Le Journal

Many holiday travelers are getting an early start on Thanksgiving rush, and San Francisco International Airport is one place expecting an increase in numbers. Making matters more complicated beyond the crowds is renovation work at SFO, specifically a modernization project to Terminal 3 West. More than 6 million passengers are expected to pass through SFO between Thankgsgiving and New Year’s Day. And about 73 million holiday travelers are expected to hit the roadways, AAA says. Ginger Conejero Saab has more in the video above.

An original copy of the first edition of the first “Superman” comic from 1939 — which had been lying undiscovered in an attic for decades — was sold at auction on Thursday for more than $9 million, thought to be highest price paid for a comic book. “Superman #1” was described as “the pinnacle of comic collecting” by auction house Heritage Auctions and the finest known copy ever sold, breaking the previous record of $6 million. The hallowed comic was found in a box in an attic by three brothers in northern California, as they cleared out the house of their mother after her death. The trio have said their mom spoke of having original copies of comic books from the 1930s but couldn’t remember where — it was dismissed as a family legend. The item sold on Thursday for $9.12 million thanks to its near-pristine condition — CGC, a company that verifies and appraises comics and trading cards, gave it an unparalleled score of 9, with 10 being the highest. “Superman No 1 is a milestone in pop culture history, and this copy is not only in unprecedented condition, but it has a movie-worthy story behind it. I was glad to see the price reflect that and am honored Heritage was entrusted with this iconic book,” Heritage vice-president Lon Allen said in a statement. The item is steeped in pop culture history: it is the first time a superhero appeared in a comic entirely devoted to them, as DC Comics capitalized on the popularity of Clark Kent / Superman’s exploits in the ensemble cast of “Action Comics #1” in 1938. Art and Culture 18 hours ago $54.7 million sale of Frida Kahlo self-portrait breaks auction record for female artists Art and Culture Nov 19 Gustav Klimt painting breaks modern art record with $236.4 million sale at auction Art and Culture Nov 18 Flush with cash? A solid gold toilet is up for auction The cover promises to tell “the complete story of the daring exploits of the one and only Superman,” featuring the Man Of Steel in his famous red and blue costume. The comic book was described as one of the hardest out of the most-sought-after titles early titles to find in good condition. DC Comics may have inadvertently caused this rarity by designing the back cover so it could be cut out and framed. “We presume that most every kid wanted to have a Superman pinup, and cut up the back cover along the dotted line as they were encouraged to, resulting in a lot of copies that are low-grade today if they survived at all,” the auction house said. Before these early comic books emerged, the medium was largely used as a way to reprint popular newspaper comic strips in the 1930s. Superman was created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, both sons of Jewish immigrants from Europe, who met in Cleveland and went on to create a character that still features in blockbuster movies and books almost 90 years on. The latest installment from Hollywood, “Man of Tomorrow,” is due for release in 2027. Siegel and Shuster, however, sold rights to their character for $130, a payment that was later unsuccessfully challenged in multiple lawsuits. Such is the fervor for early Superman memorabilia, the $412 check received by the authors in 1938 — including the $130 for Superman — was itself sold for $160,000 at auction in 2012.

