Peter Pickering was a British businessman recruited by the CIA to help stop the drain of US technology for weapons use by rogue nations and terrorists. When he disappeared in Switzerland, his French wife Monique hired a detective to find him. Peter turned up with amnesia as a John Doe left for dead in Germany. The PI was wounded saving agent Joan Walters from being taking down by an intruder to the Pickering estate in the Berkshires. Despite their age difference, Joan was attracted to him and they became more than partners. The investigators traveled to Europe for answers, but encountered spies who killed one of the Brit’s component customers while ransacking his Zurich office.

This first OECD Skills Outlook presents the initial results of the OECD Survey of Adult Skills, which evaluates the skills of adults in 22 OECD and 2 non-OECD partner countries.

This open access book discusses challenges in school improvement research and different methodological approaches that have the potential to foster school improvement research. Research on school improvement and accountability analysis places high demands on a study's design and method. The potential of combining the depth of case studies with the breath of quantitative measures and analyses in a mixed-methods design seems very promising. Consequently, the focus of the book lies on innovative methodological approaches. The book chapters address design, measurement, and analysis developments as well as theoretical and conceptual developments. The relevance of the research presented in the chapters for educational accountability is discussed in the book's discussion chapter. More specifically, authors present one specific innovative methodological approach and clarify that approach with a concrete example in the context of school improvement, based on empirical data when possible. In this way, this book helps researchers designing complex useful studies.

Two shocking exposés of Nazi cruelty and international collusion from “one of the finest investigative journalists” (The Washington Times). Nazi Gold: The Full Story of the Fifty-Year Swiss-Nazi Conspiracy to Steal Billions from Europe’s Jews and Holocaust Survivors This riveting exposé reveals the shocking truth about how the Swiss banking industry knowingly collaborated with the Third Reich during the darkest era in modern history. With the knowledge and acquiescence of the Swiss government, hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from Jewish Holocaust victims were systematically hidden away in Swiss bank accounts. For the next half century, Swiss authorities engaged in a covert campaign of lies, subterfuge, and corruption to hide the wealth from its rightful owners—concentration camp survivors and the families of the slain—while freely dispensing the illegally obtained funds to fugitive Nazis. Nazi Gold is an explosive account of state-endorsed crimes and atrocities; of former victims fighting courageously for their due in the face of prejudice, hatred, and indifference; and of the dedicated US Treasury agents who worked tirelessly for decades to right an unconscionable wrong. “Compelling [and] carefully researched.” —The Washington Times Klaus Barbie: The Butcher of Lyons In 1942, SS Gestapo chief Nikolaus “Klaus” Barbie was dispatched to Nazi-occupied France after leaving his bloodstained mark on the Netherlands. In Lyons, Barbie was entrusted with “cleansing” the region of Jews, French Resistance fighters, and Communists, an assignment he undertook with sadistic cruelty. Thousands died on Barbie’s orders. Following the D-Day invasion, Barbie fled, slaughtering all his prisoners. But the war’s conclusion was not the end of the “Butcher of Lyons.” With the dawning of the Cold War, Barbie went on to find a new employer: the US intelligence services. He escaped to South America, where he lived a free man until extradited to France to finally stand trial for war crimes in 1983. “[A] taut, richly backgrounded story.” —Kirkus Reviews

Issues for Sept. 1933- contain a section on research notes.

Florian Zainhofer uses the theory of life cycle investing as a framework to study the implications of a potential BVG individualization. He proposes a model adapted to Swiss conditions and parameterized with estimated Swiss earnings dynamics.