Probably best for about early 3rd grade and up. Jul 01, Jessica rated it liked it. The third book in the series follows Bart and Allison as they head to San Fransisco. Of course, anything that can wrong does and Allison is always in the middle of it. Her evil stalker returns from the grave but in the end Allison and Bart are triumphant. May 19, Serene Heiner rated it really liked it. I really enjoyed this one.
Even though these books are kind of like the show "24" where anything that could possibly go wrong, does. And as great as the action is, I don't think I could ever recommend it to a guy. It's written from a girl's perspective and so the "romantic" parts would be way too mushy for a guy. Dec 31, Michele Nell rated it really liked it. Another one down in less than 24 hours from start to finish. I find myself constantly trying to find out who the "bad guy" is and not always am I right.
Diamonds and Danger (Gems and Espionage, #3)
A great page turner yet very much like the previous 2 books. Jul 16, Ann rated it really liked it. I really should have started from the beginning of the series, but this was available to me to read to I read it.
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It just seemed like there was a little too much going on and not enough story to support all of the action. I still might finish out the series though, I will have to think about it. Once I got started on this series, I had to buy the next one that Lynn Gardner wrote, and so continued along the dangerous lives of Allison and Bart. The inclusion of religion, prayer, and faith added to the meaning of the book for me.
I enjoyed the story and the twists and turns of the plot. Apr 01, Liesl rated it really liked it Recommends it for: Those who like to read fun series books. Recommended to Liesl by: This was her first book. You can tell it is a first book as it is rough in places. The series gets better and better. I really enjoyed this series. It was very fun, exciting, and romantic. The romance is between a Husband and Wife which makes it even more fun to read.
Jul 29, Jordyn rated it it was amazing. Jan 15, Melissa rated it liked it Shelves: These are fun fast passed good reads. The only problem I had was that the series went on too long. Jul 07, Kalia rated it it was amazing. These books are really great. I love this kind of novel.
Ramance and action rolled very perfectly in one. Feb 08, Michael-Ann rated it liked it Shelves: Good romance, spy thriller. Dec 04, Julia rated it really liked it. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. May 22, Allison rated it really liked it Shelves: This book was a fast read and a cute, but action packed romance. I really enjoyed it! Apr 09, Jenya rated it it was amazing. Apr 30, Dara rated it it was amazing. Great suspense and mystery with a little romance!
May 27, Carol rated it liked it. Sequel to Pearls and Peril. Jun 26, Racheal Decker rated it it was amazing. Jul 19, Angela rated it it was amazing. This was a great continuation. Aug 17, Jana rated it really liked it. Boy Allison annoyed me in this one. She has no idea what she does to Bart. But the setting was compelling and the mystery intriguing. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, Sillitoe was in overall charge of the police forces in Kent during the war.
Peter Wright, a former British agent who created great controversy by publishing his memoirs, Spycatcher, in , claimed that Sillitoe was made boss of MI5 by the prime minister Clement Atlee in as a snub to the intelligence services which Atlee blamed for the Zinoviev letter in That letter, purporting to be from the Russians, called on the British Communist Party to prepare for revolution and was blamed by the Labour Party for the defeat of Britain's first Labour government in the general election of In , not long after Sillitoe had retired, he was approached by Sir Ernest Oppenheimer for assistance in combatting illicit traffic in diamonds.
Sir Percy agreed and in March undertook a 6-week tour of diamond mines all over Africa at the end of which he set up the International Diamond Security Organization which had the twin aims of increasing security at the mines and discovering the major channels of smuggling to Europe, the Middle East, and the Iron Curtain. Because London was the main international centre for diamond sales the trade was a huge dollar earner for Britain and hence IDSO had no difficulty in getting support from the highest in the land.
By means of undercover buying in Liberia and Rhodesia the IDSO was able to penetrate the smuggling rings, but suffered some setbacks along the way. A former airline steward who infiltrated the smuggling network died when his plane crashed on Kilimanjaro before he could pass on to the IDSO important information that he claimed to have discovered.
Fleming was approached by one of Sillitoe's agents, who used the alias "John Blaize" without, according to Fleming the blessing of De Beers, in April That was the year following the publication of the novel Diamonds are Forever - the title was inspired by the famous advertising slogan, of which it is the plural form - in which Bond took on diamond smugglers. The main source of smuggled diamonds was Sierra Leone, where the stones are found along the courses of rivers and streams over a large area of the country, which made it hard to police diamond production.
