This timely book is a comprehensive analysis of incomplete International Investment Agreements (IIAs), featuring insights from negotiating experiences in a number of bilateral and multilateral investment treaties. It examines problems, causes, and solutions surrounding this phenomenon by employing incomplete contract theory and opens new avenues in discussing how to correct incomplete IIAs. Throughout the book, the author challenges the fundamental assumption that most IIAs are concluded in a complete manner and emphasizes the importance of accounting for the fact that IIAs are often concluded without significant investment protection articles and are subject to renegotiation. Park applies various interdisciplinary approaches, including incomplete contract theory and development theory, to illustrate how countries easily postpone their treaty negotiations and are willing to renegotiate to remedy incomplete IIAs. Furthermore, he depicts the reality of treaty negotiation in recent years, helping readers to understand how countries are failing to negotiate complete IIAs and how utilizing an economics approach could analyse and resolve this issue. Offering a useful and practical contribution to the discussion on the resolution of incomplete IIAs, this book will be key reading for academics and researchers within the fields of commercial law, international economic law, trade law and international investment law. It is also a must-read book for both government officers and investment treaty lawyers in all countries involved with Free Trade Agreements.

Korean director Hae-sung Song's remake of John Woo's 1986 action blockbuster. Leaving his younger brother Cheol (Kim Kang-woo) behind, Kim Hyeok (Jin-mo Ju) flees North Korea with his best friend Lee Yeong-choon (Seung-heon Song), and sets himself up as an illegal arms smuggler in South Korea. After being double-crossed in an arms deal, Hyeok is caught and spends three years in jail. On his release, and still guilt-ridden over leaving his brother behind, he sets out to seek a reconciliation with Cheol, now a police officer, only to have his advances rebuffed. Now, as Hyeok tries to go straight, he finds himself on a collision course with Cheol as the two opposing brothers get caught up in a gang war that threatens to engulf them both.

Apocalyptic sci-fi thriller by Korean director Byung-Chun Min, set in the year 2080 AD. Police detectives Agent R (Yu Ji-tae) and his colleague Noma (Yun Chan) are responsible for eliminating cyborgs that have expired past their lifespan. But unbenown to Noma, R has fallen in love with beautiful android dancer Ria (Seo Rin), and is desperately trying to find a way to dodge the law and save her life.

It's thought that there are over ten million domestic cats in the United Kingdom therefore Te Harrison-Best's new collection of feline poems titled Catawall at very least should have a vast ready-made audience among owners. If you've kept a dog and cat at the same time you will be only too aware how different in nature these creatures are. Basically, the faithful hound is a camp follower, awaiting orders while the cunning kitty strolls off to do its own thing. Does this make the cat a much more interesting and independent creature? All the evidence would suggest so and this colourful assortment of verse helps make the case. However, before we get over-slushy and sentimental on the topic of cats (which is easy to do) one or two interesting facts are worth considering. It's thought that every year the average domestic cat kills up to forty small feathery or furry creatures. But remember their antecedents included the sabre-toothed tiger and apologists will tell you they are still only doing what comes naturally. And did you know that researchers at Bristol have found that cat owners tend to be more intelligent than dog owners? Not because of close contact with the wily pussies but simply because they have been better educated, tend of work longer hours and so have less time to spend with their pets; thus the low maintenance, independent moggie best fits requirements.

November 1911. Lady Emily Hardcastle is celebrating her birthday by seeing a play at the Duke's Theatre in Bristol with her maid and confidante, the inimitable Flo. Act One is a triumph. Then Act Two opens with a body on stage-a real one. One of the cast has been brutally murdered during the interval. When other matters get in the way of Inspector Sunderland overseeing the case himself, he asks the ever-resourceful Lady H to keep a watchful eye on the suspects-and his police colleagues. Rustling up some cunning disguises of their own, she and Flo are soon in deep cover among the cast and crew, pulling back the curtain on some shocking secrets and rivalries... The problem is, everyone seems to have a motive, and everyone seems to have an alibi...In this locked-room mystery in which nothing is as it seems, the amateur sleuths need to put on the performances of their lives if they're to stand a chance of shining a spotlight on the truth...

