Trucker recalls facing knife-wielder beheading body on bus

MORDEN, MAN. — Long-haul trucker Christopher Alguire admits there was a point, as he faced a man with a knife who was hacking at the body of a Greyhound bus passenger, when he considered whether he might be able to kill the man with a metre-long metal rod he’d grabbed from his truck.

It was the end of July and Mr. Alguire, 28, had been hauling a load of metal pipe from Alberta to Manitoba when he saw the bus, which had veered off the road west of Winnipeg.

Passengers were streaming out and running away.

Someone yelled to him through his window as he slowly passed that a man was stabbing someone on board. Mr. Alguire pulled over and grabbed the metal bar, a tool used to secure loads on his truck, and sprinted for the bus. Mr. Alguire said the driver of the bus was in shock, so a second Greyhound driver from another loaded who had stopped to help was guarding the door.

Mr. Alguire, who said he is familiar with weapons and martial arts, saw the driver holding the door closed and together they shoved their bodies against it to keep it closed.

Soon afterward, the driver boarded the bus to see if any passengers were trapped, and Mr. Alguire, his metal rod at the ready, followed him inside.

He said he saw a man leaning over a passenger’s body, hacking at a body with a knife. The dead passenger was later identified as Tim McLean, 22, a carnival worker heading home to Manitoba after a stint in Edmonton.

Then the man stood up with Mr. McLean’s severed head in his hand, Mr. Alguire recalled, leaving the truck driver with a split-second decision to make. He said he is also experienced with knife throwing, he didn’t think his piece of metal was a match for that knife.

“At 10 feet away, it’s a deadly weapon because you can throw it [the knife] so fast and so hard. If the guy had any experience in throwing, he could stick it into my chest very quickly, or into my throat or head,” he said In an interview yesterday from the trucking facility in Morden, Man., where he works, Mr. Alguire said the second bus driver left him alone on the bus with the attacker. He thought if the man seriously injured or even killed him, there would be no one else who could defend the rest of the passengers.

“My duty was to make sure that nobody else was exposed to his rage.”

Mr. Alguire decided to jump off the bus and slammed the door closed again.

“He walked up to the door and put the head right up to my face through the glass and waved the knife at me. He turned around and put the head down on the floor in front of me so I could see,” Mr. Alguire said.

It was the man’s dark eyes that struck him most. “They were empty. It was like staring into a black hole.”

His adrenalin pumping, and holding his metal bar like a spear, Alguire readied himself for a possible fight.

“I was ready to break every bone in his body. I was not going to let him get past me to the people behind that I was there to try to save.”

The man on the bus turned away, sat in the driver’s seat and tried to start the bus, but the driver had disabled the engine.

Then police arrived, including an armed tactical team, Alguire said he urged officers to shoot the suspect, but they dismissed him.

“He had just finished mutilating a guy. He just killed somebody. Put a stop to him, at least shoot out his knee or shoulder or something,” he said.

“If they would have done something like that, Tim McLean’s body wouldn’t have been desecrated nearly as much as it was.”

The suspect was eventually arrested after trying to jump out a window.

Alguire was also upset that passengers weren’t herded farther away, saying they had a clear view of other indignities committed on the body as they stared in horror through the front windshield.

With the police on the scene and passengers out of harm’s way, Alguire got back into his rig and got back onto the highway. He managed to drive to nearby Portage la Prairie, Man., before he simply had to stop his rig and sit there for a while, trying to understand what he called a “surreal experience.”

The trucker said he has recurring dreams about what happened, including visions of McLean’s severed head, the knife-wielding attacker and the terror in the passengers’ eyes as they watched the incident unfold.

“My life has been in shock, things haven’t been going so well for me,” said Alguire.

But his friends and family are helping him to cope with what’s happened, he said.

Vince Weiguang Li, 40, of Edmonton is expected to make another court appearance Monday on a charge of second-degree murder. He has been ordered by a judge to undergo a psychiatric assessment.

Mr. McLean’s family filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Greyhound, the federal government and Mr. Li that claimed they didn’t ensure passenger safety.

Jay Prober, a lawyer for Mr. McLean’s family, said the family alleges that neither Greyhound nor federal agencies responsible for transportation and public safety took proper precautions. He said the family wants to make sure more security measures are in place for bus passengers.