Furthermore, according to Fleming, "there was a general idea among the illicit miners that the soil of Sierra Leone belongs to the Sierra Leoneans" and they saw no reason why they should not be allowed to look for diamonds. One leading American illicit diamond buyer, whom IDSO was unable to trap, encouraged this idea and claimed to be acting in the best interest of the Africans. Actually the main beneficiaries were foreign buyers and Sierra Leone lost a great deal of revenue owing to smuggling of diamonds into Liberia from where they were sent to Antwerp or Beirut.
One of the Lebanese businessman involved in this trade, Fred Kamil, had a grudge against the smugglers after being cheated by one of them and recruited a gang of thugs and started ambushing smugglers along the Liberian-Sierra Leonean border.
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Sillitoe reached a deal with Kamil whereby IDSO agents supplied Kamil with information about the movements of smugglers and in return he handed over recovered diamonds to De Beers who would give one third of their value in cash. Action of a more constructive nature to discourage smuggling was taken by the British authorities who decided to legalize the illegal diggers by giving them mining and prospecting licences while the Diamond Corporation i.
De Beers set up buying posts for purchasing the stones extracted by the miners. The tax on diamond exports was also reduced. By the spring of these attempts to encourage sales through official channels and the efforts of Sillitoe's agents in targetting some of the brains behind the smuggling rings had proved so successful that the IDSO was disbanded, its mission having been accomplished.
Some of its men went back to intelligence or security work and others took jobs with De Beers and the Anglo-American Corporation. Sillitoe and the IDSO had not totally eliminated diamond smuggling. By the s it was again becoming a problem and, Fred Kamil, who had led the ambushes of smugglers in Sierra Leone, was among the agents hired by De Beers to combat it.
Kamil started working for the firm in and he tried to emulate Sillitoe in establishing a network of investigators and informers to discover who was involved in smuggling. However in he was fired. Kamil claimed that was because he was about to expose some senior De Beers executives in Namibia. As the west African smugglers had discovered more than 10 years earlier it was unwise to cross Kamil who maintained he had not received full payment for work he had already done and he hijacked a South African airliner on which Harry Oppenheimer's son-in-law was supposed to be travelling, intending to hold him for ransom.
Actually the intended victim was not the plane and after landing in Malawi Kamil surrendered and was imprisoned. Subsequently Kamil wrote a largely autobiographical book entitled the Diamond underworld , Kamil, Diamond smuggling took a more sinister turn in the s. In the Portuguese government gave up its attempt to hang on by force to its colonies in Africa, but independence did not bring peace. Both sides were financed by mineral wealth.
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With the ending of the Cold War and apartheid, pressure on the warring factions to end the fighting increased and a peace deal was agreed in Among the legacies of the conflict, in which half a million people died, are at least 10 million landmines some estimates put the figure twice as high , or one for every man, woman and child in the country. The visit to Angola of Princess Diana in helped to attract widespread international support for the Ottawa Treaty prohibiting the use of antipersonnel mines, despite the opposition of the American government.
However Angolans will be suffering from landmines for many years to come. In the year the diamond embargo was imposed Angolan government forces were also involved in fighting outside their country when they intervened in the Congolese civil war. By it was apparent that the effect of the embargo was limited and in March that year the United Nations released a report accusing the presidents of Burkina Faso and Togo of supplying UNITA with arms and fuel in exchange for diamonds.
Not long after gaining independence from Belgium in , the mineral-rich province of Katanga attempted to secede from the rest of the country. That rebellion was eventually crushed but not until after the prime minister Patrice Lumumba, had been killed by troops loyal to the army chief Joseph Mobutu who seized power, allegedly with Belgian and US encouragement.
Mobotu, who renamed the country Zaire, proved spectacularly corrupt but because of his pro-western policies he was supported by the US until after the end of the Cold War. In Rwanda invaded the eastern part of Zaire in order to crush Hutu militias who had been using it as a base. Tutsi and other anti-Mobutu rebels, took advantage of the Rwandan invasion to capture the capital Kinshasha and install Laurent-Desire Kabila as president of the country which they renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo. Unfortunately a rift soon opened between Kabila and some of his former allies and in the country was plunged into a civil war in which the anti-Kabila rebels, supported by Rwandan and Ugandan troops, were prevented from capturing Kinshasha by the intervention of Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe which took Kabila's side.
