Puerto Rico lies approximately 1,000 miles southeast of Miami and 1,500 miles from Washington, DC. Despite being far outside the continental United States, the island has played a significant role in American politics and policy since the United States acquired Puerto Rico from Spain in 1898. On 20 September 2017, Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm with sustained wind speeds of over 155 miles per hour. At that time, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico was already in recovery mode following the glancing blow struck by Hurricane Irma on 6 September 2017, which left 70% of electricity customers without power. Chapter 1 deals with the challenges to recovery in Puerto Rico and the role of the Financial Oversight and Management Board. Even before the 2017 hurricane season, Puerto Ricos electric power infrastructure was known to be in poor condition, due largely to underinvestment and the perceived poor maintenance practices of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA).Chapter 2 focuses on the recovery of Puerto Rico from the hurricanes, and the restoration of power. The two hurricanes that hit may have been historic, but they exposed a state of affairs in Puerto Rico that existed well before any of the hurricanes made landfall. Decades of mismanagement led to a paralyzing debt burden. Chapter 3 describes the factors that contributed to Puerto Ricos financial condition and levels of debt and federal actions that could address these factors. Chapter 4 examines the economic conditions in Puerto Rico as of the end of 2016, and (2) assesses the potential effects of applying the 2016 Overtime Rule to Puerto Rico. Chapter 5 provides policy and historical background about Puerto Ricos political status -- referring to the relationship between the federal government and a territorial one. Congress has not altered the islands status since 1952, when it approved a territorial constitution.

In the immediate aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire, the local parish church became a focal point of the relief effort, and a gathering place for a traumatised community. In the months that followed, it worked closely with other community and faith groups to provide a compassionate network of support. In this bold and prophetic challenge, Alan Everett shows that the church's response was possible only because it had opened its doors long ago, building relationships with the most marginalised in the community. Its effectiveness was born out of a patient, faithful, unheroic ministry that is all too easily underestimated. Through gripping reportage and searching theological reflection, After the Fire demonstrates how parish ministry can be a living symbol of God's love, and a vital sign of hope.

From award-winning ABC News Chief National Correspondent Matt Gutman, and written using exclusive interviews and information comes the definitive account of the dramatic story that gripped the world: the miracle rescue of twelve boys and their soccer coach trapped in a flooded cave miles underground for nearly three weeks--a pulse-pounding page-turner by a reporter who was there every step of their journey out. After a practice in June 2018, a Thai soccer coach took a dozen of his young players to explore a famous but flood-prone cave. It was one of the boys' birthday, but neither he nor the dozen resurfaced. Worried parents and rescuers flocked to the mouth of a cave that seemed to have swallowed the boys without a trace. Ranging in age from eleven to sixteen, the boys were all members of the Wild Boars soccer team. When water unexpectedly inundated the cave, blocking their escape, they retreated deeper inside, taking shelter in a side cavern. While the world feared them dead, the thirteen young souls survived by licking the condensation off the cave's walls, meditating, and huddling together for warmth. In this thrilling account, ABC News Chief National Correspondent Matt Gutman recounts this amazing story in depth and from every angle, exploring their time in the cave, the failed plans and human mistakes that nearly doomed them, and the daring mission that ultimately saved them. Gutman introduces the elite team of volunteer divers who risked death to execute a plan so risky that its American planners admitted, "for us, success would have meant getting just one boy out alive." He takes you inside the meetings where life and death decisions were grimly made and describes how these heroes pulled off an improbable rescue under immense pressure, with the boys' desperate parents and the entire world watching. One of the largest rescues in history was in doubt until the very last moment. Matt Gutman covered the story intensively, went deep inside the caves himself, and interviewed dozens of rescuers, experts and eye-witnessed around the world. The result is this pulse-pounding page-turner that vividly recreates this extraordinary event in all its intensity--and documents the ingenuity and sacrifice it took to succeed.

The loans ordinary Americans take out to purchase homes and attend college often leave them in a sea of debt. As Devin Fergus explains in Land of the Fee, a not-insignificant portion of that debt comes in the form of predatory hidden fees attached to everyday transactions. Beginning in the 1980s, lobbyists for the financial industry helped dismantle consumer protections, resulting in surreptitious fees-often waived for those who can afford them but not for those who can't. Bluntly put, these hidden fees unfairly keep millions of Americans from their hard-earned money. Journalists and policymakers have identified the primary causes of increasing wealth inequality-fewer good working class jobs, a rise in finance-driven speculative capitalism, and a surge of tax policy decisions that benefit the ultra-rich, among others. However, they miss one commonplace but substantial contributor to the widening divide between the rich and the rest: the explosion of fees on every transaction people make in their daily lives. Land of the Fee traces the system of fees from its origins in the deregulatory wave of the late 1970s to the present. The average consumer now pays a dizzying array of charges for mortgage contracts, banking transactions, auto insurance rates, college payments, and payday loans. These fees are buried in the pages of small-print agreements that few consumers read or understand. Because these fees do not fall under usury laws, they have redistributed wealth to large corporations and their largest shareholders. By exposing this predatory and nearly invisible system of fees, Land of the Fee reshapes our understanding of wealth inequality in America.