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Fraud costs the United Kingdom a reported £190 billion per year. Making up 40 percent of all crime reported, fraud is now the most prevalent crime type across the UK, with an estimated 3.3 million incidents of fraud committed annually. Whether you are a new or an experienced counter-fraud professional, Blackstone's Counter Fraud Professional's Handbook offers a detailed understanding of all the relevant law, practice, theory, and procedure that you will need. Developed from first hand insights from those involved in the development of the Government Counter Fraud Profession, it will help you to understand and deploy prevention, risk assessment, and measurement techniques to improve your overall response. The book's practical, straightforward advice will help you build awareness and plan your effective response in the following areas: &#8226 Bribery & Corruption insight and investigation techniques &#8226 Leadership skills, integrity, and effectiveness &#8226 Investigation models and techniques &#8226 Emerging and existing legislation to have in your counter fraud toolkit &#8226 Fraud risk assessment, prevention, and measurement techniques. This text gives you ready access to the authors'extensive experience, knowledge, research, and reference materials to assist you on your own counter-fraud journey.

Catholic and Protestant missionaries followed their own, competing agendas rather than those of the colonial state. This volume unravels these agendas and challenges received wisdom on the histories of Rwanda and Burundi, as well as the colonial relationship between state and mission. The archives of the White Fathers Catholic missionary order in Rome and Paris are read alongside primary sources produced by the British Protestant Church Missionary Society to analyse their impact between 1900 and 1972 in Rwanda and Burundi. The colonial state was weaker than often assumed, and permeable by external radical influences. Denominational competition between Catholic and Protestant missionaries was a key motor of this radicalism. The colonial state in both kingdoms was a weak, reactive agent rather than a structuring form of power. This volume shows that missionaries were more committed and influential actors, but their inability to manage the mass demand for the education that they sought and delivered finally undermined the achievement of their aims. Missionaries and the Colonial State is a resource for historians of Christianity, Belgian Africa specialists, and scholars of colonialism.

From the award-winning novelist David Whitehouse, hailed by The New York Times as “a writer to watch,” a tragicomic adventure about a troubled adolescent boy who escapes his small town in a stolen library-on-wheels.“An archivist of his mother,” Bobby Nusku spends his nights meticulously cataloging her hair, clothing, and other traces of the life she left behind. By day, Bobby and his best friend Sunny hatch a plan to transform Sunny, limb-by-limb, into a cyborg who could keep Bobby safe from schoolyard torment and from Bobby's abusive father and his bleach-blonde girlfriend. When Sunny is injured in a freak accident, Bobby is forced to face the world alone. Out in the neighborhood, Bobby encounters Rosa, a peculiar girl whose disability invites the scorn of bullies. When Bobby takes Rosa home, he meets her mother, Val, a lonely divorcee, whose job is cleaning a mobile library. Bobby and Val come to fill the emotional void in each other's lives, but their bond also draws unwanted attention. After Val loses her job and Bobby is beaten by his father, they abscond in the sixteen-wheel bookmobile. On the road they are joined by Joe, a mysterious but kindhearted ex-soldier. This “puzzle of people” will travel across England, a picaresque adventure that comes to rival those in the classic books that fill their library-on-wheels. At once tender, provocative and darkly funny, Mobile Library is a fable about the intrinsic human desire to be loved and understood—and about one boy's realization that the kinds of adventures found in books can happen in real life. It is the ingenious second novel by a writer whose prose has been hailed as “outlandishly clever” (The New York Times) and “deceptively effortless” (The Boston Globe).

Reminiscent of such novels as A Confederacy of Dunces and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Bed is a darkly funny and surprisingly tender debut novel about two brothers, one of whom refuses to leave his bed on his twenty-fifth birthday. Mal Ede, a child of untamed manners and unbounded curiosity, is the eccentric eldest son of an otherwise typical middle-class family. But as the wonders of childhood fade into the responsibilities of adulthood, Mal's spirits fade too. On his twenty-fifth birthday, disillusioned, Mal goes to bed—back to his childhood bed—and never emerges again. Narrated by Mal's shy, diligent younger brother, Bed details Mal's subsequent extreme and increasingly grotesque transformation: immobility and a gargantuan appetite combine, over the course of two decades, to make him the fattest man in the world. Despite his seclusion and his refusal to explain his motivations, Mal's condition earns him worldwide notoriety and a cult of followers convinced he is making an important statement about modern life. But Mal's actions will also change the lives of his haunted parents, his brother and the woman they both love, Lou. In Bed, David Whitehouse has put a magnifying glass on contemporary society. Hailed as a “momentous” (The Bookseller) debut in the UK, Bed is a mordantly funny and ultimately redemptive parable about mortality, obesity, celebrity, depression and the broken promises of adulthood. It is one of the most audacious debut novels in years.

Between 1966 and 1973, the British Institute of Persian Studies conducted seven seasons of excavation and survey at Siraf, which was a major city on the Iranian shore of the Persian Gulf that played a leading role in the network of maritime trade that supplied Western Asia with the products of India, the Far East and Eastern Africa between A.D. 800 and 1050. This volume synthesises the written evidence of the history of Siraf, and outlines what we know about the character of the city, the ways in which its inhabitants exploited the hinterland and its role in the maritime trade of the Indian Ocean. This volume introduces the excavations carried out at the site and the range of finds that were recovered (Chapter 1), the written evidence that relates to Siraf (Chapter 2), the cities'urban topography (Chapter 3), its hinterland (Chapter 4), the nature of settlement in the neighbouring high valleys (Chapter 5) and Siraf's place in the wider historical and geographical contexts (Chapter 6). The volume also includes digital versions of the original maps of the site produced in the 1970s. This is the first volume in a new series that has been established by the British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS) in conjunction with Oxbow Books, which will publish archaeological research in Iran that has been sponsored by BIPS.

Here is the most up-to-date history of man in space, researched by a NASA insider from astronaut interviews, diaries and speeches, and even top-secret documents from the former Soviet Union, with many revelations appearing in print for the very first time,.One Small Step shows space travel as it's never been seen before and those who read it will be both shocked at the dangers and failings of the space missions, and full of admiration for the courage of those who travelled into space. There are surprises in these pages even to those who closely follow space exploration. From Laika, Yuri Gagarin, Alan Shepard and John Glenn, to Columbia, the International Space Station and SpaceShipOne, via the Vostok, Soyuz, Gemini and Apollo missions and the moon landings, One Small Step is a unique first-hand history of space exploration.

Molecular Forensics offers a comprehensive coverage of the increasingly important role that molecular analysis plays within forensic science. Starting with a broad introduction of modern forensic molecular technologies, the text covers key issues from the initial scenes of crime sampling to the use of evidential material in the prosecution of legal cases. The book also explores the questions raised by the growing debate on the applications of national DNA databases and the resulting challenges of developing, maintaining and curating such vast data structures. The broader range of applications to non-human cases is also discussed, as are the statistical pitfalls of using so-called unique data such as DNA profiles, and the ethical considerations of national DNA databases. An invaluable reference for students taking courses within the Forensic and Biomedical sciences, and also useful for practitioners in the field looking for a broad overview of the subject. Provides a comprehensive overview of modern forensic molecular technologies. Explores the growing debate on the applications of national DNA databases. Discusses the initial phases of investigation to the conclusion of cases involving molecular forensic analysis.