Word: ransoms
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...What if this year, your mom, who holds Thanksgiving dinner ransom until everyone holds hands and says out loud what he or she is thankful for and then gives you a dirty look when you say, "over the counter painkillers and 300 cable channels," decides to extend the tradition to Independence Day? If you had to stand before your loved ones and tell them one reason you are proud to be an American what would you say? You're on your own on that one. I checked, and there is no "Patriotism for Dummies...
...first term, Duterte's challenge was to rehabilitate Davao's reviled police department, which was running scared after years of NPA attacks. Shortly after Duterte took office, he heard that some kidnappers were trying to skip town with their just-collected ransom. Duterte led the pursuit, beating the cops to the scene and stationing his car on a bridge at the city line. When the kidnappers arrived, they started shooting. Duterte and his security detail returned fire, killing three of the four suspects. It was like a scene from the Philippine movies, which are replete with Dirty Harry loner-heroes...
...strangers each year. It's a horrifying figure, but usually the parents' and child's hideous ordeal is short-lived. According to organizations that help find missing children, only about 200 to 300 are kidnapped in the traditional sense, that is, taken by strangers for a long time, for ransom or worse reasons. About half of those never come home...
Wang Manji was returning home with freshly dug sweet potatoes from her fields last October when she stepped into the most bitter event of her life. A deranged neighbor had abducted her 15-year-old son and was holding him ransom with a meat cleaver. His demands: $100 and a car. Fifty policemen came to the rescue?and then, Wang says, the dithering began. The abductor claimed to be related to a top cop, and, Wang says, "the officers spent all their time trying to figure out what kind of a relative he was." After a fruitless, 8-hr. standoff...
...claims that Berezovsky had nefarious links to Chechen guerrillas are also late in coming. Berezovsky often had dealings with Chechens, and had a hand in hostage releases, a very murky aspect of Yeltsin's Russia, where top police officials were often rumored to be getting a cut of the ransom money. Berezovsky's dealings with the Chechens were well known, yet the FSB, headed for part of the time by Putin, expressed no concern...