Land Of The Tuk Tuk

The novel is a story of love, corruption, greed and American ethnocentrism abroad. The novel is based on major events in Iran and Thailand: the impending revolution in Iran and the influx of hundreds of thousands of Indochinese refugees in Thailand. The first chapter is set in Isfahan, Iran where Jack Dakasian is working as a civilian instructor in a training program for Iranian military personnel learning to pilot and maintain U.S. made helicopters. Jack witnesses the conduct of Americans in Iran amidst the social turmoil in the country and returns to Thailand with an emerging love for Amara, a university instructor in Bangkok, Thailand. When Jack arrives in Thailand he becomes involved in a worthy cause, assisting refugees fleeing Cambodia. He is a field officer for the U.S. Refugee Program helping Cambodian refugees enter the United States. Jack soon discovers with the help of his former students that there is corruption in United Nations contracts for food, shelter and transportation in the massive refugee effort that involves officials of the World Food Programme and the U.S. Embassy . Events lead Jack to an ever widening circle of corruption that includes tourist development.

In 1944, Albania erupted in civil war. The communist party prevailed and acted quickly and brutally. By 1946, through executions, imprisonments, and mass banishments, the communists broke the back of Albania's freedom. A young Franciscan Catholic and man of heroic character in this time of inhumanity, Friar Zef Pllumi was arrested, brutally tortured, imprisoned, and sent to labor camps. Through deeply personal descriptions of shocking atrocities, Fr. Pllumi focuses on his extraordinary will to survive and his powerful faith. His intense desire to "live to tell" honors those martyred with Christ's name on their lips. Fr. Pllumi was initially released in 1949. Fr. Pllumi's memories are a brave confrontation of communism. His story's power lays in the fact that despite obscene efforts, the communist party could not succeed. As Fr. Pllumi states, "They think people are frightened before dying, but what they don't realize is that when you've arrived to a certain agonizing point, nothing is frightening anymore." Fr. Pllumi's historical memoir also delivers clear lessons for today. Amid the many horrors, differences in beliefs melted away. Christians, Muslims, Albanians, Italians, and French alike, although wounded physically, emotionally, and spiritually, were still alive to help each other and stand together and triumph for mankind.

The Central Highlands are an important area in Sri Lanka that generates important ecosystem services for the country. However, the area suffers from land degradation and related issues. The project “Rehabilitation of Degraded Agricultural Lands in Kandy, Badulla and Nuwara Eliya Districts in the Central Highlands” (GCP/SRL/063/GFF) was designed to tackle the above-mentioned challenges. The terminal evaluation found that the project generated relevant planned and unplanned outcomes including spontaneous dissemination of project models (e.g. tea smallholding productivity improvement) and demand for replication and use of Participatory Land Use Development Plans (PLUDP) as national model for village level resource planning. Positive gender results and lateral dissemination of technology and strengthened peer-to-peer learning were evaluation findings. The recommendations include: i) the project should catalyse and showcase their knowledge management, training and outreach related innovations post COVID-19; ii) future projects trying to innovate conservation approaches beyond the traditional ones should receive dedicated, embedded technical advisory support; iii) long-term and innovative financing should be embedded into sustainable land use models in project and pilot design; and iv) land use planning and development planning should be connected.

Natural or supernatural No mystery is out of this world for us . . . Travel back in time with the DOA gang as they solve out-of-this-world mysteries using their wits, will and Tuk Tuk, their auto rickshaw with attitude, which also happens to be a time machine! DOA Case File 1 Agra, India, 1636: There's some serious trouble at the Taj! Chief architect of the Taj Mahal, Ustad Ahmed Lahauri, has been kidnapped, leaving work on the construction unfinished. Emperor Shah Jahan now has to find a new architect for his dream project. But the ghost of his dead empress, Mumtaz Mahal, is determined to not let any other architect work on her mausoleum. She summons the DOA detectives and commands them to find the missing architect before it's too late and she's saddled with a hideous tomb for eternity. Soon the detectives discover that there is much more to the Ustad's disappearance than a mere kidnapping. There is a traitor in the imperial court who will stop at nothing till he fulfils his evil designs! Who could it be? Will the detectives be able to stop his wicked plans? Will they be able to ensure that the magnificent Taj Mahal gets built?

British agent Daniel Swann is back in Thailand, caught up in a government-level conspiracy over a mysterious black box. But as his friends are beheaded one by one and he is pursued by CIA agents, Swann realizes his mission has become personal. Someone wants him dead. So he turns to the only people he can trust—the underworld.