“There’s no security in place,” Mr. Prober said. “This lawsuit is not about money. It’s about accountability. It’s about responsibility. It’s about ensuring that they get answers to questions that they haven’t been getting answers to.”

None of the allegations in the lawsuit has been proved in court and a statement of defence has not yet been filed.

A Greyhound spokeswoman, Abby Wambaugh, said from the company’s headquarters in Dallas, “We believe this was a very unfortunate and tragic occurrence, but beyond that, I can’t address any type of pending litigation.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080902.wtruckerbus0902/BNStory/National/home

Georgia mobilizes commando units near S.Ossetia – Russian military

MOSCOW, September 2 (RIA Novosti) – Georgia is mobilizing commando units near its border with South Ossetia, a senior Russian military official said on Tuesday.

Russia officially recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states on August 26, saying the move was needed to protect the regions after Georgia’s August 8 attack on South Ossetia.

“According to our information, Georgian security forces are trying to restore their [military] presence in Georgian populated villages in South Ossetia. With this aim, Georgia is mobilizing its special forces from the interior and defense ministries near the administrative border with South Ossetia,” Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the deputy chief of Russia’s General Staff, said.

He also said that Russia had deployed 19 peacekeeping observation posts in South Ossetia to provide security and stability in the republic, adding that South Ossetian military detachments were also mobilizing near the border to counter any possible Georgian attacks.

Georgia attacked South Ossetia on August 8 in an attempt to regain control over the republic, which split from Tbilisi in the early 1990s. Most people living in South Ossetia have Russian citizenship and Moscow subsequently launched an operation to “force Georgia to accept peace.” The operation was concluded on August 12.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Sunday that Russian support for South Ossetia and Abkhazia envisaged military as well as economic assistance.

http://en.rian.ru/world/20080902/116487190.html

Sarah Palin in a bikini???

gods, I hope this is fake…

Storm Ike forms, seen growing into hurricane

*I am getting a headache*

MIAMI (Reuters) – Tropical Storm Ike, the ninth of a busy Atlantic hurricane season, formed on Monday midway between Africa and the Caribbean and was expected to grow rapidly into a hurricane that could threaten the United States or the Caribbean.

Ike was churning across the Atlantic on the heels of Hurricane Gustav, which pounded New Orleans on Monday as it came ashore on the U.S. Gulf Coast, and Hurricane Hanna, which strengthened as it neared the south-eastern Bahamas islands.

The peak of the six-month Atlantic hurricane season usually occurs around September 10, and an average season spawns 10 tropical storms. Six of those strengthen into hurricanes.

Ike’s formation, and the possibility of another tropical depression developing in its wake in the coming days, means the storm activity this year is well above normal, bad news for U.S. oil and natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico and for the millions living in the Caribbean and on U.S. coasts.

By 5 p.m. (10 p.m. British time), Tropical Storm Ike was about 1,400 miles (2,250 km) east of the Leeward Islands and moving west at 16 miles per hour (26 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Centre said.

Its top sustained winds were already at 50 mph (85 kph) and it was expected to reach hurricane strength, with winds of at least 74 mph (119 kph), within 36 hours, the hurricane Centre said.

Computer models used to forecast tropical storm tracks indicated Ike was likely to stick to a westerly path that would bring it just north of the island of Hispaniola, shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

The Miami-based hurricane Centre said Ike could be a “major” hurricane by then. Major hurricanes are those that rank at Category 3 and higher on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of storm intensity and are the most destructive.

Hurricane Katrina was a Category 3 when it came ashore near New Orleans in 2005 and swamped the city, killing 1,500 people on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Hurricane Gustav was also a Category 3 on Monday shortly before landfall but it weakened as it landed.

Long-range track and intensity forecasts are subject to enormous error but some models suggested Ike could eventually dip to the south-southwest, potentially threatening Haiti, Cuba or the Gulf of Mexico where the United States produces 25 percent of its oil and 15 percent of its natural gas.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKN0133098020080901

Sun Makes History: First Spotless Month in a Century

Drop in solar activity has potential effect for climate on earth.

