London, Sep 17 (ANI): American writer Dan Brown’s new book ‘The Lost Symbol’ is said to have broken sales record in the first 36 hours of its release in the UK, after it sold more copies than any other adult hardback novel.
The book, which went on sale on September 15, has sold more than 300,000 copies in the UK.
The previous best-selling adult hardback was Thomas Harris’ ‘Hannibal’, which has sold 298,000 copies since it was published in 1999.
‘The Lost Symbol’ once again features Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon from ‘The Da Vinci Code’, and had a UK first print run of a million.
According to Publisher Transworld, the book has sold more than 1million copies worldwide.
Transworld warned it was on the lookout for websites offering pirated copies of the new novel, after reports that two sites had already posted material from the book.
“We have a very vigilant team who are constantly scanning the web to investigate potential piracy issues,” the BBC quoted a spokeswoman as saying.
“If and when they do find any rogue material out there we will issue ‘take down’ notices,” she added. (ANI)
Serbian mafia boss arrested over killing of Croatian journalist
Belgrade – Belgrade police on Monday arrested Serbia’s most powerful outlaw figure Sreten Jocic on suspicion of murdering Croatian editor and publisher Ivo Pukanic last year, Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said. Dacic said Jocic, aka Joca Amsterdam, was arrested in a coordinated police action and that he is suspected of participating in the murder of Pukanic.
Jocic’s attorney briefly told journalists that the police were searching though his client’s house but made no other comment.
Belgrade B92 television reported that Jocic, 47, was arrested in the house of the late former president Slobodan Milosevic which he was renting in the upmarket Belgrade neighbourhood of Dedinje.
Pukanic, the editor of Nacional weekly, was a controversial figure in Croatia and had links with figures on both sides of the law. He and his marketing director were killed in a bomb blast in downtown Zagreb last October.
Croatian media reported last week that a witness told local police that the so-called cocaine king of Europe has organized and ordered the murder of Pukanic.
Serbian media are speculating that Jocic was also involved in the killing of two narcotics bosses in Belgrade last Friday when police found two charred bodies in the wreckage of a Jeep. Media reports that one of the men allegedly owed Jocic half a million euros.
In the early 1990s Jocic was a cocaine boss in the Netherlands where he was arrested in 1993, after which he fled to Bulgaria to become the local drug boss.
Bulgaria extradited him in 2002 to the Netherlands but he was released due to lack of evidence. He awaits trial in Serbia over his suspected connection with several murders.
The murder of Pukanic shook the Croatian public and local police promptly arrested several suspects. Serbian media reports say that a former member of the Serbian security forces suspecting of having planted the bomb is still at large.(dpa)