Word: rigged
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...sober assessment of risk. When film star Betty Grable sought to insure her famous legs, Lloyd's came up with a policy and calculated the appropriate premium. But disasters have a way of defying the laws of probability. Recent years have witnessed an extraordinary string: the Piper Alpha oil-rig blowout in the North Sea, the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland, the Exxon Valdez oil spill and America's Hurricane Hugo. Last week Lloyd's announced that it would post a $980 million deficit for 1988 -- the most recent year on which books can be closed, since...
These days, the entire insurance industry is struggling. But Lloyd's, which writes $9.6 billion worth of policies each year, finds itself in a particularly vulnerable position, since it specializes in the riskiest end of the market, such as oil-rig activity and communications satellites. Lloyd's structure also sets it apart. It is like a club, a society of underwriters who write policies in various specialized fields. If Lloyd's were a company, it & could go bankrupt, and stockholders would lose only their investment. Instead, Lloyd's gets its funds from investors known as names, who must show assets...
...ready to get serious," they reply encouragingly. What he doesn't know, of course, is that they're thinking metaphorically, with a little help from director Scott, with whose surrealistic reinvention of the West -- one-third desert, one-third industrial wasteland, one-third unzoned strip development -- this oil-truck rig fits right in. In Scott's eyes, and his heroines', it is a gigantic penis. And, yes, they are ready for that. Ready to blow it to smithereens with their little guns...
...spill off the shores of Kuwait, which was widely reported to be the largest in history -- some 11 million bbl. -- is now estimated to be one- quarter to one-twentieth that size, making it smaller than the 1979-80 Gulf of Mexico spill at the offshore drilling rig known as Ixtoc I. Similarly, Carl Sagan's well-publicized prediction that smoke from the oil fires could rise 5 to 10 km (3 to 6 miles) to the stratosphere and blanket the globe has not yet come to pass. So far, the smoke clouds are hugging the ground, drifting...
...demonstrators believe the Front holds an unfair advantage in parliamentary elections slated for May 20. Some charge that the Front may attempt to rig the balloting. Critics say almost 90% of the group's members are former Communists. Iliescu's vow that a "return to the past is impossible" has failed to reassure his detractors. Says Sergiu Cunescu, chairman of the center-right Social Democratic Party: "People live in fear...