"Risk transfer is reasonably self-evident in most traditional per-risk or per-occurrence excess of loss reinsurance contracts. For these contracts, a predetermined amount of premium is paid and the reinsurer assumes nearly all or all of the potential variability in the underlying losses, and it is evident from reading the basic terms of the contract that the reinsurer can incur a significant loss. In many cases, there is no aggregate limit on the reinsurer's loss. The existence of certain experience-based contract terms, such as experience accounts, profit commissions, and additional premiums, generally reduce the amount of risk transfer and make it less likely that risk transfer is reasonably self-evident."

Insurance, the avoiding, mitigating and transferring of risk, creates greater predictability for individuals and organizations.

Georgia Health Insurance

QUITO, Ecuador – Ecuadorean officials say there's new hope that famed Galapagos giant tortoise Lonesome George, believed to be the last of his species, could soon be a father.
The Galapagos National Park says in a statement that one of the two female tortoises kept with George has laid five eggs.
Scientists say George, aged 90 to 100 years old, is the only known living Geochelone abigdoni tortoise. His companions are of a similar but different species, and eggs laid last year turned out to be infertile.
The park said Tuesday that the eggs are being cared for in an incubation center. It could be clear by November whether they are viable.
George was discovered in 1972 and has lived with the Geochelone becki females since 1993.

KASOTA, Minn. – A plainclothes sheriff's deputy shot and killed an unarmed 24-year-old man wearing only swim trunks after an argument ensued when he confronted the man for erratic driving, authorities and witnesses said Tuesday.
Le Sueur County Sheriff's investigator Todd Waldron, 37, shot Tyler Heilman after the two scuffled Monday in Kasota, a town about 60 miles southwest of Minneapolis, when Heilman returned from a day of swimming with friends. Those who saw the argument said it wasn't clear the man he was fighting with was a law enforcement officer.
"This ain't right," said Heilman's father, Mark Heilman. "I think the cop just freaked ... Why didn't he just say 'Freeze' or something? Or shoot him in the leg? He shot to kill ... I think he just flipped."
Authorities said Waldron was working another case and driving an unmarked sport utility vehicle on Monday when he saw Heilman driving a car erratically, and at times speeding, so he followed him. At one point, Heilman drove his car off the road and up an embankment.
Waldron called for backup from a marked squad car, but before the car arrived, Heilman pulled into the parking lot of an apartment complex and got out of the vehicle. The two began arguing, and when Waldron tried to arrest Heilman, he resisted and the two got into a physical confrontation, said Andy Skoogman, a spokesman with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which is investigating the case.
BCA investigators believe Waldron fired four shots. Skoogman said Waldron was not in uniform, but he had a sheriff's badge on his belt. Waldron was not working undercover, and Skoogman said authorities are investigating whether the deputy identified himself.
Witnesses give a similar account. Kris Hoehn, who was in the car with Heilman and other friends, said the group was on its way back from a day of swimming at the Minnesota River when they noticed an SUV following them. Hoehn acknowledged the vehicle may have swerved some, and he said Heilman drove up a sledding hill at one point.
Hoehn said the group didn't know Waldron was a deputy. When they arrived at the apartment complex, Waldron asked Heilman for a driver's license, and then the two started arguing, Hoehn said. He said Heilman and the deputy ended up wrestling on the ground.
Heilman ended up on top of Waldron, but got up and "that's when he seen the badge — as he's getting up," Hoehn said. "Then came the gunshots, just as my buddy's hands were going up.
"It was too late. ... We had no idea who he was. If we would have known he was a cop, none of this would've happened," said Hoehn, 24.
Hoehn said Heilman was gasping for breath and said, "I'm done, man. I'm done." He staggered a few feet and fell, face down, on the grass.
It wasn't clear if alcohol played a role in the argument. Tyler Heilman was treated for alcohol abuse while back in high school, but his father said he had kicked the problem, though he still drank a little bit. Hoehn said the group of friends had been drinking "a little" at the lake on Monday, but not enough to affect Heilman's driving. Authorities are conducting an autopsy, which will include toxicology tests.
Summoned by a friend who heard about the shooting, Heilman's father arrived at the scene moments later to find the area sectioned off by police tape, and his son lying on the ground as firefighters attempted to revive him. Heilman said his son was shot twice in the chest while another bullet grazed his right side, and he made the sign of the cross on his forehead a few times.
"I just knelt down by his head, brushed his head, brushed his scar," Heilman said in a telephone interview, noting that his son had brain surgery in May to remove a blood clot.
Skoogman said Waldron suffered non-life threatening injuries, but did not elaborate. The incident — from the time Waldron started following Heilman to the shooting — lasted less than 20 minutes, Skoogman said. There was no weapon found on Heilman or in his car, Skoogman said.
Waldron, who has been a deputy with the department for 10 years, has been placed on standard paid administrative leave, and the investigation could take six to eight weeks, Skoogman said. The BCA said Waldron has never been disciplined. Waldron's resume indicates he also worked as a jailer with the department. He was promoted to investigator in 2004, and focuses on narcotics, sexual assaults and robberies, Skoogman said.
Waldron also served as a patrol officer with three small-town police departments and has a degree in law enforcement from Minnesota State University, Mankato. He's taken several continuing education training courses, including training in use of deadly force, according to his personnel records.
A working phone number for Waldron could not be found and his parents, whose house he visited on Tuesday, declined comment.

Heilman acknowledged his son had gotten into past trouble for stealing and getting into fights, but said he had no serious problems in the last five years. Court records show Tyler Heilman has over a dozen convictions in recent years, mostly from 2004-2006, and mostly for traffic and alcohol violations. He pleaded guilty to burglary in 2004 and also has a petty misdemeanor drug conviction and a misdemeanor assault conviction. His most recent conviction was in 2008 for driving with a suspended license.

