider-Verse does not just add Miles's Spidey, but Spider-woman, Noir Spider-Man, Hobie-Brown > Spider-ham, the aforementioned Peters, Peni, and all the rest.  If conveying heart and humor and doing the Spider action stuff well are the keys, then it is a close race between Shameik's Miles Spidey and Tom's Spidey.  But then there is the ballet of Spider-woman. Gwen Stacey's Spider-woman is just otherworldly in the way she moves, in how great she is in a fight.  But she is not so snarky mid-fight, which puts her behind the two young dudes.  Shameik Moore > Tom Holland  > Gwen Stacey > Peter B. Parker > Andrew Garfield > Tobey Maquire > Noir Spider-Man > Spider-ham > Hobie Brown > Jessica Drew > Karan Soni >  Peni> Spider-Byte > Ben ReillyBest use of Bruce CampbellNot used at all in the non-Raimi movies, and what a mistake that is.  Glad to have this handy video presenting all three appearances.  Makes it hard to pick.  Probably the usher...So, where do they all stand?Original ranking:
1 > 6 (Homecoming) > 2  > 4 (Amazing 1) > 3 > 5 (Amazing 2)Now?  Hmmm.  The big question is whether Into is better than Across, because there is just so much fun, heart, silliness, and action packed into the two animated Milo Spidey tales, plus the advantage of having heaps of Spideys that only No Way Home Can Compete.  And, yes, No Way Home, because it brings all of the live action Spidey movies together, it is ahead of all of the rest of them.  Just having the three Spidey's chat about what it is to be Spider-men is just terrific stuff.  So, which Verse wins?  For now, the first one, but I will have to re-watch the second one when it comes out, freezing lots of scenes to get all of the stuff that flew by.  It is a pretty close call, and I can see why folks might think Across is Empire--better than the original.  For now,Into the Spider-verse (9) > Across the Spider-Verse (10) > No Way Home (8) >  Spidey 1 > Homecoming > Spidey 2 > Far From Home > Amazing 1 (4) > Spidey 3 > Amazing 2 (5).  To be clear, meh Spidey has thus far been better than much of the MCU, and great Spidey is better than all of it.  Enuf said.

This paper deals with a quantitative analysis of the content of official political speeches. We study a set of about one thousand talks pronounced by the US Presidents, ranging from Washington to Trump. In particular, we search for the relevance of the rare words, i.e. those said only once in each speech – the so-called hapaxes. We implement a rank-size procedure of Zipf–Mandelbrot type for discussing the hapaxes' frequencies regularity over the overall set of speeches. Starting from the obtained rank-size law, we define and detect the core of the hapaxes set by means of a procedure based on an Hirsch index variant. We discuss the resulting list of words in the light of the overall US Presidents' speeches. We further show that this core of hapaxes itself can be well fitted through a Zipf–Mandelbrot law and that contains elements producing deviations at the low ranks between scatter plots and fitted curve – the so-called king and vice-roy effect. Some socio-political insights are derived from the obtained findings about the US Presidents messages.

