The book considers the impact of COVID-19 on the GCC member states through the prism of challenges faced by their hydrocarbon sector. Yet, the publication’s discourse is not solely focused on the problems experienced by the oil and gas industries of the GCC member states after the beginning of the COVID pandemic. Instead, the contributors will analyze how these challenges and subsequent response to them affected other aspects of the GCC socio-economic and political development, from direct impact of the COVID on the energy sector of the GCC to socio-economic consequences of the oil market crisis for the region and its potential fallouts for the international relations of the Gulf. 

This book is a study of a shift in the politics and finance of development from one centered in the institutions and ideas of the post-World War II global political economy to the emergence of South-South economic ties and the rise of authoritarian or state capitalism as an alternative model of development. This is a study of the economic statecraft of the Gulf Arab states, specifically the deployment of aid, investment, and direct support from some of the wealthiest petrostates of the world to their surrounding sphere of influence within the Middle East, Horn of Africa, and West Asia. These new models of development finance, aid, and intervention include distinct institutional designs and ideological bases. For the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, the preference for state-led and often state-owned development is a strategic priority in the energy sector, a mechanism for domestic economic growth and consolidation of wealth among leadership and ruling families. Exporting that agenda as a foreign economic policy tool continues all of the domestic benefits, while also affirming broader regional political goals.

The Schuylkill River flows more than 100 miles from the mountains of the Pennsylvania Coal Region to the Delaware River. It passes through five counties - Schuylkill, Berks, Chester, Montgomery, and Philadelphia - and its valley is home to more than three million people, yet few are aware of the hidden ruins and traces left by a pioneering 200-year-old inland waterway: the Schuylkill Navigation. Some of it is literally buried in their own backyards. Often called the Schuylkill Canal, this complex Navigation system actually boasted twenty-seven canals. The first of the anthracite-carrying routes in America, the 108-mile Navigation shadowed the Schuylkill River for nearly all its length. It once had more than thirty dams and slackwater pools, more than 100 stone locks, numerous aqueducts, and the first transportation tunnel in the nation. They were all built by hand starting in 1816. In the 1940s, as part of a massive environmental cleanup of the river, this important and influential infrastructure was largely dismantled - but not entirely. Two short sections of the watered canal get plenty of attention: the Oakes Reach at Schuylkill Canal Park near Phoenixville and the Manayunk Canal in Philadelphia. Both are popular recreational destinations. What happened to the rest of it? Photographer Sandy Sorlien resolved to find out. Over the course of seven years, she traveled upriver repeatedly to bushwhack along the riverbanks and to row and paddle in the river itself. Armed with camera and binoculars, loppers and trekking poles, nineteenth-century maps and modern satellite imagery, and abetted by local historians and an archaeologist, she found all sixty-one lock sites and explored most of the canal beds. Her photographs reveal a mysterious remnant landscape, evidence of a bold industrial innovation that spelled its own demise. The water pollution created by the coal industry and obstructive dams meant the end of a way of life for the towns that boomed along the canals, from Pottsville to Reading, Birdsboro to Phoenixville, Bridgeport to Philadelphia. Along with Sorlien's full-color plates and explanatory essays, Inland features a selection of historic images, rare historic Schuylkill Navigation Company maps, and early Philadelphia Watering Committee plans. The book also includes a foreword by renowned landscape scholar John R. Stilgoe, an essay on regional transportation history by Mike Szilagyi, Trails Project Manager for the Schuylkill River Greenways Natural Heritage Area, and an afterword by Karen Young, Director of the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center. A sweeping new Schuylkill River map by Morgan Pfaelzer connects it all. Inland is the first to present contemporary photographs from a survey of the entire Schuylkill Navigation, becoming an essential resource for future historians and a resonant visual history all its own.

Project X Origins is a ground-breaking guided reading programme for the whole school. Action-packed stories, fascinating non-fiction and comprehensive guided reading support meet the needs of children at every stage of their reading development. This Handbook is compiled by experts and practising teachers and draws together findings from research and classroom experience to provide strategies, ideas and practical advice on how to improve boys' reading - and how girls can benefit from this, too!

