Word: ransoms
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Nearly five months after their abduction, seven foreign oil workers were freed in a jungle region of Ecuador. The men-four Americans, a New Zealander, a Chilean and an Argentine, were taken from an oilfield owned by Repsol YPF, a Spanish-Argentine company. Their employers paid a $13 million ransom before they were set free. The abductions have been attributed to either Colombian guerrillas or "common criminals...
Gore wanted to sleep on it. He bucked up the weeping kids and sent everyone to bed. But no amount of sleep could soften an unsigned opinion tossed over history's transom like a ransom note penned by Kafka. You have to wonder if the Supreme Court, instead of reading election results, is now in the business of making them. The court warned that its ruling was custom fit: "Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances...equal protection...generally presents many complexities." You bet it does: like flawed machines that disproportionately failed to record legally cast votes in inner...
...characters on a big movie screen. Inspired by a Vanity Fair article about a U.S. businessman kidnapped in Colombia, Tony Gilroy's script imagines that engineer Peter Bowman (the excellent David Morse) is seized by terrorist rebels, taken to an Andean prison aerie and held for a $3 million ransom. His wife Alice (Ryan) finds that Peter's company will not pay for the services of Terry Thorne (Crowe), an expert negotiator; she must hope Terry takes the job pro bono. Even if he does, he'll have to juggle the demands of Alice, the guerrillas and his own bruised...
...Gibson looms over himself. A gallery of movie posters hangs in his office at Icon Productions, his company with its headquarters on the Paramount lot in Hollywood. The Man Without a Face: Gibson in silhouette in the distance, the actor shadowed in his 1993 directorial debut. Ransom: closeup of Gibson, blue eyes blazing with righteous desperation. Maverick: James Garner, Jodie Foster and Gibson, all of them smiling, no doubt thinking about how much they were paid. On each poster, on each face, Gibson has added a mustache with a heavy black marker--a graphic display of his famously self-deprecating...
...Bowman, who was commissioned to build a dam on the outskirts of Tescala, is merely driving to work when he encounters a barricade and is randomly snatched by men in ski-masks, who hustle him off into the mountains. Thorne, representative of the London-based K & R (Kidnap and Ransom), is brought in to handle the case and offer assurances to Peter's wife, Alice (Meg Ryan...