Forensic Pathological Considerations of a Unique Case of “Complicated Suicide”*,†

In the forensic literature, peculiar and uncommon cases of suicides defined as “complicated” are reported. In these circumstances, the suicide method chosen by the victim fails, and death occurs due to a subsequent unforeseen accidental event defined as secondary trauma. Through retrospective examination of 25,512 autopsies in 27 years (1993–2019) at the Bureau of Legal Medicine of Milan, a unique case of complicated suicide was identified from a total of 4497 suicides. It concerns an elderly man who, after killing his wife by inflicting incised wounds to her neck, tried to hang himself by tying a rope to a heater and jumping from the window located over the heater itself. However, the rope suddenly snapped and the man fells to the ground causing fatal traumatic injuries. Death occurred because of an accidental event caused by the failure of the hanging mechanism. Therefore, a peculiar yet characteristic case of complicated suicide is described.     

Multicriteria Decision Aid to support Multilateral Environmental Agreements in assessing international forestry projects

The three Rio Conventions—the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification—face the challenge to create synergies at different levels. The objective of this article is to describe how we have assessed synergies between the Rio Conventions at the project level in the forest sector. Since the complexity of the decision problem is high, we adopted the Multicriteria Decision Aid approach, which can provide a broad insight into the decision problem and find a compromise solution to a problem with multidimensional and conflicting criteria including social, economic and environmental features. The ELECTRE TRI model was used for assessing synergies at the project level, and has been a useful tool to quantify the performance of afforestation and reforestation projects into three categories (synergistic, reasonably synergistic, and not synergistic). For the first time, afforestation and reforestation projects have been assessed in a comprehensive way through decision criteria that reflect global and local interests using a non-compensatory multicriteria method.     

Accounting and Accountability in Italian Local Governments: Recent Changes and Challenges for the Future

The Italian public sector, especially local government, has been experiencing an era of considerable change over the last four years following reforms introduced by the National Legislature (Parliament). The reforms influence many aspects of local government operations: organization, policy, management, finance, accounting, and auditing. This article analyzes some aspects of accounting reform in the new laws and directives in order to demonstrate how the traditional concept of accountability for local governments is changing. The direction of reform is clearly toward federalism and away from national authority and control in the public sector.     

Sharaf Rashidov and the international dimensions of Soviet Uzbekistan

ABSTRACT

During the Cold War, Sharaf Rashidov became a representative of the Soviet anti-imperialist agenda, a key interlocutor with Third World leaders and a promoter of Uzbekistan as a modern and emancipated model of political, economic, social and cultural development for newly independent countries emerging from decolonization. Tashkent hosted important meetings among Soviet and Asian leaders, along with international festivals of cinema and literature, which attracted hundreds of Asian, African and Latin American intellectuals, writers, poets, journalists, trade unionists and athletes. Moreover, Uzbekistan came to symbolize the self-proclaimed compatibility between communism and Islam, offering a façade of religious freedom, tolerance and tradition combined with Bolshevik progress. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan discredited this narrative – and Uzbekistan and (posthumously) Rashidov were humiliated in the Cotton Affair – pointing to the impact as well as the limits of Uzbek internationalism.     

Policies for full employment and more efficient utilization of resources and new trends in European regional development

Democracy promotion in the middle east. Business as usual?

La questione della democrazia nel mondo arabo ; stati, società e conflitti / a cura di Federica Bicchi, Laura Guazzone, Daniela Pioppi. ‐ Monza : Polimetrica, c2004. ‐ 396 p. ‐ (Islamica). ‐ ISBN 88–7699–008–9     

A Spatial Analysis of the Italian Second Republic

The Optimal Classification method is applied to a newly created data set to provide a spatial map of the Italian Second Republic (1996–2008). A bi-dimensional political space was found in the XIII Legislature and virtually a one-dimensional political space in the XIV and XV Legislatures. In addition, the main dimension is explained along the government–opposition dimension rather than on the traditional left–right dimension. During the Second Republic, Italy experienced changes in the electoral system and in the format of parties. The data are used to discuss the implications of either change on the dimensionality space. It was found that the format of the party system was a more important determinant of the dimensionality of the political space than changes in the electoral system.