Some ten years have elapsed since the world was rid of the scourge of the maniacal Tommy Tu-Sun who met his end whilst undergoing radical brain surgery at a Swiss clinic in Davos…… But did he? A series of alarming but seemingly unconnected events on mainland Europe provokes renewed interest from the International Crime Prevention Unit section of the ICPB which is now headed by Keith Harpur. It followed the disappearance of 10 year old Samuel Harpur, beloved son of Keith and Sally Harpur, from their home in Carmarthen.

HYTUS II is the second such fiction novel by Keith Willans which follows the changing fortunes of partners and lovers Keith Harpur and Sally Oppenheim, in their new role as members of the International Crime Prevention Unit based in the UK. Their objective is to assist in the thankless, never ending fight against crime and the threat to civilised society. Recent such frightening events, although fortunately foiled, have strongly indicated the presence of a new underworld organisation run by arch-villain Apollyon spreading its pernicious tentacles all too readily worldwide. It is the constant pursuit of Apollyon which now takes Keith and Sally to the Middle East, North Africa, The Americas, and the South Atlantic in a quest to neutralise any new threat before it is perpetrated. Many thousands would perish.

New evidence this year corroborates the rise in world hunger observed in this report last year, sending a warning that more action is needed if we aspire to end world hunger and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030. Updated estimates show the number of people who suffer from hunger has been growing over the past three years, returning to prevailing levels from almost a decade ago. Although progress continues to be made in reducing child stunting, over 22 percent of children under five years of age are still affected. Other forms of malnutrition are also growing: adult obesity continues to increase in countries irrespective of their income levels, and many countries are coping with multiple forms of malnutrition at the same time – overweight and obesity, as well as anaemia in women, and child stunting and wasting.

Sustainable infrastructure development is vital for Africa s prosperity. And now is the time to begin the transformation. This volume is the culmination of an unprecedented effort to document, analyze, and interpret the full extent of the challenge in developing Sub-Saharan Africa s infrastructure sectors. As a result, it represents the most comprehensive reference currently available on infrastructure in the region. The book covers the five main economic infrastructure sectors information and communication technology, irrigation, power, transport, and water and sanitation. 'Africa s Infrastructure: A Time for Transformation' reflects the collaboration of a wide array of African regional institutions and development partners under the auspices of the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa. It presents the findings of the Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD), a project launched following a commitment in 2005 by the international community (after the G8 summit at Gleneagles, Scotland) to scale up financial support for infrastructure development in Africa. The lack of reliable information in this area made it difficult to evaluate the success of past interventions, prioritize current allocations, and provide benchmarks for measuring future progress, hence the need for the AICD. Africa s infrastructure sectors lag well behind those of the rest of the world, and the gap is widening. Some of the main policy-relevant findings highlighted in the book include the following: infrastructure in the region is exceptionally expensive, with tariffs being many times higher than those found elsewhere. Inadequate and expensive infrastructure is retarding growth by 2 percentage points each year. Solving the problem will cost over US$90 billion per year, which is more than twice what is being spent in Africa today. However, money alone is not the answer. Prudent policies, wise management, and sound maintenance can improve efficiency, thereby stretching the infrastructure dollar. There is the potential to recover an additional US$17 billion a year from within the existing infrastructure resource envelope simply by improving efficiency. For example, improved revenue collection and utility management could generate US$3.3 billion per year. Regional power trade could reduce annual costs by US$2 billion. And deregulating the trucking industry could reduce freight costs by one-half. So, raising more funds without also tackling inefficiencies would be like pouring water into a leaking bucket. Finally, the power sector and fragile states represent particular challenges. Even if every efficiency in every infrastructure sector could be captured, a substantial funding gap of $31 billion a year would remain. Nevertheless, the African people and economies cannot wait any longer. Now is the time to begin the transformation to sustainable development.

Amid early twentieth-century China’s epochal shifts, a vital and prolific commercial publishing industry emerged. Recruiting late Qing literati, foreign-trained academics, and recent graduates of the modernized school system to work as authors and editors, publishers produced textbooks, reference books, book series, and reprints of classical texts in large quantities at a significant profit. Work for major publishers provided a living to many Chinese intellectuals and offered them a platform to transform Chinese cultural life. In The Power of Print in Modern China, Robert Culp explores the world of commercial publishing to offer a new perspective on modern China’s cultural transformations. Culp examines China’s largest and most influential publishing companies—Commercial Press, Zhonghua Book Company, and World Book Company—during the late Qing and Republican periods and into the early years of the People’s Republic. He reconstructs editors’ cultural activities and work lives as a lens onto the role of intellectuals in cultural change. Examining China’s distinct modes of industrial publishing, Culp explains the emergence of the modern Chinese intellectual through commercial and industrial processes rather than solely through political revolution and social movements. An original account of Chinese intellectual and cultural history as well as global book history, The Power of Print in Modern China illuminates the production of new forms of knowledge and culture in the twentieth century.

A guide which covers the islands of Madagascar and Comoros. There are details of medical care, bargain air travel, customs and etiquette, rules of the road, hints on speaking the language and locating budget accommodation.

For the thirty-third consecutive year, the Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL) has provided the major forum for the discussion of linguistic data geared towards understanding how African languages are constituted, acquired and used. This volume represents a selection of 25 peer-reviewed papers from the 33rd AWAL held in March 2002 at Ohio University in Athens. The papers cover language acquisition, syntax, phonetics, phonology, morphology, historical linguistics, as well as language use and function in Africa.