" It was while studying the manuscript contained in an archive at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin that Mr. Orenstein first encountered the missing line: "I thought, what is that instrument doing here?

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Authorities in Somalia's semi-autonomous region of Puntland say they are powerless to confront the pirates, who regularly hold ships for ransom at the port of Eyl.

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But the idea that I am going to hold the euro zone to ransom at a time of acute financial stress by blackmailing our closest trading partners with some cobbled-together list of vague and probably unachievable ultimatums, risking years of damaging uncertainty, simply to appease a faction in my party who will never be reconciled to EU membership anyway, is completely absurd.

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But a study of marine life done at the time, uncovered recently by one of Ransom Myers' students at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, portrays a different picture.

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It wants some leverage over Banerjee in the state so that she is not able to hold the government at the Centre to ransom.

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The Humane Society's Curtis Ransom is stationed at an emergency campground in San Diego County where people have taken refuge with their dogs, cats, horses and even goats.

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The BBC's Joseph Odhiambo in Mombasa says that on at least two prior occasions the ransom money was delivered to the hijacked vessels via air-drops.

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"At this time I can say we know of no ransom demand, " Aberdeen Police Chief Henry Trabert told reporters.

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Several of the tiny parties and personalities that were able to hold to ransom successive governments, and block their attempts at reform, have been swept out of the legislature.

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For most of this time, the country has been at war and piracy has now become an attractive way of making money, with ransom payments reaching tens of millions of dollars.

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The fees, that is, are sometimes so onerous and the tax results so bad (some of what you get from the trust is doubly taxed and taxed at rates of up to 35%) that escaping a trust might be worth paying a ransom to the promoter, plus the capital gains tax you were avoiding in the first place.

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