International university ranking systems, popular in recent years and increasing in number, are perceived as a sign of quality and are used by universities as an important marketing tool. On the other hand, it is understood that policy- and decision- makers pay attention to the subject, as strategic documents, policies and regulations include articles related to university rankings. International university rankings do not take the community service mission of universities into consideration and focus on research rather than educational mission. Nine research/academic performance based international university ranking systems which produced general and/or criterion-based rankings until 2015 constitute the scope of this study. Similarities of the general ranking lists have been identified in the first phase of the research that is carried out in three stages. In the analyses which were performed in two ways, one according to the ranking systems, and the other according to the years, the results are obtained according to the four similarity measures and visualized through the heat maps.The second phase of the research focuses on ranking position change of the universities in the ranking systems and in this section the ranking positions of the universities are revealed by means of scatter plots. In the third stage, Spearman correlation test and cosine similarity measure were used along with multi-dimensional scaling to examine the similarities and relations of the criteria used within the same ranking system. It has been determined that the general ranking lists generated by the same ranking system are highly similar in every year. THE has the lowest similarity values among the general ranking systems. On the other hand, as a result of comparing different systems that provide ranking lists in the same year, THE and QS are found as the least similar to the others. It is understood that the similarity between the general ranking lists of the same ranking system is higher for the years where the weighted criteria, methodology, data source or criteria are kept steady. The similarity of the ranking systems decreases in parallel with the increasing criteria dissimilarity. The rankings of the same system in different years and the rankings of different systems in the same year have shown that ranking positions changes significantly. It is understood that the years when change in the ranking positions was the most noticeable are the years where ranking systems changed their criteria, methodology, data source, or criterion weights. URAP and THE, which changed mostly in this sense, are the two ranking systems that cause the most sudden changes in university ranking positions. The ranking systems in which the university rankings are the most different from each other are URAP, THE, QS and CWUR. Analyses on criteria have shown that very similar lists can be created with fewer criteria than the ones used in the current rankings. Among the ranking systems which contain university-size dependent measures, it has been found that there is no significant effect of size dependent criteria on the rankings for URAP, while there is for ARWU and NTU. As a result, it is clear that quality of a university can not be equated with the position in the ranking lists. University rankings should not be used to make important decisions without knowing what and how they measure. ; Son yıllarda popüler olan ve sayıları giderek artan uluslararası üniversite sıralama sistemleri kalitenin bir göstergesi olarak algılanmakta ve üniversiteler tarafından önemli bir pazarlama aracı olarak kullanılmaktadır. Öte yandan, politika yapıcı ve karar verici konumdaki kişilerin de üniversite sıralamalarını önemsediği stratejik belgelerde, politika ve yönetmeliklerde üniversite sıralamalarıyla ilgili maddelerin yer almasından anlaşılmaktadır. Uluslararası üniversite sıralama sistemlerinin büyük kısmının üniversitelerin topluma hizmet misyonunu dikkate almadıkları ve eğitimden ziyade araştırma misyonuna odaklandıkları görülmektedir. Bu çalışmanın kapsamını da akademik performans odaklı dokuz uluslararası üniversite sıralama sisteminin 2015 yılına kadar yaptıkları genel ve/veya ölçüt bazlı sıralamalar oluşturmaktadır. Üç aşamada gerçekleştirilen araştırmanın ilk aşamasında genel sıralama listelerinin benzerlikleri tespit edilmiştir. Sıralama sistemlerine göre ve yıllara göre olmak üzere iki yönlü gerçekleştirilen analizlerde dört farklı benzerlik ölçümüne göre bulunan sonuçlar ısı haritaları aracılığıyla görselleştirilmiştir. Araştırmanın ikinci aşaması üniversitelerin sıralama sistemlerindeki konum değişimlerine odaklanmakta ve bu kısımda üniversitelerin konumlarının sıralama sistemlerine ve yıllara göre nasıl değiştiği saçılım grafikleri yardımıyla ortaya çıkarılmaktadır. Aynı sıralama sisteminde kullanılan ölçütlerin birbirine benzerliklerinin ve birbirleri ile olan ilişkilerinin incelendiği üçüncü aşamada çok boyutlu ölçekleme ile Spearman korelasyon testi ve kosinüs benzerlik ölçümü kullanılmıştır. Yapılan analizlerle aynı sıralama sisteminin her yıl oluşturduğu genel sıralama listelerinin birbirine yüksek düzeyde benzer olduğu saptanmıştır. THE, genel sıralama listeleri arasında en düşük benzerlik değerlerine sahip sıralama sistemidir. Öte yandan, aynı yıl sıralama listesi sunan farklı sıralama sistemlerinin karşılaştırılması sonucunda THE ve QS'nin diğer sıralamalara en az benzeyen listelere sahip olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Aynı sıralama sisteminin farklı yıllarda oluşturduğu genel sıralama listeleri arasındaki benzerliğin ölçüt, metodoloji, veri kaynağı ya da ölçütlerin ağırlıklarında değişiklik yapılmayan yıllarda daha yüksek olduğu, kullandıkları ölçütler farklılaştıkça sıralama sistemlerinin yaptıkları sıralamalar arasındaki benzerliğin de azaldığı anlaşılmaktadır. Aynı sıralama sisteminin farklı yıllarda yaptığı sıralamalarda ve aynı yılda farklı sıralama sistemleri tarafından yapılan sıralamalarda üniversite konumlarının önemli değişiklikler gösterebildiği saptanmıştır. Konum değişikliğinin en dikkat çekici olduğu yılların sıralama sistemlerinin ölçüt, metodoloji, veri kaynağı veya ölçüt ağırlıklarında değişiklik yaptıkları yıllar olduğu anlaşılmaktadır. Bu anlamda en fazla değişiklik yapan URAP ve THE, üniversite konumlarında en ani değişimlere neden olan iki sıralama sistemidir. Aynı yıl oluşturulan listelerde üniversite konumlarının birbirinden en farklı olduğu sıralama sistemleri URAP, THE, QS ve CWUR'dir. Ölçütler üzerine yapılan analizler mevcut sıralamalarda kullanılandan daha az sayıda ölçüt ile de çok benzer listelerin oluşturulabileceğini göstermiştir. Üniversite büyüklüğüne bağımlı ölçüt içeren sıralama sistemlerinden (ARWU, NTU ve URAP) URAP için beklenenin aksine bu ölçütlerin sıralamaya önemli bir etkisinin olmadığı saptanmıştır. Sonuç olarak, bir üniversitenin sıralamalardaki konumunun kalitesi ile eşdeğer tutulamayacağı açıktır. Üniversite sıralamalarının neyi, nasıl ölçtüğü bilinmeden önemli kararları verme amacıyla kullanılmaması gerekmektedir.