Their intervention proved expensive but has been partly financed by Congolese gold and diamonds. A peace agreement signed in July by the governments of the six countries involved failed to put a complete end to the war in which, according to some estimates, over 2 million people died, many as a result of hunger and disease. In January Laurent Kabila was assassinated by one of his body guards and succeeded by his son Joseph Kabila as president.
Experts from the United Nations have stated that the conflict has been deliberately prolonged by factions wanting to plunder gold, diamonds and other resources. Among those implicated, if allegations made by an American diamond dealer in March are to be believed, are Zimbabwean generals, government ministers and close relatives of president Robert Mugabe. All of those, according to John Marsischky, the boss of Flashes of Color , are involved in offering for sale, gems looted by government forces during the Congolese civil war. His company had attempted to set up a diamond cutting operation in the Congo the previous year, but were unsuccessful owing to the opposition of those with a vested interest in the existing situation.
In October a United Nations panel of experts issued a report on the illegal exploitation of Congolese resources report no. A few weeks later President Joseph Kabila sacked the top managers from the Congo's state diamond company but denied that the action had anything to do with the report. Some of the companies criticised in the report have also responded vigorously, most notably Oryx Natural Resources who were hoping to be exonerated in a later report by the UN. However in October the UN described the situation as "unresolved". The Congo is not only a diamond producer but a channel by which diamonds from other countries reach the world markets.
UN inspectors concluded in July that the Republic of Congo was exporting diamonds at a rate "approximately times greater than its estimated production" and therefore most of these had been smuggled into the country illegally. These findings led to the Republic of the Congo being suspended from the Kimberley Process, thus barring its gems from legitimate markets. Lebanese traders began to settle in Sierra Leone at the beginning of the 20th century and were prominent among the people who acquired mining and buying licences when the colonial government introduced a new licensing system in As a result of this the Lebanese civil war which started in the late s had an impact on Sierra Leone as various Lebanese militia sought financial assistance from their diamond trading compatriots in that country.
One of the best known militia leaders, Nabih Berri, had been born in Sierra Leone. After a failed coup in the leading Lebanese businessman in Sierra Leone went into exile, creating an opening for Israeli businessmen who were reputed to have close connections not only to the Antwerp diamond trade but also with organised crime in the United States and Russia.
After civil war broke out in smuggling of diamonds across the border into Liberia to pay for arms increased.
Drug traffickers were also attracted to Liberia since they were able to launder money by purchasing diamonds which could easily be sold abroad. By the government controlled only the capital and the surrounding area and therefore it turned to the international security firm Executive Outcomes for assistance and the rebels were driven back from the capital of Sierra Leone, Freetown and from some of the main diamond producing areas.
Two years later President Kabbah was deposed by a military coup but Kabbah's supporters fought on with the help of weapons supplied by Sandline International, a private military company run by a former British army officer, despite a UN arms embargo. In a subsequent enquiry Sandline International claimed it had the support of the Foreign Office even though the British government officially supported the arms embargo.
President Kabba returned to Freetown in March after a Nigerian-led West African intervention force, captured the capital but in January rebels attacked Freetown again. Later in talks led to a peace agreement and UN peacekeepers were dispatched. However, the following year, rebels prevented the UN troops from being deployed in some parts of the country and fighting broke out again in many areas.
The situation was transformed by the intervention of British troops in support of the UN mission and by January the conflict was over. American and European intelligence agencies trying to unravel the finances of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network believe that Al-Qaeda had been buying diamonds from Revolutionary United Front rebels and selling them in Europe for a profit. Therefore the restoration of stability is important not just for the long-suffering people of Sierra Leone but also for people of many other nations.
In April border guards were put on alert to prevent a massive diamond from being smuggled out of the country following rumours that massive 1, carat diamond had been found on the 22nd of that month. If true it would be the second largest diamond ever discovered. Later reports claimed the diamond was even bigger than previously estimated, 1, carats, and had arrived in Belgium. Botswana is one of the more peaceful and prosperous African nations.
In contrast to many other African countries it has long had a democratic, multi-party system, has enjoyed peace, and its human rights record is generally regarded as good. However, according to Survival International, a worldwide organisation supporting tribal peoples, there is one significant blot on that record. The original inhabitants of southern Africa were the Bushmen. When Bantu cattle herders moved south about 1, years ago the area occupied by the Bushmen was gradually reduced and the arrival of Europeans moving north from the Cape about years ago led to the Bushmen being forced into arid areas that neither the whites nor the Bantu wanted.
Today their numbers total fewer than , about half of whom live in Botswana. In February Survival International accused the Botswanan government of cutting off all water supplies in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in order to drive the Gana and Gwi Bushmen off their ancestral homeland. The European Union offered to meet the cost of supplying water but its offer was ignored.
It has been suggested that the Botswanan authorities want to remove the Bushmen in order to exploit the reserve's diamond resources. In November the Mail on Sunday claimed that the supermodel Iman pulled out of a marketing campaign in which she was the "face" of De Beers. The newspaper said that company had specifically wanted an African woman for the campaign but Iman, who is the wife of the popstar David Bowie , decided not to do any further promotional work for them unless De Beers abandoned its plan to mine diamonds in the Bushmen's territory.
However other newspapers claimed that the reports were untrue and that Iman was not only unconvinced that diamonds are the reason for the resettlement but she also thought it has nothing to do with De Beers. The firm have strongly denied that they want the Bushmen moved and have threatened to sue campaigners for defamation. In December , to the surprise of many, the Botswanan High Court upheld the right of the Bushmen to return to their land. However the government was considering an appeal against the decision. Botswana is not the only country where there have been disputes over the eviction of people from their ancestral lands.
In October a South African court ruled that the Nama community in Richtersveld had a legitimate claim to the mineral rights at Alexander Bay on the north-west coast where there are lucrative diamond mines.
Black Diamonds: danger in the mines
Such disputes are not confined to Africa either. There have been a number of deaths in clashes between Indians and prospectors. In Cape Town in October Nicky Oppenheimer addressed a group of students from Harvard and unashamedly described De Beers as "the world's longest running monopoly", adding that it deliberately set out "to manage the diamond market, to control supply, to manage prices and to act collusively with our partners in the rural parts of Africa. Within a year of Oppenheimer's defiant speech De Beers completely reversed its policy.
It would no longer be the buyer and seller of last resort but would rely on aggressive marketing to ensure that it was the industry's "preferred supplier. We could do away with the advertising department altogether" he said. The hoard of secret diamonds is vast, worth billions of dollars. A fall in the value of diamonds would be catasatrophic. The event to which Oppenheimer was referring occurred on November when what would have been the biggest burglary in history was attempted in London.
The gang had intended to escape in a speedboat on the Thames, causing the press to compare their plot with scenes from the James Bond film, the World Is Not Enough. It was, of course, also great publicity for the Dome which had notably failed to fulfil the hopes that Tony Blair and the Labour government had for it. Despite that failure, diamond thefts became more common in the following years. De Beers' change of strategy was the result of the position the firm found itself in at the start of the third millennium.
Techniques of producing synthetic diamonds were also improving and if it became feasible to mass produce diamonds of gem stone quality then that would be a new threat to the stability of the cartel. Much more importantly, the Central Selling Organisation was weakened in the s by a flood of illicit diamonds on to the market in the wake of the break-up of the Soviet Union, by doubts about the future of the agreement between De Beers and Russian producers, the defection of the owners of the Argyle diamond mine in Australia and even some African suppliers, and by new diamond discoveries in Canada.
The cartel had survived similar threats in the past but this time there were complicating factors. The hostility of US anti-trust authorities was nothing new but the European Union had also begun to adopt stricter anti-cartel policies and in April launched an enquiry into an agreement between De Beers and French luxury goods group LVMH.
By July the situation had changed. Almost exactly a year later, in July the American anti-trust case was finally settled when De Beers agreed to plead guilty to price-fixing charges leaving it free, after payment of a fine, to return to the US market. However, the most important threat to the future of the industry was the issue of conflict diamonds. Diamonds from Canada's Ekati mine were marketed as coming from a land as pure as the driven snow - in unspoken contrast to those coming from the war-torn jungles of Africa Cockburn, , p. If De Beers had been successful in inducing Canadian and other suppliers to join the cartel there would be a risk that the whole diamond industry would be tarred with the same brush - with disastrous consequences for the economy of several African countries.
By redirecting its efforts into marketing only diamonds which came from its own mines De Beers could avoid this danger and at the same time assuage the consciences of individual purchasers, as could developments in tracing the origins of diamonds. In July it was reported that Belgium scientists had developed a technique capable of identifying origins. Production of synthetic diamonds has grown enormously since the first successful experiments by researchers at ASEA in Sweden in February and at General Electric in the United States in December Up until now synthetic diamonds been small and only useful for industrial purposes but in two firms - Gemesis a Florida-based firm using Russian technology, and Apollo, a firm based in Boston, claimed that they could produce diamonds of gem-stone quality.
If they can produce them at a competitive price then De Beers' monopoly would obviously be seriously threatened. Individuals buying jewelry are unlikely to regard the fact that the market for gemstones has been dominated by a cartel as scandalous. Industrial diamonds are a different matter.
After all, nobody buying a diamond engagement ring would want to be regarded as a cheapskate.
Diamonds are appreciated precisely because they are expensive as shown by the song Diamonds are a girl's best friend , written by J. The belief that diamonds were the key to a woman's heart helped to cause the French Revolution. A woman calling herself the Comtesse de La Motte, who became Cardinal Rohan's mistress, convinced him that the queen wanted him to purchase secretly on her behalf a fabulous diamond necklace worth the enormous sum of 1,, livres, the price of a battleship that had been made by the jeweller Charles Bohmer for Madame du Barry who had been banished from the French court after the death of Louis XV.
Cardinal Rohan obtained the necklace from the jeweller and gave it to Mme La Motte, expecting to be repaid by Marie Antoinette. Instead Countess de La Motte gave the necklace to her husband who took the diamonds to London and sold them. When Charles Bohmer demanded payment the whole affair became public, including letters concerning the diamond that apparently came from the Queen but had actually been forged by Mme de La Motte. The furious King and Queen had de La Motte and the cardinal put on trial. Cardinal Rohan protested his innocence and was acquitted but the countess was found guilty, flogged, branded and imprisoned.
Later she escaped to London where she spread rumours about Marie Antoinette. Although the Queen was innocent many of the public believed La Motte accused and thought that Marie Antoinette really had led Cardinal Rohan on and persuaded him to obtain the necklace. Consequently the affair of the necklace increased her unpopularity with damaging consequences for the short-lived future of the French monarchy.
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The affair of the diamond necklace inspired a novel by Alexandre Dumas, Le Collier de la reine or the Queen's Necklace , and Thomas Carlyle also wrote a book about it. Despite the fate of Marie Antoinette and the cynical sentiments of Diamonds are a girl's best friend , diamonds have become a symbol of eternal love. The tradition of giving them as tokens of love dates back to when Archduke Maximilian of Austria gave a diamond ring to Mary of Burgundy. However the typical diamond in an engagement ring is probably about 3 billion years old or two thirds of the age of the Earth itself, and was formed deep within the Earth and brought to the surface by a volcano over 70 million years ago.
Diamonds are also formed in stars and are scattered into space by stellar explosions. Astronomers have claimed that most diamonds formed from primordial carbon initially present during the accretion of Earth. Diamonds are abundant, in microscopic specks, in some meteorites, and it is quite possible that the stone in a ring was seeded by one such speck from outer space Hart, In June , G.
Parthasarathy of the National Geophysical Research Institute in India, claimed that he and his colleagues had obtained evidence that black diamonds , known as carbonados and found only in Brazil and the Central African Republic, were part of extra-terrestrial objects that fell on the earth several million years ago. Therefore it could be claimed that the old belief of the Romans that diamonds were splinters of stars that had fallen to Earth was not without a grain of truth.
In February astronomers announced that they had found the largest known diamond in the universe. It is actually a white dwarf star about 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus. Technically known as BPM but more popularly called Lucy after the Beatles' song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds it has a kilometre-wide core of crystallised carbon, or diamond, with a mass of 2.
The manner in which diamonds were formed and the values they symbolise are summed up concisely in what Advertising Age magazine called the greatest advertising slogan of the 20th century. Late one night in Frances Gerety, a young copywriter at the N. Ayer advertising agency, was working on a presentation for De Beers but, feeling tired and completely stumped she prayed, "please God, send me a line.
It contains extensive archives making it an excellent source of information on past events as well as current news, e. Al-Qaeda 'traded blood diamonds'.