Costa Rica-based NASA International is taking online wagers on events ranging from the likelihood of a major stock market crash to aliens landing in the nation's capital in the new millennium.

"It's really simple," said Greg Champion, NASA's CEO. "If it's of interest, we'll open a line on it. There are odds on everything."

The list of wagers and their respective odds are available on the company's online sports book in the Betting Lines section. They include:

Bank Failures: 1,000-1 that a Y2K glitch will shut down the Federal Reserve for 24 hours or more; and 700-1 that Citibank, Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corp, USB, or the Dresdner Bank will close for 24 hours or more due to a Y2K glitch.

• Utility Meltdowns: 20-1 that a major US utility (serving more than 200,000 customers) or a European telephone company will shut down for 48 hours or more.
• Downed airliner: 300-1 that a Y2K failure will down a commercial airliner.
• Stock Market crash: 30-1 that a Y2K event will cause the Dow Jones Industrial Average to drop more than 200 points on the first day of trading after the millennium.
• Firearm stockpiling: 200-1 that more firearms are sold in the US in December 1999 than December 1998.
• Armageddeon: 1,000,000-1 that the world will end on 1 January 2000.
• Alien landing: 100,000-1 that aliens will land in Washington on 1 January 2000.

The company, which also operates NASA Casino, Cabaret Casino (a girls and gaming site), Rock Island Sports, and a sports book in San Pedro, California employing more than 300 people, is also considering taking bets on a Y2K-inspired mass suicide or shooting rampage, and the triggering of a global recession.

In addition to Y2K bets, the online sports book is offering odds on a variety of subjects, including the outcome of the Microsoft antitrust trial, and whether Ricky Martin will announce he's gay.

"NASA wants to be the Lloyds of London of the wagering industry," Champion declared. "If you want to insure your legs, you go to Lloyds to do it because that's the only place to do it. If anyone has a proposition they think is interesting, we'll do it because we're the only ones who'll do it."

"Unfortunately, as morbid as some of them sound," Champion added. "There's a number that has got to be right."

Although online gambling is technically illegal under the Federal Wire Act, there are no penalties for the bettor, only the bookie, said John Sheck, vice president of government affairs at the American Gaming Association.

"If I'm betting in my living room, the feds aren't going to break down my door and drag me away," he said.

"It's OK in the office to bet on who President Clinton is sleeping with," noted Pat Martin, director of external communications at Harrahs, which operates a chain of casinos. "But as an industry, we're not allowed to do that."

As far as Champion is concerned, American citizens place online bets at their own risk; and many do.

Champion urged potential customers to check the legality of betting online in their respective states. He said enforcement varies greatly from state to state but, in general, anti-online gambling statutes are difficult to enforce.

"It's a very gray area," he said, "The laws are 100 percent unenforceable."

Nonetheless, the company has posted a warning to Indiana residents on its Web site at the request of the state's Governor.

"We're licensed in Costa Rica, the UK and Russia," Champion added. "As far as we're concerned, we're licensed and legal in the countries we do business in."

While it's illegal to gamble on most anything in the United States, in Britain it's legal to put a wager on anything a bookie will accept.

And while most bookies tend to shy away from taking bets involving death and disaster -- "We're quite ethical in the way we offer bets," said Ed Nicholson, a Ladbrokes spokesman -- companies like William Hill are doing a brisk trade in Y2K-related bets, most of them bizarre in nature:

• Hoax: The company is offering 100-1 odds that President Clinton will confirm in 2000 that the 1969 moon landing was a fake. William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe said this is such a popular bet, the opening odds of 1,000-1 have dropped to 500-1. He said William Hill paid out 100,000 pounds in 1969 to punters betting that a man would walk on the moon.

"If Clinton confirms it didn't happen, I suppose we should go and ask those people for their money back," Sharpe joked.

• Resurrection: 1,000-1 on the Second Coming of Christ in 2000.
• UFOs over London: 50,000-1 that UFOs will land on London's Millennium Dome at midnight on 1 January.
• Chuck to get hitched: 100-1 that Prince Charles will marry in the Millennium Dome during 2000. Charles can't remarry in a church, reasoned Sharpe, making the Dome the perfect venue. "It's not a million-to-one long shot, is it?" he said.

William Hill has taken plenty of bets that the world will end on or around the turn the century. The bet is the only one where punters are allowed to determine their own odds.

The bookie is also offering one punter and his pregnant wife odds of 200-1 that their twins -- due 1 January -- will be born in different centuries. The bet is conditional on the punter agreeing to publicity, a clause he is still mulling, said Sharpe.

However, the company won't take a bet on where the first millennium baby will be born.

"Pretty soon you'd find skullduggery involved," Sharpe said.