He made a stand against the end of the world... The Blight arose from nowhere. It swept across the bickering nations like the End of Times and spared only those with a single fortuitous blood type. Hot-headed religion and territorial savagery rule the cities now. Somewhere amidst the chaos a damaged man receives a signal, and with it the tiniest flicker of hope. The chance to rediscover the humanity he lost, long ago, in the blood and filth and horror of The Cull.
Fire at her fingertips. Watch the world burn. When Monroe Benson was born with the power to summon fire from her fingertips, her family knew she had to stay hidden. But when Queen Viera calls for the Culling, an age-old tradition in Erydia where ten goddess-touched girls battle to the death in order to claim the crown, Monroe can no longer hide. She’s whisked away from her home, from her mother, from everything she’s ever known to fight alongside the other girls—each with their own power—for a throne she does not want. Duty is his destiny. There’s no way out. As the son of the queen and the next king, Cohen can’t question tradition. Not even when he’s being mysteriously poisoned. Not even when his sister goes missing and no one seems to care. The Culling makes choices for him—who will become his wife, who will rule by his side. And when rebellion rises, what little control Cohen has over his future is threatened. Together they’ll stand. Together they’ll fall. But Monroe sees a different Cohen than the rest of the world. She sees him as more than just the crown, more than just the next cruel ruler in a long line of cruel leaders. In turn, he sees her as more than just her powers. More than just a goddess-touched girl destined to lose her life. When a betrayal threatens both their relationship and the monarchy, Monroe and Cohen face a choice that will change their lives . . . forever.
Lucian “Lucky” Spark has been recruited for training by the Establishment, a totalitarian government. If a recruit fails any level of the violent training competitions, a family member is brutally killed ... and the recruit must choose which one. An undeniable attraction develops between Lucky and another recruit, but only one of them can survive.
The world is thrown into a frenzy when an experimental virus is accidentally released. Highly contagious, its victims suffer a fate worse than death. Bodies ravaged by fever, their numbers increase at a startling rate as they mindlessly roam the streets infecting all with whom they come into contact until their inevitable and swift deaths. Frankie, a businesswoman with a young family, and Henry, a bachelor well on his way to becoming a grumpy old man, find themselves caught in the fallout. Terror the new way of life, each struggle to survive as society crumbles around them. Hundreds of miles away from one another, they find themselves on a journey to Los Alamos, New Mexico with hopes of finding a cure that, unbeknownst to them, resides within their veins.
he Culling In a solar system where The Authority decides who lives and who dies, only one of their own executioners can stop them. Glade Io is a trained killer. Marked at a young age as an individual with violent tendencies, she was taken from her family and groomed to be a Datapoint—a biotech-enabled analyst who carries out the Culling. She is designed to identify and destroy any potential humans that threaten the colonies: those marked as lawbreakers, unproductive or sick. But when she’s kidnapped by rogue colonists known as the Ferrymen, everything Glade thinks she knows about the colonies, and The Authority that runs them, collapses into doubt. Pulled between two opposing sides, and with her family’s lives hanging in the balance, Glade is unsure of who to trust—and time is running out. The Authority When everything she’s ever known is a lie, one young woman must make a choice that could change the course of history. Glade Io is torn between two worlds. She’s a trained killing machine—selected by the ruthless Authority to be a Datapoint, a tech-enabled agent of the state who eliminates threats to the human colonies throughout the solar system in the Culling. But her time among rogue colonists called the Ferrymen has convinced her that The Authority has far more sinister plans in store, and all the justifications they fed to her are lies. Vowing to help the rebels fight The Authority from the inside, Glade must sabotage a captured Ferryman ship that The Authority is planning to use to attack the Ferrymen stronghold. Though Glade is drawn to the brave leader of the Ferrymen, Kupier, she has older loyalties as well. Her friend and mentor Dahn Enceladus is charismatic and ambitious, but although Glade cares for him, she can no longer trust him. Her younger sisters are also in danger of facing Datapoint testing, and now she’s being forced into an upgrade she cannot refuse. But help is about to arrive in an unlikely form: a ghost from her distant past. The Ferrymen Torn in two directions, Glade must make one fateful choice—for herself, and the future of humanity. Glade Io is a rebel. Having fled with her younger sisters to live among the Ferrymen, she knows there is no going back now. She is committed to the cause of overthrowing the brutal Authority, and she trains her new comrades in the art of combating Datapoints like herself—those tasked with the Ferrymen’s destruction. Meanwhile Ferryman leader Kupier longs to travel the stars with Glade, free from constant war, but to do that he believes they must strike The Authority at its heart: the ancestral homeworld of Earth. Glade is hesitant; she hopes taking out the Datapoints living on the Station will be enough. But when the time comes, Glade faces the specter of killing her former friends in cold blood and her former mentor, Dahn Enceladus, tells her that The Authority has eyes and ears within the rebel stronghold. Now Glade faces a dilemma: sabotage The Authority from within, or return to fight alongside the Ferrymen, possibly putting her sisters’ lives in danger.
Culling the Masses questions the widely held view that in the long run democracy and racism cannot coexist. David Scott FitzGerald and David Cook-Martín show that democracies were the first countries in the Americas to select immigrants by race, and undemocratic states the first to outlaw discrimination. Through analysis of legal records from twenty-two countries between 1790 and 2010, the authors present a history of the rise and fall of racial selection in the Western Hemisphere. The United States led the way in using legal means to exclude “inferior” ethnic groups. Starting in 1790, Congress began passing nationality and immigration laws that prevented Africans and Asians from becoming citizens, on the grounds that they were inherently incapable of self-government. Similar policies were soon adopted by the self-governing colonies and dominions of the British Empire, eventually spreading across Latin America as well. Undemocratic regimes in Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Cuba reversed their discriminatory laws in the 1930s and 1940s, decades ahead of the United States and Canada. The conventional claim that racism and democracy are antithetical—because democracy depends on ideals of equality and fairness, which are incompatible with the notion of racial inferiority—cannot explain why liberal democracies were leaders in promoting racist policies and laggards in eliminating them. Ultimately, the authors argue, the changed racial geopolitics of World War II and the Cold War was necessary to convince North American countries to reform their immigration and citizenship laws.
African swine fever (ASF) is a highly fatal infectious disease of domestic and wild pigs of all breeds and ages with no effective vaccine or treatment. The incursion of ASF into Asia and the Pacific region has been a major concern as the region is the major pig production area, which produces over 58 percent of pigs globally (FAOSTAT). The concerns, therefore, are growing for its impacts on food security and economics as the virus is expanding towards more areas and countries in the region. As the disease continues to expand into new territories, preparedness and control activities need to be constantly adjusted to adapt to situations observed in the field that may be contrary to what was expected based on international standards or experiences from other parts of the world. National veterinary services face challenges in these complex situations, and so regional and international support is needed to fill capacity gaps required for ASF control and to facilitate dialogue among key stakeholders. Through various regional and national consultation meetings, affected countries have requested technical support to make available relevant technical guidelines for ASF control that are practical especially for smallholder pig farmers in the context of Asia (SO5). This [Culling and disposal of pigs in an ASF outbreak] is the second of the series of the “Guidelines for African swine fever (ASF) prevention and control in smallholder pig farming in Asia” which provides guidance on planning and conducting pig culling and disposal operations in smallholder setting including other relevant actions, such as cleaning and disinfection of premises in the event of an ASF outbreak.