Despite having cracked 30 cases in the last three years, the Oakland Police Department’s cold case homicide detail is being dissolved as the department scrambles to deal with staff losses and budget cuts, top officials acknowledged to NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit. The unit had two full-time investigators and one sergeant unit the department began to shift investigators out earlier this year. The last investigator is currently on loan from another part of the department and is being transferred out by the end of the year. The department’s statement to NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit about the unit did not spell out what will happen when the last investigator leaves. But the department stressed any of the city’s 10 homicide investigators can still work cold cases. Minutes after the department sent that statement, a top police official appeared at a public hearing and confirmed that the unit’s fate is, in fact, sealed. “We have just shut down our cold case unit,” investigations Capt. Omar Daza-Quiroz told the city council’s public safety committee on Tuesday. The prospect of the unit’s total demise stunned families who have been counting on its investigators to keep their hopes for justice alive. “You get rid of the cold case unit, what does that do for the families?” said Brenda Grisham, whose 17-year-old son Christopher LaVell Jones was killed by a stray bullet fired as he and his family were preparing to leave their East Oakland home to go to church on New Year’s Eve in 2010. Grisham now lobbies for justice reform. She says while politicians talk about the realities of budget cuts and staffing shortages, she doesn’t think they truly understand what the unit’s closure will mean to victims’ families she works with. “Nobody’s thought about that, if they have not lost the person because it’s not going to affect them, and they don’t really feel that that’s a part of OPD, and it’s a very, very big part of OPD,” Grisham said in a recent interview. “It’s terrible,” said Tamika Bass-Stephens about the prospect of the unit’s closure. She was counting their being able to find who killed her 19-year-old nephew, Andre Robinson Jr., shot from behind in 2020 as he brought breakfast to his girlfriend in East Oakland. While that case remains unsolved, Bass-Stephens says Oakland police have made an arrest in the 2023 New Year’s Day slaying of her husband, James Earl Stephens II, an innocent bystander hit with gunfire as he sat in a car outside a smoke shop in East Oakland. “I’m lucky, I was blessed, but I know there’s a lot of other families have lost loved ones to murder, and they still haven’t had any resolve to their case,” she said. Bass-Stephens now fears the unit’s loss may rob those families of their chance at getting justice. “We need them. We need them like yesterday,” said Marilyn Washington Harris, whose 18-year-old son Khadafy was shot outside McClymonds High School in August 2000. Like Grisham, Washington Harris works with survivors and their families to help them understand the complexities of the justice system. “We just want our just due,” she said. “I, as a mother who’s lost a son – 25 years, it’s a cold case – I need something better to happen than what’s happening.” Even if the department were to keep the unit alive, the current staffing level of one full-time investigator doesn’t make much sense, one expert says. “Having one cold case detective is tough,” said Aaron Benzick, a Dallas-area veteran homicide investigator who founded Solve the Case, a national nonprofit dedicated to helping local law enforcement crack old cases. He says authorities need to understand there’s a true cost to public safety when they seek cuts. “These aren’t just old cases that we’re going back and looking at because we want to show off and do a good job,” Benzick said. “We want to bring answers to families….we want to get these killers off the streets so that more lives can be saved.”…

The Trump administration has sued California for providing in-state college tuition, scholarships, and state-funded financial aid to students who aren’t legally in the United States. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, alleges the practice harms U.S. citizens and encourages illegal immigration. Among the defendants are the state, top state officials, and the state’s two public university systems, the University of California and California State. President Donald Trump’s administration has filed similar lawsuits against policies in other states, including Illinois, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Kentucky and Texas. Half the country now has similar laws to California’s. In June, after the administration sued, Texas ended its decades-old law. And Florida last year scrapped its law that allowed in-state tuition for high school graduates who weren’t in the country legally. Supporters of the state tuition breaks argue that they don’t violate federal law if they provide the same rates to U.S. citizens in the same circumstances — meaning they are residents of the state and graduates of one of its high schools. The California Dream Act also allows such students to apply for state-funded financial aid. Many of the students were brought to the U.S. by their parents when they were children, and supporters of the laws say they are as much a part of their communities as U.S. citizens. It is the latest action by Trump’s administration since he issued executive orders in February directing federal agencies to stop public benefits from going to immigrants living in the U.S. illegally and to challenge state and local policies seen as favoring those immigrants over some citizens. The lawsuit argues that the Republican president’s orders enforce federal immigration laws. “California is illegally discriminating against American students and families by offering exclusive tuition benefits for non-citizens,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “This marks our third lawsuit against California in one week — we will continue bringing litigation against California until the state ceases its flagrant disregard for federal law.” The Justice Department also recently sued to block new congressional district boundaries approved by California voters, and over California’s new laws banning federal agents from wearing masks and requiring them to have identification while conducting operations in the state. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said in a statement: “The DOJ has now filed three meritless, politically motivated lawsuits against California in a single week. Good luck, Trump. We’ll see you in court.” The University of California defended its decades-old in-state tuition policy. “While we will, of course, comply with the law as determined by the courts, we believe our policies and practices are consistent with current legal standards,” it said in a statement. The lawsuit comes weeks after the California Supreme Court let stand a lower-court ruling that the University of California’s policy barring students without legal status in the U.S. from campus jobs is discriminatory and must be reconsidered. University system officials had warned that the decision would put them in a precarious position as they negotiate with the Trump administration after the withdrawal of federal research funds. The UC is dealing with federal grant suspensions and a White House demand that it pay a $1 billion fine over allegations including antisemitism and the illegal consideration of race in admitting students to its Los Angeles campus. The California State University system is the nation’s largest and among its most diverse, with more than 460,000 students. More than a quarter of undergraduates are first-generation college students, according to the university system. The University of California serves about 300,000 students.

She said the current practices violated the constitutional rights of journalists and protesters.