May 1912. After the previous year’s deadly heatwave, it’s been an uneventful spring in Littleton Cotterell. Though for Lady Hardcastle and her fiercely loyal lady’s maid Flo, at least there are the provincial delights of the village’s inaugural art exhibition—and bicycle race—to look forward to. But at the exhibition opening, there’s a panicked shout of ‘Fire!’ In the confusion, the main attraction—an extremely expensive book—is stolen from under everyone’s nose, as is a valuable painting lent by Sir Hector Farley-Stroud. Then the race, which starts as a charming day out, ends in a shocking death. And to top it all off, the Farley-Strouds reveal they’re in debt and might lose their house. The sleuthing duo soon find themselves torn between a murder investigation, an art theft mystery, and trying to help their pals. All with a suspicious figure from Flo’s past, a supercilious insurance investigator, and a pair of rather bizarre treasure hunters on the loose…

Mihi Whan Park loves fairy tales. She wants to be a princess more than anything, but everyone tells her she's not the princess type. But when she and her new friends, Savannah and Reese, discover a portal to a fairy tale realm inside the fridge in their school library, Mihi finally gets her shot: She and her friends can learn to be princesses! They just have to make it through a very rigorous training program first . . . But princess training turns out to be more than Mihi bargained for, and the fairy tale world is not the wonderful place she imagined. Soon, Savannah and Reese decide they're ready to go home, and Mihi has to decide where her loyalties lie: With her friends and her future at home, or with her princess dreams?

The new spinoff manga to the hit fantasy isekai series, developed by original creator Fuse! Against the odds, the little slime Rimiru has established his magical kingdom for all monsters, called Tempest, and it's thriving. But three visitors, Phos the fox girl, Stella the dragon girl, and Nemu the winged girl, come to pay Tempest a visit, they're stunned at just how quickly it's developed. Don't miss this new story in the world of Slime, just as the second season of the anime arrives! With a concept and story by Fuse, the creator of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Trinity in Tempest is the grand tour of Rimiru's world that fans have always wanted. Through the eyes of three cute little monsters, one from the fox clan, one from the dragon clan, and one from the winged clan, readers will meet the residents of the utopia in Jura Forest, and get a peek at how they live their lives. The little group's leader, Phos, is a fox girl from the Beast Kingdom of Eurazania. But this isn't just a pleasure trip for her... she's visiting Tempest on secret orders from Lord Carrion. What would a demon lord want with Rimiru's monster paradise?

Summer 1911. A scorching heatwave engulfs the quiet town of Littleton Cotterell and brings about an unusually early harvest. The villagers are thrilled, but events quickly turn sour when one of them turns up dead in an apple orchard, stabbed through the heart. Amateur sleuth Lady Hardcastle and her trusty lady's maid, Flo, suddenly have a juicy case on their hands. Might the mysterious stranger they recently met in the village be to blame? When a second cider-related murder takes place, it quickly becomes clear that there's more to these mysterious deaths than meets the eye. The daring duo uncover whispers of an ancient order and moonlit rituals. And evidence points to a macabre secret in the village stretching back years. A secret someone will do anything-anything at all-to keep hidden. Something is rotten, that's for sure. With the local constabulary baffled, Lady Hardcastle and Flo must use all their powers of wit and whimsy to get to the bottom of the dastardly deed. But can they catch the killer before any more people drop dead?

August 1911. Emily Hardcastle and her inimitable lady's maid Florence Armstrong are enjoying a fine summer until Harry, Lady H's brother, turns up out of the blue with a mystery for them to solve. A routine parachute test at a local aeroplane factory has gone horribly wrong-with pilot Dickie Dupree plummeting to his death. Harry is certain there is more to this 'tragic accident' than meets the eye, having discovered that someone at the airfield is leaking top secret intelligence to foreign rivals. In between strolls to the Dog & Duck and planning for the annual village show, the daring duo dust off the Crime Board and go undercover at Bristol Aviation. With international powers investing heavily in aeronautics, the stakes are high-sky high-and the suspects soon mount up. Can Lady Hardcastle find the culprit before someone else falls down dead?