___

Amy Forliti contributed to this report from Minneapolis.

BAGHDAD – Iraqi officials outraged by the abuse of prisoners at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison are trying to contain a scandal of their own as allegations continue to surface of mistreatment inside Iraqi jails.
Accounts of Iraqis being beaten with clubs, blindfolded and coerced into signing false confessions are attracting increased attention partly because the United States is getting out of the prison business in Iraq. The U.S. has transferred 841 detainees into Iraq's crowded prison system and more are on the way.
Allegations of mistreatment have persisted since 2005, when U.S. troops raided an Interior Ministry lockup in a predominantly Shiite area of southeastern Baghdad and found scores of emaciated prisoners. The matter returned to the spotlight after the June 12 assassination of Sunni lawmaker Harith al-Obeidi, an outspoken advocate of prisoner rights.
The issue is a test of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's commitment to the rule of law and to reconcile with the Sunni minority, who account for most of the prisoners held in security cases. Sunnis claim they are being unfairly targeted by security forces run by al-Maliki's Shiite-dominated government.
"The cases are as bad as what took place at Abu Ghraib, but it is painful when these things take place in Iraqi prisons," said Sunni lawmaker Salim Abdullah. "We met some of those who were released and saw the scars on their skins. They use different kinds of torture like tying the shoulders and hanging the body, which normally leads to dislocation of the shoulders."
The allegations pale in comparison with the horrific accounts of Saddam Hussein's prisons, where inmates were systematically beaten, jammed into tiny windowless cells and executed on the flimsiest of evidence and where men were forced to watch their wives and daughters raped.
Still, the current Iraqi leadership came to power with the promise to hold itself to a higher standard and respect human rights.
Iraqi officials acknowledge some abuse and insist improvements are being made. The issue, however, poses a thorny question for Americans: How can the United States transfer detainees into a system where abuse has occurred?
The U.S. military says it sends Iraqi prisoners only to detention facilities approved by Iraq's Ministry of Justice.
However, Iraqi lawmakers, human rights advocates and the Human Rights Ministry claim most of the abuse is not taking place in prisons run by the Justice Ministry, but in those operated by the Interior and Defense Ministries. Prisoners there are generally accused of links to Sunni and Shiite insurgent groups.
Abu Ali al-Rikabi, a father of five who owns a vegetable shop in Diwaniyah, said scars on his legs and back are evidence of his mistreatment at the hands of the Iraqi police who accused him of being involved with a former Shiite militia.
"At dawn one day in November 2007, I was sleeping in my room with my wife when the Iraqi police broke in, handcuffed me and took me blindfolded to their headquarters," al-Rikabi told The Associated Press. "As soon as they reached the place, they began beating me severely with thick clubs and batons, hitting every part of my body, especially my legs and back. They kept on doing that for three days."
He said he was ultimately transferred to another prison in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad, and was released the following October. "No one told me why I was arrested or why I was released," he said.
An eight-member panel that al-Maliki set up after al-Obeidi's assassination to look into abuse is expected to complete its investigation in a month of two.
A military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, said the panel has visited three detention centers in Baghdad and will inspect others. He said most of the abuse uncovered so far took place in Rusafa prison in eastern Baghdad.
At a human rights symposium this month, al-Maliki said allegations would be investigated. The prime minister said detainees should have rights but that no one should ignore the victims of crime — "orphans and the widows who lost their husbands because of terrorism."
"If every imprisoned person is innocent ... then who has destroyed the country? Who killed people?" he asked.
Al-Maliki's prison investigation follows a limited Interior Ministry probe of 112 complaints of abuse. Of those, the ministry found 23 cases of human rights abuses and 20 cases where inmates were incarcerated without warrants. Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani said 43 police officers face charges.

A 2008 report by the Human Rights Ministry identified 307 cases of alleged torture and ill-treatment among 26,249 detainees in Iraqi custody at the end of last year. The Iraqi prison population has risen to nearly 30,000 since then and is slated to grow as the U.S. either releases or transfers its remaining 10,429 detainees.

The ministry report stated that most of mistreatment occurs when the detainee is first arrested and taken to facilities run by combat soldiers and not trained prison guards.

"It's an uncomfortable place to be in an (Iraqi) Ministry of Defense facility," said David King, a British adviser to Iraq's Ministry of Defense. "They are very overcrowded and they are very poorly equipped."

King said, however, that the Iraqi government was interested in improving the system and supplying clean bedding and clothing and allowing relatives to visit detainees.

That's little consolation to Iraqis who say they have been abused.

Mohammed al-Obeidi, 28, a Sunni, told the AP that he was selling mobile phones in a rented shop in Amiriyah, 25 miles west of Baghdad, when Iraqi soldiers arrived in Humvees and apprehended him and six others in 2006. He said they were taken to a prison in northern Baghdad where he was blindfolded and handcuffed during interrogation.

"The investigation officer used to tell me to confess that I was a terrorist and was planting roadside bombs," said al-Obeidi, who was never charged and was released for lack of evidence. "They used insults and sectarian slander. They normally tied me to a hook on the ceiling to keep me hanging, and then they were beating me with electric sticks. In one of these investigation sessions, my left shoulder was dislocated."

Politicians loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, a firebrand anti-American Shiite cleric, also are pressuring the government on the issue. Al-Sadr's followers were rounded up in droves last year as part of a government crackdown against militia fighters.

Sadrist lawmaker Falah Hassan Shanshal said he visited a month ago with detainees facing the death sentence.

"One of them was 22 years old. He was crying and asked to talk to me in private," Shanshal said. "He told me that officers raped him and abused him sexually and then forced him to confess things he did not commit."

"These officers were committing the same violation conducted during the former regime," he said.