International audience For a given voting situation, the Strong Borda Paradox occurs when a Condorcet loser exists and is elected. A Condorcet loser is a candidate that loses all his pairwise comparisons. In three-candidate elections, we use an analytical approach to find out, the range of all the scoring rules that can exhibit the Strong Borda Paradox under some well-known preference restrictions and we describe all the scenarios with respect to the rank of the Condorcet loser in the collective rankings. Using the parameterized Barvinok's algorithm, we provide a simplified representation of the likelihood of the Strong Borda Paradox for the Plurality rule and the Antiplurality rule (given the size of the electorate) with the impartial and anonymous culture condition for each type of restriction.

Stalin's little-known 1928 caper, the production and distribution of bogus hundred-dollar bills, was preceded by an even less known venture of the same sort. Specialists in East European history have left it unexplored during the decades which have passed since it occurred, and several aspects of the plot behind it, as well as some of its most powerful supporters, remain unknown. It happened in 1925, and involved a string of high-ranking Hungarian civilian and military personages, with a prince at one end and a bishop at the other.

AbstractThe concept of digital economy has gained currency in recent years and has caught the attention of policymakers and the public. This study uses the 2017 Digital Economy and Society Index indicators—connectivity, human capital, use of Internet services, integration of digital technology, and digital public services—to determine the digital policy performance of various European countries. It uses the co‐plot method to visualize and classify countries based on their correlations with similar variables. The top‐performing European Union (EU) countries have strong correlations with at least one of these indicators. By ranking these countries in this way, policymakers can ascertain their development levels and make changes to infrastructure, human resources, and regulations to develop their digital economy.

Based on the analysis of diplomatic correspondence of British ambassador in Russia at the court of Empress Anna Ioannovna highlights the process of preparation for the conclusion of the Russian-British commercial treaty in 1734. In foreign and Russian historiography, the treaty was actively discussed, but the plot related to its preparatory stage was poorly covered, or not touched at all. The author draws attention to the complex nature of the negotiations, the persistence and skill of the British negotiators in achieving their goals, and the weakness and inability to protect the national interests of certain high-ranking Russian officials. The treaty of 1734 is estimated by the author as unequal and the most profitable for the English merchant class.