Bus Stops - February 22

Comic Book Collection Expected To Fetch $2 Million (Huffington Post) 

(Michael Rorrer said his great aunt once mentioned having comic books she would one day give him and his brother, but it was a passing remark made when they were boys and still into superheroes. Ruby Wright gave no indication at the time – and she died last February, leaving it unclear – that her late husband's comic collection contained some of the most prized issues ever published. The 345 comics were slated to sell at auction in New York on Wednesday, and were expected to fetch more than $2 million.)

NY case of comic book collector’s death in stolen goods ring back in court (Washington Post) 

(Several alleged members of an upstate New York stolen goods ring that’s blamed for the 2010 death of a comic book collector again entered not guilty pleas to federal murder and racketeering charges Tuesday after a grand jury revised its indictment. Neither alleged ring leader Rico Vendetti nor his six co-defendants spoke during the arraignment on the indictment amended to include the forfeiture of $5 million and five properties if the defendants are convicted and to add conspiracy and racketeering to the charges against co-defendant Terry Stewart.)

THE COST OF THE DEATH STAR (Short List) 

(Still weighing up whether you should join the Dark Side or not? Well, we might be able to help make your mind up. If you're looking for a better wage then you might have to start embracing evil. Students at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania worked out how much it would cost to build the Death Star and came up with a figure of $8,100,000,000,000,000 ($8.1 quadrillion!?), which is 13,000 times the world's GDP.)

Five Leadership Mistakes Of The Galactic Empire (Forbes) 

(My colleague Dorothy Pomerantz notes that this weekend, the re-issued 3-D version of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, pulled down about $23 million in the Box Office over the weekend. This got my mind to pondering the mistakes that people make, ranging from making the Star Wars prequels to reissuing them in 3-D to actually going to relive the misery that was The Phantom Menace all over again.)

Defense: Ga. Suspect Says Angel Told Him to Kill (ABC) 

(Prosecutors urged jurors Tuesday to dismiss a murder defendant's assertions that an angel who looked like Olivia Newton-John ordered him to fatally shoot a co-worker's husband outside a preschool. They say Hemy Neuman was not delusional or insane and had planned the killing for months.)

Five-year-old boy lives as girl in youngest case of Gender Identity Disorder (The Telegraph) 

(A little boy who decided he was a girl trapped in a boy's body has become one of the youngest-ever children to have his decision backed by the NHS - aged just four.)

Edvard Munch masterpiece The Scream to be auctioned (BBC) 

(Edvard Munch's famous masterpiece The Scream is to be sold at auction in New York, Sotheby's has announced. The Norwegian artist created several versions of the artwork, using different techniques. The 1895 work, which is going under the hammer in May, was created using pastels and is the only version still in private hands.)

Quebec 'couch surfing' accident kills man (CBC) 

(A 22-year-old man has died after a country road stunt involving a sled-mounted couch went wrong in Quebec's Beauce region Saturday night. The man was critically injured while riding on the sled-mounted couch, which was dragged by a van down a country road in St. Benjamin, south of Quebec City.)

Crocodile Bites Off Part Of Elderly Man's Testicles In Zimbabwe; Jonah Maturure Survives Attack (Huffington Post) 

(A 70-year-old man from Zimbabwe narrowly escaped a crocodile attack as he crossed the Chivake River with his pants off -- but he lost part of his testicles and suffered a few broken bones in the melee. Jonah Maturure told the Sunday News that he'd taken off his trousers and put them in a tomato box above his head before he crossed the river. He'd crossed the same spot in the same river several times before, but this time, a giant croc was waiting for him.)

Adele Makes Obscene Gesture at Brit Music Awards (People) 

(Warning, music fans: Adele just went M.I.A. An angry Adele gave the middle finger at the Brit awards for music Tuesday night in London, less than three weeks after rapper M.I.A. gave the same obscene gesture at the Super Bowl halftime show. It happened as Adele, 23, was picking up the best album award to go with her solo female honor and was giving her acceptance speech.)

Kevin Smith: Hollywood's Hockey Super Fan (CBC) 

(Spike Lee has basketball. Kevin Costner has baseball. Kevin Smith has hockey. As we saw Sunday night in the second installment of AMC's Comic Book Men, while Smith's obsession with Superman and Jack Kirby and Star Wars is nearly unparalleled, so is his love of a sport that most Americans never notice until it's time for the Olympics. But hockey fandom has one great, mainstream champion in Smith. The fact that it serves as the backdrop for what Smith says is his last movie as a director -- Hit Somebody, set for release in 2013 -- is hardly a surprise.)

Jay & Silent Bob Get Old, Hammersmith Apollo - review (This Is London) 

(Comedy is so international nowadays it rarely gets lost in translation when crossing the Atlantic. In fact this packed London debut from cult characters Jay and Silent Bob, essentially livewire loon Jason Mewes and chunky filmmaker Kevin Smith being themselves, was bigger than any of the pair's American gigs. Which suggests that British audiences have a greater capacity for schoolboy smut than our US neighbours.)

Winnipeg bus-stop killer sentenced to life (CBC) 

(A Winnipeg man has been sentenced to life in prison for gunning down a man who was standing at a North End bus stop. Jheruel Mananghaya pleaded guilty on Tuesday to second-degree murder in the shooting death of Darren Walsh, 24, who was fatally shot on July 4, 2010.)

Sabbath bus angers religious (Sky News) 

(In the latest salvo in Israel's simmering cultural war between religious and secular Jews, municipal authorities in the bustling metropolis of Tel Aviv have outraged the country's religious establishment with a decision to launch bus service on the Jewish Sabbath. The effort - likely to be blocked by the government - comes as the country's powerful religious minority faces increasing pressure over what many perceive to be attempts to impose religious tenets on the rest of the country.)

Advert on Oxford Street shown only to women (BBC) 

(An interactive hoarding at a London bus stop aims to show a 40-second advertisement only to women and girls. The screen showing the short video campaign, by children's charity Plan UK, is located at a bus stop opposite Selfridges on Oxford Street.)

(Submitted by @Fitzman73)



Get Ready for the Million-Mustache March (Time) 

(It’s time to put that mustache to work in Washington, says the American Mustache Institute (AMI). The apparently patriotic group announced plans for a Million Mustache March from the Capitol to the White House on April 1 (now, what day is that, again?) in support of the STACHE Act, its Stimulus to Allow Critical Hair Expenses plan.)