A life-size bronze statue of comic book reporter Tintin and more than 200 other items linked to the diminutive globetrotter have fetched more than euro1 million at a Paris auction.
The most expensive lot was two inked and water-painted original panels from the 1938 “King Ottokar’s Sceptre” album, which went for euro243,750. The bronze statue, showing Tintin with his hands in his pockets and dog Snowy at his side, went for euro125,000 in the Saturday auction at the Drouot-Montaigne auction house. Belgian artist Herge’s adventures of Tintin have been translated into nearly 80 languages and sold more than 200 million books since 1929. Racial stereotypes in books such as Tintin in the Congo have prompted criticism, but demand for Tintin artefacts remains strong.
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China cops free forced labourers
Beijing : The police has rescued 34 people forced to work at a brick kiln in northern China, where they were given electric shocks if they protested, local media reported, in the country’s latest slavery scandal.
A further 11 people have been detained for “using methods such as beating, electrocuting, intimidating, and restrictions on freedom, to force migrant workers to engage in heavy manual labour,” Yanzhao Metropolis Daily said.
The workers were forced to work 14 to 18 hours a day for no pay in Hebei province’s Raoyang county and were watched at all times, even when they went to the toilet, the newspaper, which belongs to the official Hebei Daily, said. The police in Raoyang and in the larger nearby city of Hengshui were not available for comment. —AFP