Standoff with Ala. school bus shooting suspect in third day

Updated at 8:02 a.m. ET

MIDLAND CITY, Ala. A standoff that started when a man boarded a school bus full of children near his home in a rural Alabama neighborhood, killed the driver and took one 5-year-old boy hostage entered its third day Thursday.

The suspect and the child hostage have not been identified by police.

People who live along the rutted red clay road said the suspect is a retired truck driver with a reputation, CBS News correspondent Manuel Bojorquez reports. They said he allegedly beat a dog to death and threatened to shoot kids who trespass on his property. He was reportedly due in court this week on a weapons charge.

Neighbor Ronda Wilbur described the suspect to CBS News as "very anti-social, very anti-government" and that he "hates everybody."

"My granddaughter who just turned 7, when I have her visiting me this next weekend, I won't have to worry about 'mean man,'" Wilbur told CBS News. "One way or another he's not gonna be there. He will either be locked up, or he'll be dead."

Wilbur told The Associated Press that the suspect beat her 120-pound dog with a lead pipe for coming onto his side of the dirt road. The dog died a week later.

"He said his only regret was he didn't beat him to death all the way," Wilbur told the AP. "If a man can kill a dog, and beat it with a lead pipe and brag about it, it's nothing until it's going to be people."

The neighborhood near Midland City, population 2,300, remained under siege after the Tuesday shooting, with the suspect and child holed up in a bunker-type shelter on the man's property that was equipped with electricity, food and TV.

On Thursday, dozens of police cars and rental cars that had brought FBI agents to the site were parked about the state highway at the clay road's entrance. A large law enforcement truck also pulled up before dawn to a staging area for law enforcement agents that was lit by bright lights overnight.

At least one ambulance was parked nearby and numerous television news satellite trucks also lined up across the rural highway.

Homes on the road had been evacuated earlier after authorities found what they believed to be a bomb on the property. SWAT teams earlier had taken up positions around the gunman's property and police negotiators tried to win the kindergartener's safe release.

The situation remained unchanged for hours as negotiators continued talking to the suspect, Alabama State Trooper Charles Dysart told a news conference late Wednesday. Earlier in the day, Sheriff Wally Olson said that authorities had "no reason to believe that the child has been harmed."

Local TV station WDHN obtained a police dispatch recording of the moment officers first arrived at the site. On it, the officers are heard saying that they were trying to communicate with the suspect through a PVC pipe leading into the shelter.

Authorities gave no details of the standoff, and it was unclear if the suspect made any demands from the bunker, which resembled a tornado shelter.

State Rep. Steve Clouse, who met with authorities and visited the boy's family, said the bunker had food and electricity, and the youngster was watching TV.

At one point, authorities lowered medicine into the bunker for the boy after his captor agreed to it, Clouse said.

The standoff began after school Tuesday afternoon. Olson said the man shot the bus driver several times when he refused to hand over the child. The gunman then took the boy away.

"As far as we know there is no relation at all. He just wanted a child for a hostage situation," said Michael Senn, a pastor who helped comfort other traumatized children after the attack.

The bus driver, Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, was hailed by locals as a hero who gave his life to protect the 21 students aboard the bus. Authorities say most of the students scrambled to the back of the bus when the gunman boarded and said he wanted two boys 6 to 8 years old.

But when the gunman went down the aisle, authorities said, Poland put his arm out to grab a pole near the front steps of the vehicle, trying to block the suspect. That's when authorities say the driver was shot four times before the gunman grabbed the child at random and fled.

Mike and Patricia Smith, who live across the street from the suspect and whose two children were on the bus, said their youngsters had a run-in with him about 10 months ago.

"My bulldogs got loose and went over there," Patricia Smith said. "The children went to get them. He threatened to shoot them if they came back."

"He's very paranoid," her husband said. "He goes around in his yard at night with a flashlight and shotgun."

The suspect had been scheduled to appear in court Wednesday to face a charge of menacing some neighbors as they drove by his house weeks ago. Claudia Davis said he yelled and fired shots at her, her son and her baby grandson over damage the suspect claimed their pickup truck did to a makeshift speed bump in the dirt road. No one was hurt.

"Before this happened, I would see him at several places and he would just stare a hole through me," Davis said. "On Monday I saw him at a laundromat and he seen me when I was getting in my truck, and he just stared and stared and stared at me."

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Obama Prods GOP on Immigration Negotiations

Jan 31, 2013 6:00am

                                                                        (Image Credit: John Gurzinski/Getty Images)

President Obama has apparently had enough of leading from behind.

During the health-care push, Obama left Congress to its own devices. On immigration, he’s doing just the opposite, attempting to prod Republican legislators to the middle by demanding a vote on his own plan.

