A disgruntled young chemist. A reformed noble thief. A cranky, middle-aged lord. What could possibly go wrong? Apprentice chemist Iggy's uncle won't sign her off as competent, even though he trusts her with Project Sapphire: researching a formula to erase forensic evidence. When she finds an alternative route to sign-off, she applies her energy to that, neglecting her assigned duties to do so. In a stroke of luck, this decision leads her to a sponsorship deal, but her benefactor has secrets she's unaware of. After his recent adventure abroad, Lord Richard Hayes is now home: and on probation to keep his seat on the Council of Lords. He has plentiful funds, detailed instructions and a boring plan for honest living, but despite his efforts to fit in, everything starts to go wrong. He loses his only household servant, he antagonises a young chemist the first time he meets her, and he gets blamed for a burglary he didn't even do. The only bright spot is that making new enemies keeps life from being completely dull. Stiff-necked Lord Huntley Angus detests frivolous young nobles who dodge responsibility for their actions. But when he secretly pawns his wife's jewellery to pay an unexpected debt, he gets entangled in a spiralling set of misfortunes. The Sapphire Solution is a fantasy of manners that takes place immediately after the events of The Diamond Device.

Blame Liesel: it was all her idea... • First, she meets Tom in the Golden Dragon hotel in Nonthaburi. • Second, she lets him take her to his room. • Third, she tells Tom to: “Dream of Jenna dressed in royal blue sapphires.” Oh yes... Jenna! She’s a young Thai girl. She’s Tom’s girlfriend – and she works for a Bangkok jeweller – and this makes her an asset to Project Sapphire. But romance is not the reason for the visit. Tom and Liesel are here to work. They have a contract with Veronique’s company to train the Thailand Border Patrol to use a drone to monitor the heroin traffic that crosses their border with Myanmar. Liesel has an idea: if she’s flying a drone, why not use it to earn a little extra...? She knows Olaf. He’s a Russian engineer who is mining for sapphires, just across the border in Myanmar. Liesel believes that with help from Tom, she and Olaf can help themselves to some of the smaller rough-cut sapphires... and use the drone to make lots and lots of money! It’s a slam-dunk project! Tom flies it in - Olaf loads it up - Tom flies it back - Jenna sells them. What could possibly go wrong...?

The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program has since authorized more than $1.5 billion for a wide array of weapons destruction, demilitarization, nuclear security, and nonproliferation activities in the Newly Independent States (NIS) of the former Soviet Union.

A young girl who is of the supernatural descent, meets her mate who just so happens to be her enemy. There is already a battle going on between the two, how can there be anything else? The two go through ups and downs and the ride has just begun.

This book explores a century of business development of The South African Life Assurance Company, from a specific local focus to a national conglomerate expanding into global insurance markets. Established as a strategic vehicle to address Afrikaner economic marginalization and abject poverty at the beginning of the twentieth century, Sanlam has displayed both path dependence and a dynamic adaptability to complex changing contexts to become a global player. The strategic convergence of economic empowerment through the mobilization of savings into insurance products, as well as Afrikaner nationalism, assisted this growth. Sanlam has played an a-typical role in the economic empowerment of an ethnic entity through extensive investments into the industrializing South African economy. This strategic diversion created operational limitations that were only resolved early in the twenty-first century. As globalization, financial deregulation, and weakened Afrikaner political and social hegemony manifested, strategic change management relied on the path dependence of empowerment strategies to address new markets with similar needs to those of the early stakeholder market of 1918. The former mutual life office demutualized operations to become a diversified financial services group of companies operating across almost the entire African continent, as well as in India, Malaysia, and the UK. This volume presents a business history of strategic management of an insurance enterprise, and its transformation from a defined cultural context into an international empowerment strategy through innovation on all levels of business operation and organization. This book is an Open Access publication, available online under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.