In brief: Probe into cause of NYC blast to start
NEW YORK – New York City’s fire commissioner says rescue workers have searched the rear basement of the site of a deadly gas explosion but haven’t yet reached the area where the piping and meters will help explain what caused the blast that killed eight people.
Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano said Saturday that the investigation of the piping and the meters will likely start today when workers can reach deeper into the basement.
No more bodies have been found in the rubble, Cassano said.
Life insurance policy one for record books
SAN JOSE, Calif. – An unnamed Silicon Valley billionaire has purchased the world’s most valuable life insurance policy.
The San Jose Mercury News reported Saturday that Guinness Book of World Record officials say the $201 million life insurance policy is more than double the previous record set in 1990 by an unidentified “entertainment industry figure.”
A Southern California financial services company who helped put the deal together declined to identify the buyer for safety reasons.
“We don’t want hit men running around Palo Alto trying to find him – or members of his own estate,” quipped Dovi Frances of the Santa Barbara-based SG LLC financial services company.
Frances said the life insurance policy is actually two dozen policies underwritten by 19 different insurers. That’s because no one company could afford to pay the policies’ benefactors when the billionaire died.
Frances wouldn’t disclose the billionaire’s age. Frances said the billionaire purchased the policy to help his heirs avoid paying a 45 percent inheritance tax.