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.”
A string of rape and assault allegations against the son of Norway’s future queen have plunged the royal family into its “biggest scandal” ever, wrapping up an annus horribilis for the monarchy. The legal troubles surrounding Marius Borg Hoiby, the 27-year-old son born of a relationship before Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s marriage to Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon, have dominated the Scandinavian country’s headlines since August. The tall strapping blond with a “bad boy” look — often photographed in tuxedos, slicked back hair, earrings and tattoos — was arrested in Oslo on Aug. 4 suspected of assaulting his girlfriend the previous night. A photograph
‘GOOD POLITICS’: He is a ‘pragmatic radical’ and has moderated his rhetoric since the height of his radicalism in 2014, a lecturer in contemporary Islam said Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria. Al-Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda. He is a former extremist who adopted a more moderate posture in order to achieve his goals. Yesterday, as the rebels entered Damascus, he ordered all military forces in the capital not to approach public institutions. Last week, he said the objective of his offensive, which saw city after city fall from government control, was to
The US deployed a reconnaissance aircraft while Japan and the Philippines sent navy ships in a joint patrol in the disputed South China Sea yesterday, two days after the allied forces condemned actions by China Coast Guard vessels against Philippine patrol ships. The US Indo-Pacific Command said the joint patrol was conducted in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone by allies and partners to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight “ and “other lawful uses of the sea and international airspace.” Those phrases are used by the US, Japan and the Philippines to oppose China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the
‘KAMPAI’: It is said that people in Japan began brewing rice about 2,000 years ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol Traditional Japanese knowledge and skills used in the production of sake and shochu distilled spirits were approved on Wednesday for addition to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, a committee of the UN cultural body said It is believed people in the archipelago began brewing rice in a simple way about two millennia ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol. By about 1000 AD, the imperial palace had a department to supervise the manufacturing of sake and its use in rituals, the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association said. The multi-staged brewing techniques still used today are
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