Word: far
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...wildest allegation so far, an internal report by an investigator for Pan Am's insurance carrier suggests that the CIA unwittingly allowed the bomb aboard Flight 103 to protect a hostage-for-drugs operation. The report states that Monzer al Kassar, a Syrian arms dealer, was permitted to ship drugs through a "protected" route at Frankfurt in exchange for promises to help free American hostages in Lebanon. The subpoenas filed by Pan Am suggest that the CIA may even have a videotape of the bomb-laden suitcase being loaded in Frankfurt. The CIA and British authorities categorically deny these allegations...
...biggest vote getter, as expected, was the South West African People's Organization, or SWAPO, the Marxist-led group that conducted a 23-year guerrilla war for independence. But SWAPO won only 57% of the vote and 41 seats, far short of the 85% prediction by Sam Nujoma, 60, the group's leader, or of the 67% that would have let SWAPO shape the constitution...
...become the most expensive painting ever sold at auction. It had been put on the block at Sotheby's in New York City by heiress Linda de Roulet, whose brother John Whitney Payson had sold Van Gogh's Irises for $53.9 million two years before. It was a far better picture than the Picasso self- portrait, Yo Picasso, that had made a freakish $47.85 million last...
...accept a "global reserve" (the minimum price acceptable to the seller on the whole collection), instead of placing a reserve, or minimum, on each lot, as is more usual. This enabled Sotheby's to meet the bottom line by selling 15 out of 44 impressionist and modern paintings far under its low estimate, rather than not sell them at all -- and gamble on making up the slack over the next three days...
Sotheby's feels it is being arraigned for the crime of high success. David Nash, head of its Fine Arts division, told the Washington Post that critics, far from being elitist, have "a hostile proletarian attitude toward our business." (Let 'em eat Braque.) But auction-house pretensions to be self- regulating have collided with the skepticism of Angelo Aponte, New York City commissioner of consumer affairs...