- the first interdisciplinary book dedicated to the metaverse - the first book to focus on virtual reality in connection to digital communication

Given the extreme variety of research issues under investigation today and the multi-million-dollar industry surrounding research, it becomes extremely important that we ensure that research involving Indigenous peoples is ethically as well as methodologically relevant, according to the needs and desires of Indigenous peoples themselves. This distinctive volume presents Indigenous research as strong and self-determined with theories, ethics and methodologies arising from within unique cultural contexts. Yet the volume makes clear that challenges remain, such as working in mainstream institutions that may not regard the work of Indigenous researchers as legitimate 'science'. In addition, it explores a twenty-first-century challenge for Indigenous people researching with their own people, namely the ethical questions that must be addressed when dealing with Indigenous organisations and tribal corporations that have fought for - and won - power and money. The volume also analyses Indigenous/non-Indigenous research partnerships, outlining how they developed respectful and reciprocal relationships of benefit for all, and argues that these kinds of best practice research guidelines are of value to all research communities.

Winner of the Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities Winner of the Istvan Hont Book Prize An ambitious reinterpretation and defense of Plato’s basic enterprise and influence, arguing that the power of his myths was central to the founding of philosophical rationalism. Plato’s use of myths—the Myth of Metals, the Myth of Er—sits uneasily with his canonical reputation as the inventor of rational philosophy. Since the Enlightenment, interpreters like Hegel have sought to resolve this tension by treating Plato’s myths as mere regrettable embellishments, irrelevant to his main enterprise. Others, such as Karl Popper, have railed against the deceptive power of myth, concluding that a tradition built on Platonic foundations can be neither rational nor desirable. Tae-Yeoun Keum challenges the premise underlying both of these positions. She argues that myth is neither irrelevant nor inimical to the ideal of rational progress. She tracks the influence of Plato’s dialogues through the early modern period and on to the twentieth century, showing how pivotal figures in the history of political thought—More, Bacon, Leibniz, the German Idealists, Cassirer, and others—have been inspired by Plato’s mythmaking. She finds that Plato’s followers perennially raised the possibility that there is a vital role for myth in rational political thinking.

'Te-Ping Chen's Land of Big Numbers contains 10 illuminating, sharp stories set in China, penned by a former investigative reporter who worked in Beijing for several years' The Independent 'In this magnificent collection of stories, the author and former Beijing-based correspondent vividly captures the desires and losses of a richly drawn cast while drawing on the realities of contemporary China' Cosmopolitan A dazzling debut collection which, deftly and urgently, tells the stories of those living in the biggest and most complicated country on earth. A brother competes for gaming glory while his twin sister exposes the dark side of the Communist government on her underground blog; a worker at a government call centre is alarmed one day to find herself speaking to a former lover; a delicious new fruit arrives at the neighbourhood market and the locals find it starts to affect their lives in ways they could never have imagined; and a young woman's dreams of making it big in Shanghai are stalled when she finds herself working as a florist. These are just some of the myriad lives to be evoked in The Land of Big Numbers, a collection of stories which - sometimes playfully, sometimes darkly - draws back the curtain on the realities of modern China and unveils a cast of characters as rich and complicated as any in world literature. With virtuosic brilliance, Te-ping Chen sheds light on a country much talked about but little understood and announces the birth of a bright new star in the literary firmament. "A spectacular work, comic, timely, profound. Te-Ping Chen has a superb eye for detail in a China where transformation occurs simultaneously too fast and too slow for lives in pursuit of meaning in a brave new world. Her characters are achingly alive. It's rare to read a collection so satisfying, where every story adds to a gripping and intricate world." Madeleine Thien, author of the Booker-shortlisted Do Not Say We Have Nothing "Te-Ping Chen shows us how much life, loss, and quiet pleasure exists in the world, just out of view." Alexandra Kleeman

This book presents Korea's economic strategy to meet the emerging challenges, as it recovers from the 1997 financial crisis and moves on into the globalization and information era. For important policy areas, the authors evaluate existing policies, and offer proposals for new strategic direction that can achieve sustainable and equitable economic growth for Korea. A considerable majority of the contributing authors are involved in formulating economic strategy as policy advisors to the Korean government, and they bring to their chapters extensive experience and insights regarding Korean government policies that are rarely available to readers in such a comprehensive form. The book therefore offers a timely, practical, and unique analysis of all aspects of the Korean economy. Academics, policy practitioners, and others with interests in the Korean economy, Asian economies, development studies, and a broad sweep of other issues concerning structural reform will find in this volume a gold mine of detail and opinion.