Word: ransoming
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...title from New Zealand's Stephen Jones. "Bloody good," says Williams of the three-ball break. Cleland goes on to defeat Jones, 26-12, in a 90-minute match. The prize: an Omega watch, not much to those on the pro golf or tennis circuits but a king's ransom on the croquet tour and another sign that the once upper-crust game is trickling down...
...period of strict economic austerity, gangs of kidnapers are bidding to become Brazil's richest citizens. More than two dozen people, mostly businessmen, have been abducted and held for ransom in Rio de Janeiro so far this year. Last week brought the third in six days...
When a publicity-hungry guerrilla gang kidnaped miner Scott Royden Heimdal near the Colombia-Ecuador border last April and demanded a $1.5 million ransom, his family in Peoria, Ill., despaired: the sum was utterly beyond its reach. Then Marge and Roy Heimdal heard that the kidnapers had cut the ransom to $60,000, and issued an appeal for help. Over the next four days, all Peoria joined in a frantic campaign to raise the cash. Children sold lemonade; retirees held bake sales...
Thieves usually fence their loot for 5% of its "real" value. This robbery will yield nothing like that. The only professional thing about it was its speed. As art thieves, specialists in heisting old paintings under the best conditions for resale or ransom, last week's pair were bunglers. They cut some canvases off their support stretchers, a hasty amateur act that enables the painting to be rolled up but severely damages it by cropping and cracks the old dry paint like a potato crisp when it is rolled, thus causing big problems of restoration. (When another Vermeer, The Letter...
Instead, the Gardner offered a $1 million reward for information leading to the return of the paintings. This ransom money -- "reward" is a euphemism -- may work, if it does not gum up the investigation with half the flakes and crazies from Boston to Miami. But it does not dispose of the ghastly possibility that one of the greatest of Vermeer's paintings (along with other things of lesser significance) may be destroyed by the thieves as too hot to handle...