Word: ransomes
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Congress' reaction to the 1932 kidnap-murder of Charles Lindbergh's baby son was shock, rage and a stiff law: "Whoever knowingly transports in interstate commerce any person who has been unlawfully kidnaped and held for ransom or otherwise, shall be punished by death if the kidnaped person has not been liberated unharmed and if the verdict of the jury shall so recommend." Last week, on the basis of the jury verdict last clause, the Supreme Court struck down the Lindbergh law's death-penalty provision...
Randall Darwall's settings are striking, although they concentrate on evoking the ambiance of American Synthetic, and so serve to further confuse the dramatic issue. Especially notable is his paper-collage house curtain, suggestive of a ransom note assembled from picture magazines by a gigantic idiot...
...jars of curry powder to television sets, turbaned men, sari-clad women and coffee-tinted youngsters stepped off planes from such diverse points as Cairo, Dar-es-Salaam and Athens. Most of their journeys began in Kenya, where they had sold their businesses at panic prices, paid scalpers' ransom rates for airline tickets and grabbed planes to any place that offered hope of a connecting flight to Britain. Thus last week, in a final, frantic stampede, 6,200 of Kenya's Asians descended on London before Britain finally slammed the gate on one of its major sources...
...Stalingrad. Stalin turned down the proposal, replying: "You have in your hands not only my son Yakov but millions of my sons. Either you free them all or my son will share their fate." According to his Russian cellmate, it was the news that his father had refused to ransom him that drove Yakov to despair and his suicidal attempt to escape...
...meat to ½Ib. Men are allowed only one new shirt and pair of trousers a year; women, one new dress a year, if available. Because of a similar shortage of spare parts, appliances and machines are constantly breaking down. Anything that does run fetches a capitalist's ransom. A nine-year-old G.E. refrigerator that "still cools" brought $2,000 in Havana recently; a rusted-out 1960 Buick went for $10,400-despite the fact that severe gas rationing keeps most cars at home...