Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) is vaccine-preventable neglected zoonotic neuroinvasive disease, caused by tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV). Many of the Central and Eastern European countries are affected by TBE, which is often poorly perceived by tourists visiting endemic territories. Here we are reporting a fatal case of imported TBE in Serbian resident who was exposed to tick bite during a visit to Switzerland.

The evaluation of spatial planning results, or outcomes, has been rather neglected by scholars and practitioners. The causes of this neglect are linked to the characteristics of the planning systems in use or difficulties in quantifying results. To advance the state of the art of outcome evaluation, this paper focuses on assessing the implementation of national spatial planning objectives in urban landscapes, through the use of an evaluation framework that makes use of spatially explicit information. The framework is built on four dimensions which reflect the main domains of spatial planning: efficient built-up development, conservation of agricultural land, landscape preservation, and human perception. Indicators capable of capturing landscape changes in both time and space are used to verify degree of conformance between adopted objectives and actual development patterns. We make use of spatially explicit data and assess whether and where landscape changes occurred, by integrating the framework into a multi-criteria analysis. In the present study, the framework is tested in two study areas in Switzerland and Romania, and the results are interpreted from the perspective of spatial planning approaches in the two countries. The efficiency and utility of the framework is demonstrated by its ability to provide valuable information facilitating improvement in the performance of planning processes, such as identifying where the implementation of objectives is less effective, and the domains of spatial planning that are affected. Our findings highlight that the distance between objectives and outcomes can be attributed to differences in countries’ spatial planning approaches, particularly regarding landscape preservation and management. Our study provides valuable insights for the integration of time series of spatial data into the evaluation procedure.

When we talk about the Defence Industry (DI), arms transfers, and military expenditures we mostly refer to data accumulated by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). In the SIPRI Top 20 list of largest exporters of major arms for 2019, small states hold consecutive positions: Israel takes 8th place, Switzerland is 13th, and Sweden, Norway, and Belarus place 15th, 17th, and 20th respectively. The author analyses the Swiss DI case due to several reasons; its place in SIPRI Top, its sharp rise of Swiss arms exports in the recent year, its Swiss neutrality strategy, the country’s multilingual society, and its all-government approach to the arms industry, though still contributing to the limited scholarly studies on contemporary Swiss DI. This paper aims to explore Swiss DI and its strategies, to identify the country’s defence and security policy influence towards DI, and to discuss the Swiss DI stance and future perspectives in the context of the global arms trade. At the same time, this paper also highlights Swiss DI successes and failures that could be of significant use to other small states aiming to develop or enhance their relevant DIs.