An eccentric family in Colorado’s runaway balloon drama will be questioned to clear up suspicions of a hoax, but investigators are convinced they are telling the truth, police said on Friday.
Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden said while police were adamant that the event that gripped US media on Thursday was real, officers would seek clarification of remarks made by six-year-old Falcon Heene.
Falcon became the focus of a massive multi-agency rescue operation after he was initially believed to have floated away on a homemade helium balloon built by his father for a weather experiment.
Heene was later discovered hiding in the attic of his garage to the relief of investigators and the boy’s family. Falcon fueled skepticism about the incident, however, during an interview with CNN’s Larry King Live late on Thursday.
Asked by his father, Richard Heene, why he had not come out of his hiding place sooner, Falcon replied: “You guys said that we did this for the show.”
The remark was swiftly seized upon by commentators and bloggers as evidence of a hoax, suggestions Richard Heene angrily denied on Friday.
Asked on NBC television’s Today show on Friday if the incident had been a hoax, Heene replied: “Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And now I’m starting to get a little bit ticked off. I’m repeatedly getting asked this in interviews.”
“What have I got to gain out of this? I’m not selling anything, I’m not advertising anything,” he said.
Yet the Heenes’ media offensive appeared to be taking its toll when Falcon vomited live on national TV in separate interviews.
Police chief Alderden said the Heene family would be re-interviewed, probably on Saturday, but stressed during a press conference on Friday that investigators believed they had not been hoaxed.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
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A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number