UNITED STATES
Comics net US$3.5 million
The bulk of a man’s childhood comic book collection, which included many of the most prized issues ever published, has sold for about US$3.5 million. Lon Allen, managing director of comics for Dallas-based Heritage Auctions, says Billy Wright’s 1939 copy of Detective Comics No. 27 that features the debut of Batman got the top bid at the New York City auction on Wednesday. It sold for about US$523,000, including a buyer’s premium. Action Comics No. 1, a 1938 issue featuring the first appearance of Superman, sold for about US$299,000. And Batman No. 1 from 1940 sold for about US$275,000. Wright died in 1994. Relatives found the 345 well-preserved comics he bought as a child while cleaning out his wife’s Virginia home following her death in February last year.
UNITED STATES
Gang ‘dissolved bodies’
A prosecutor has told a San Diego, California, jury that two alleged members of a Mexican drug gang dissolved their victims’ corpses in vats of acid. Mark Amador told jurors in his opening statement on Wednesday that the defendants belonged to a Mexican gang that broke away from a Tijuana cartel and brought its brutal methods of murder and kidnapping to the San Diego area around 2002. Jose Olivera Beritan and David Valencia are charged with murder in the deaths of two men whose corpses were dissolved in 208-liter barrels of propane-heated liquid inside a San Diego home.
UNITED STATES
Terrorist faces new charges
A man convicted in a homegrown terrorism plot faces new charges of trying to hire a hit man to behead three witnesses who testified against him. Hysen Sherifi of North Carolina was indicted on nine counts on Tuesday, accused of plotting with his younger brother and a female friend to pay a hit man to carry out the killings. Court records say an FBI informant accepted US$5,000 in payment and provided faked photos appearing to show a beheaded corpse as confirmation of the killing.
UNITED STATES
Train ‘drags drunk to death’
Authorities in New York are investigating the death of a passenger apparently dragged by a train after being kicked off for drunkenness. Police told local media that 44-year-old Troy Patrick Zabawczuk got off the Chicago-bound train for unknown reasons after it arrived at the Rochester station late on Tuesday. They say the conductor refused to let him back on because he had disturbed other passengers. Police say Zabawczuk was apparently intoxicated. They believe he tried to jump back on as the train left the station and was dragged a short distance.
UNITED STATES
‘Schizophrenic’ charged
The cousin of a Saudi Arabian teenager indicted on charges of interfering with a flight crew says his relative suffers from schizophrenia, was flying home to see his sick mother and had not taken his medication for three weeks. Authorities allege 19-year-old Yazeed Mohammed Abunayyan swung his fist at a flight attendant, tried to hit passengers and mentioned Osama bin Laden during a flight from Portland, Oregon, to Houston. Fahad Alsubaie told the Medford Mail Tribune he was the person escorted off the plane with Abunayyan. The 21-year-old cousin says the disruption began when a flight attendant confronted the two for sitting together, because Alsubaie was in the wrong seat. The cousin says he was trying to sit with Abunayyan “just to make sure he was safe.”
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion