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The article explores COVID-19 related Internet memes and treats them as samples of creolized text in a study of the way ethnic and cultural peculiarities of memes are perceived by representatives of two radically different cultural paradigms: the Russians and Chinese. A survey is used as a method of the investigation. Russian and Chinese students, and visual arts experts evaluated Russian and Chinese COVID-19 memes according to several criteria concerning their content, verbal constituent element and visual characteristics. The study concluded that the social and culture-specific components mostly contribute to forming the opinion of the meme and its appreciation. Awareness of both the cultural background and the current social and nation-specific situation is required to decode a full amount of information contained in a meme. Equally important is the visual component in understanding the meme. Thus, the study contributes not only to studying event-specific memes but also broadens the scope of research on memes as a sample of visual culture.

Introduction. Historically, France has always had an impact on the African continent. Despite the independence of most French colonies in Africa, France managed to maintain its position in the region. The system called "Françafrique" was created. The first element of this system is economic cooperation, namely the fact, that Africa provides an opportunity to use its natural resources. Another important element is the military one. The White paper of France has repeatedly emphasized the strategic importance of Africa for the Fifth Republic. In the 2010s, the situation in the region deteriorated. France's assistance in overcoming internal crises in Mali, Chad, Libya can be considered an evidence of the increasing role of France in conflict resolution, and that is the thing which is analyzed by the author in this work.

Methods and materials. While writing the article, both official documents of the French government and analytical works of famous French authors were used. Both general scientific methods (analysis, synthesis) and quantitative scientific methods (event analysis and content analysis) are used in the paper.

Analysis. The article is devoted to the activities of France on the African continent in the period from 2011 to 2017. A Special attention is paid to the role of France in the conflict resolution of Africa. In particular, the paper considers France's support for the adoption of the UN resolution in response to the civil war in Libya in 2011 and military intervention in the country; military operations of the Fifth Republic in the Sahel zone – Serval operation and in the Central African Republic – Sangaris operation, military presence of France in Djibouti. The paper emphasizes the key provisions of the French policy towards the African continent aimed at the preservation of French influence in the region.

Results. In the article, the author comes to the following conclusions: France is not ready to abandon its military ambitions, it continues Barkhane operation, without stopping the fight against terrorism in the Sahel region; despite the competition from other countries (in particular, China and Japan), France's military presence in Eastern Africa remains the same, France does not intend to leave the base in Djibouti.

Public policy has multiple trade-offs between equity and efficiency, or liberty and security. This article discusses the emerging empirical evidence that in the case of effectiveness and efficiency, there is certain complementarity. The empirical evidence shows that multiple goals can be achieved simultaneously. In the public transit, there is also certain order to how the goals could be achieved, which requires prioritization of the goals.

Privatization appeals to citizen and politician desires for more cost‐effective methods of service delivery. For this reason, it is important for public administrators to know when gains can be made by contracting out or privatizing services and when it is better to keep service provision in house. This article assesses the viability of contracting out and privatization of transit services. Following up on the 1986 work of James Perry and Timlynn Babitsky, which used data from the early 1980s, the authors revisit whether certain service delivery arrangements are more efficient and effective than others in the provision of transit services. Twenty‐five years later, they find results similar to those of Perry and Babitsky's original study. Neither the type of government nor whether an agency contracts out has much impact on the efficiency and performance of urban bus services. The main difference between the two studies is that private transit agencies are no longer more efficient or effective than public providers.

The growth of electronic commerce and malicious software tools designed to compromise various payment systems and computer networks has led to concurrent increase in data breaches, phishing, and hacking incidents targeting sensitive financial information. As a function of this increase, an underground market economy has developed around the sale of consumers' bank account details and other financial information. Recent research examining data markets operating on the Open Web demonstrate their basic functions and distribution of information sold. Emerging evidence suggests markets are now operating on the "Dark Web," or encrypted web sites operating on Tor-based networks. Little research to date has compared the distribution of victim nations in stolen data markets nor examined any variations between Open and Dark Web operations. This study utilizes a rational choice framework to examine this gap using a sample of 18 forums and 15 shops hosted on the Open Web and Tor. Using statistical analyses to examining the geography of victimization, this study provides a preliminary test of the applicability of rational choice theory to market operations.

Since 1990s, the number of states conflicts decreased and they started saying that the classical wars disappeared but at the same time, the number of internal conflicts increased dramatically. The end of colonial regime in Africa didn't bring peace to the region - the new wave of internal conflicts and civil wars overwhelmed the region. In the given article the authors analyze political and complicated socio-economic situation in the Tropical Africa, describe the conflicts in this zone, their typology, results and factors. The authors attempt to analyze internal and external causes of conflicts in the studied region, taking into account all elements of each conflict and their interdependence. The subject of the article is the conflict as the social element presenting the important part of international reality. It is noted that the crisis in the region influences every part of economic, social, and political spheres, so the solution is not possible without structural changes. In this connection, conflicts are the logical results of regional crisis as well as uncertain activity of international society. This situation provokes the large wave of migrants from the region and inside it. The countries the Tropical Africa can't guarantee any suitable level of life for the citizens, and the situation can't be resolved without active role of international community.

The following study looks at both qualitative and quantitative data collected from surveys of transit agency managers during and after the Great Recession to see if managers report changes in service provision arrangements in response to fiscal pressure. We investigate whether contracting out services is used as a method of cutback management. We find that the majority of agencies are unable to respond to current economic situation by changing service arrangements because of various and sometimes costly constraints such as state law, the level of competition in the bidding process, and length of contracts.

Contracting is often discussed as a cutback mechanism for public managers. The empirical evidence indicates that there are little savings in contracting out due to transaction costs. Public transit agencies exhibit path-dependent behavior; there are tangible conversion costs that may preclude changing the provision of services. As such, public managers should consider the provision of services very carefully as it may set an agency on a long-term trajectory that will be difficult to change due to both conversion and transaction costs.

The following study looks at both qualitative and quantitative data collected from surveys of transit agency managers during and after the Great Recession to see if managers report changes in service provision arrangements in response to fiscal pressure. We investigate whether contracting out services is used as a method of cutback management. We find that the majority of agencies are unable to respond to current economic situation by changing service arrangements because of various and sometimes costly constraints such as state law, the level of competition in the bidding process, and length of contracts. Adapted from the source document.