■UNITED STATES
Good Samaritan not fined
The Colorado State Patrol has withdrawn the US$22 jaywalking ticket issued to a good Samaritan who was seriously injured by a pickup after he pushed three people out of its path. Bus driver Jim Moffett of Denver and another man were helping two elderly women cross a busy Denver street in a snowstorm when he was hit on Feb. 20. Moffett, 58, suffered bleeding in the brain, broken bones, a dislocated shoulder and a possible ruptured spleen. He remained hospitalized in serious condition on Friday.
■UNITED STATES
Employee sets self on fire
Police in a Chicago suburb say a Wal-Mart employee has died after setting himself on fire outside the store where he worked. Police watch commander Randy Sater said 58-year-old Larry Graziano set himself ablaze late on Thursday outside the store. It was not immediately clear how he caught on fire, but Sater said lighter fluid was involved. The Cook County Medical Examiner’s office said Graziano was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead early on Friday. Sater said Graziano told police he “couldn’t take it anymore.” Police say bystanders tried to help, but Graziano fought them off. Wal-Mart spokesman Dan Fogleman says Graziano had been with the company for seven years and that he had no reported personnel issues.
■UNITED STATES
‘Superman’ auctioned off
Superman fans were able to bid for the first comic to show the red caped hero on Friday — only not at the US$0.10 price they would have paid back in 1938. Bids quickly reached US$200,200 when the rare and unrestored copy of the first issue of Action Comics began selling on Internet site Comic Connect. Bidding remains open for another two weeks, until March 13. The book’s cover shows Superman, in his familiar blue suit emblazoned with a red “S” and topped with a cape, hurling a green car past terrified onlookers. “Some books seem to go in and out of fashion. Action Comics Number One will never be one of those books,” the auctioneers said.
■UNITED STATES
Soldier convicted of murder
An Army officer who shot and killed an Iraqi detainee during an interrogation was convicted of murder on Friday night by a military jury. First Lieutenant Michael Behenna avoided conviction on the more serious charge of premeditated murder in the death of the detainee he took aside for questioning in May. A military panel of seven officers at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, also found him guilty of assault but acquitted him of making a false statement. Behenna has testified that he was trying to defend himself when he shot Ali Mansour Mohammed and that the detainee reached for his gun in a secluded railroad culvert near Beiji, Iraq. Behenna said he hadn’t intended to kill him.
■PERU
Ancient cranium unearthed
The 10-million-year-old fossil cranium of a large, toothed seabird was found in southern Ica region, a spokesman for the Museum of Natural History said on Friday. “The skull of the giant bird with teeth, measuring 40cm” was found a few months ago by paleontologist Mario Urbina in a rock strata, said Rodolfo Salas, adding that it is 10 million years old. The fossil is of the prehistoric seabird Pelagornithidae, which had wing spans of up to 6m and a large bill with tooth-like projections. It lived between the mid-Paleocene and Pliocene periods 60 million to 3 million years ago.
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