The sun has reached a milestone not seen for nearly 100 years: an entire month has passed without a single visible sunspot being noted.

The event is significant as many climatologists now believe solar magnetic activity – which determines the number of sunspots — is an influencing factor for climate on earth.

According to data from Mount Wilson Observatory, UCLA, more than an entire month has passed without a spot. The last time such an event occurred was June of 1913. Sunspot data has been collected since 1749.

When the sun is active, it’s not uncommon to see sunspot numbers of 100 or more in a single month. Every 11 years, activity slows, and numbers briefly drop to near-zero. Normally sunspots return very quickly, as a new cycle begins.

But this year — which corresponds to the start of Solar Cycle 24 — has been extraordinarily long and quiet, with the first seven months averaging a sunspot number of only 3. August followed with none at all. The astonishing rapid drop of the past year has defied predictions, and caught nearly all astronomers by surprise.

In 2005, a pair of astronomers from the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson attempted to publish a paper in the journal Science. The pair looked at minute spectroscopic and magnetic changes in the sun. By extrapolating forward, they reached the startling result that, within 10 years, sunspots would vanish entirely. At the time, the sun was very active. Most of their peers laughed at what they considered an unsubstantiated conclusion.

The journal ultimately rejected the paper as being too controversial.

The paper’s lead author, William Livingston, tells DailyTech that, while the refusal may have been justified at the time, recent data fits his theory well. He says he will be “secretly pleased” if his predictions come to pass.

But will the rest of us? In the past 1000 years, three previous such events — the Dalton, Maunder, and Spörer Minimums, have all led to rapid cooling. One was large enough to be called a “mini ice age”. For a society dependent on agriculture, cold is more damaging than heat. The growing season shortens, yields drop, and the occurrence of crop-destroying frosts increases.

Meteorologist Anthony Watts, who runs a climate data auditing site, tells DailyTech the sunspot numbers are another indication the “sun’s dynamo” is idling. According to Watts, the effect of sunspots on TSI (total solar irradiance) is negligible, but the reduction in the solar magnetosphere affects cloud formation here on Earth, which in turn modulates climate.

This theory was originally proposed by physicist Henrik Svensmark, who has published a number of scientific papers on the subject. Last year Svensmark’s “SKY” experiment claimed to have proven that galactic cosmic rays — which the sun’s magnetic field partially shields the Earth from — increase the formation of molecular clusters that promote cloud growth. Svensmark, who recently published a book on the theory, says the relationship is a larger factor in climate change than greenhouse gases.

Solar physicist Ilya Usoskin of the University of Oulu, Finland, tells DailyTech the correlation between cosmic rays and terrestrial cloud cover is more complex than “more rays equals more clouds”. Usoskin, who notes the sun has been more active since 1940 than at any point in the past 11 centuries, says the effects are most important at certain latitudes and altitudes which control climate. He says the relationship needs more study before we can understand it fully.

Other researchers have proposed solar effects on other terrestrial processes besides cloud formation. The sunspot cycle has strong effects on irradiance in certain wavelengths such as the far ultraviolet, which affects ozone production. Natural production of isotopes such as C-14 is also tied to solar activity. The overall effects on climate are still poorly understood.

What is incontrovertible, though, is that ice ages have occurred before. And no scientist, even the most skeptical, is prepared to say it won’t happen again.

Article Update, Sep 1 2008. After this story was published, the NOAA reversed their previous decision on a tiny speck seen Aug 21, which gives their version of the August data a half-point. Other observation centers such as Mount Wilson Observatory are still reporting a spotless month. So depending on which center you believe, August was a record for either a full century, or only 50 years.

http://www.dailytech.com/Sun+Makes+History+First+Spotless+Month+in+a+Century/article12823.htm

My two cents on Palin

I am getting rather tired of the whole thing, but I will mention this…

I don’t care about petty partisan bickering and rhetoric. I don’t care about the DailyKOS rumours, or anything like that.

I DO want to know…is McCain a bloody idiot? Seriously, what kind of tactic is this, opting for this woman?

There is a trick somewhere. I have yet to figure it out. No, I do not believe that it is because she is a woman, or to get the sympathy vote…

There is something MORE to this. Any ideas???