This book is a study of a shift in the politics and finance of development from one centered in the institutions and ideas of the post-World War II global political economy to the emergence of South-South economic ties and the rise of authoritarian or state capitalism as an alternative model of development. This is a study of the economic statecraft of the Gulf Arab states, specifically the deployment of aid, investment, and direct support from some of the wealthiest petrostates of the world to their surrounding sphere of influence within the Middle East, Horn of Africa, and West Asia. These new models of development finance, aid, and intervention include distinct institutional designs and ideological bases. For the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, the preference for state-led and often state-owned development is a strategic priority in the energy sector, a mechanism for domestic economic growth and consolidation of wealth among leadership and ruling families. Exporting that agenda as a foreign economic policy tool continues all of the domestic benefits, while also affirming broader regional political goals.

The Alchemy of Caregiving takes the reader on a journey that begins with the meeting of soul mates, delights in the wonders of a deeply felt new love, is rocked by a terminal cancer diagnosis, and traverses six months of caregiving, grief and loss. Karen Young s memoir recounts her journey from the world of conventional medicine to that of alternative medicine, and reveals her spiritual and emotional challenges in the role of caregiver. This compelling story illuminates the dramatic changes that seem to impact every aspect of a caregiver s life. Karen expresses the sacred alchemy that transforms all those involved in the journey of a departing soul and offers insights for caregivers from a place of understanding and wholeness. Karen Young, RN, MN worked for many years as a nurse in the field of bone marrow and stem cell transplant. She has studied with respected teachers of Buddhist and non-dual, Advaita Vedanta philosophies. She loves being in nature where she finds the deep interconnection of all life. In writing this book, she hopes to bring more understanding and awareness into the world.

Lauren Holloway's ex-fiance, Tucker Kane, is without an alibi when his ex-wife is murdered. Tucker claims to have been alone at a job site at the time, but he needs Lauren to lie for him so that he won't become a suspect in the murder. She refuses; now as a prime suspect, Tucker disappears without a trace. Years later, she sees him at an antique fair, and worried that Lauren will reveal his carefully constructed life, he forces his into her hotel room and tells her that he's trying to find evidence to clear his name. As Lauren tries to help Tucker, she questions her ability to judge character as she uncovers a labyrinth of deceit, putting her very life in danger.
"Karen Young has written an exciting thriller with the second chance romantic subplot enhancing the suspense. Readers will root for the embattled lead protagonists caught in the crosshairs of a ruthless diabolical killer. . . . Lie For Me is a gripping one sitting read."
--Harriet Klausner (5 stars)

To Save a Victim, Camille St. James May Have to Become One Herself.
Seven years ago, tragedy ended the troubled marriage of Camille and Jack Vermillion. Now, as head of the Truth Project, her life safe and orderly, she focuses her lawyerly skills on freeing wrongly incarcerated individuals on death row.
Jack paid a bitter price for his mistakes. No longer a high-powered corporate attorney, he's now pastor of a small church in Blood Bayou. Unsure of her own beliefs, Camille is highly skeptical of the conversion of this man she hasn't seen in seven years.
Then tragedy strikes again. Jack's sister is murdered, apparently by a prisoner Camille has set free. To prove his innocence, Camille must return to Blood Bayou. But that means facing the hostility of the town -- and Jack.
And as She Works to Find the Real Killer, Someone Is Determined to Stop Her...by Any Means.

When baby Max is kidnapped during Mardi Gras, Jane and Kyle Madison's life falls apart. What their daughter, Melanie, does next is unthinkable.
Max vanished into thin air while in the care of his teenage sister, Melanie. Six months later, the family is a shadow of its former self: Melanie blames herself and is acting out and rebellious; Jane is obsessed with finding Max; and Kyle, a lawyer, struggles to cope with his own grief--and a persistent suspicion that one of his cases is connected to Max's disappearance.
With her family in turmoil and her marriage on the rocks, Jane thinks things can't get any worse. Then when an affair and an unexpected pregnancy threaten to tear the Madisons' lives apart, an anonymous caller leads to a break in the case. Can a second kidnapping bring their family back together?