Obama Confident Immigration Overhaul Passes This Year

The president insisted Tuesday that Congress vote on his plan as soon as possible, barring agreement on something else.

“It’s important for us to recognize that the foundation for bipartisan action is already in place,” Obama said, referring to a bipartisan Senate bill offered up by the so-called Gang of Eight senators, which looks much more palatable to Republicans than Obama’s own plan. “And if Congress is unable to move forward in a timely fashion, I will send up a bill based on my proposal and insist that they vote on it right away.”

In doing so, Obama dared Congress to say “no” to something specific.

A Glossary for Immigration Overhaul

It’s the same strategy Obama used in the “fiscal-cliff” talks. With a year-end deadline approaching, he pushed Congress to vote on his own plan: to let higher income tax hikes go into effect if lawmakers couldn’t cut a deal themselves. Obama asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada to call “an up-or-down vote” on that plan, the president announced in a Dec. 28 appearance before cameras at the White House.

“If members of the House or the Senate want to vote ‘no,’ they can, but we should let everybody vote,” Obama said then.

Republicans hate such a negotiation tactic. Throughout Obama’s White House tenure, GOP aides have griped that the president and congressional Democrats have sought political gain while refusing to negotiate in good faith. On immigration, it’s the same.

The Obama plan includes a faster path to citizenship and nothing to trigger border-security enforcement. It would also clear an easier path for same-sex couples.

Before Obama rolled out his immigration plan in Nevada Tuesday, Sen. Marco Rubio of  Florida raised concerns that the president would launch a “bidding war.”

In a radio interview with Rush Limbaugh, Rubio dismissed the notion of an up-or-down vote: “It’s going to have to go through committees and people are going to have their input. There’s going to be public hearings.  I don’t want to be part of a process that comes up with some bill in secret and brings it to the floor and gives people a take it or leave it.

“I want this place to work the way it’s supposed to work, with every senator having input and the public having input,” Rubio said.

A Senate Republican aide jabbed, “The president’s been gone from the Senate a long time and perhaps he has forgotten that it’s a lot easier to pass legislation if he works with Congress.”

Obama has presented Republicans with a plan they will like much less than what’s been crafted by the bipartisan Senate group. The group plan includes triggers to enforce border-security measures, more unmanned drones and no provisions making it easier for same-sex couples seeking to immigrate or naturalize.

Unless other Republicans come up with a plan of their own, the president has given Republicans a choice between the left and the middle. It’s not hard to tell which they’d prefer.

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Infrared laptop trackpad ignores accidental touches

Hal Hodson, technology reporter

The success of the tablet means that some touch gestures have trickled down to the old-fashioned laptop user and their lowly trackpads. But with a surface the size of a beer mat, the trackpad's options are limited. Why not extend the pad across the whole bottom of the laptop, giving more room for gestures and making the touchpad more useful?

The obvious problem with this idea is that it would leave nowhere for your hands to rest as you type. I still brush my trackpad accidentally during particularly furious typing, even with it hidden between my wrists. Now a group of researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon, South Korea, have redesigned the touchpad to work using infrared light reflectance, doing away with accidental touches almost entirely, and spreading the touchpad across the whole bottom half of the laptop in the process.

The infrared Longpad is built out of a thin array of infrared LEDs, distributed in a grid of light receptors. The receptors detect light that is reflected back to them by objects like fingers or styluses. Traditional touch-sensitive trackpads and screens rely on current that flows through skin into the device at the point of contact. This means they register mistaken touches from forearms, wrists and thumbs, unable to discriminate between different patches of skin.

Lead researcher Jiseong Gu and colleagues have got around this by profiling what the infrared reflectance of different parts of the forearm and wrist look like, in a similar way to Leap Motion's hand-tracking system or Microsoft Digits. It can distinguish fingertips from wrists or shirt cuffs, and only responds when being touched purposefully by fingers or thumbs. It can also figure out what angle the whole hand is at relative to the Longpad, ignoring touches that come from angles that indicate typing.

In trials with 11 people performing thousands of keyboard and touchpad actions, unwanted interactions accounted for just 0.42 per cent of all Longpad touches.

With the width of the whole laptop to play with, Longpad can be used to switch applications easily by mapping the position of open applications in the Windows taskbar to spots on the pad. Sliding a finger along the pad allows a user to skip through online video intuitively, too.

Gu and colleagues will present their work at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Paris, France, at the end of April.

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New towns should take local characteristics into account: experts

SINGAPORE: Singapore will soon see a number of new towns in areas like Bidadari, Tengah and Tampines North.

Experts said the development of these places should also take local characteristics and history into account, as this will not only retain the town's history and uniqueness, it will help create a more varied environment in Singapore.

Punggol New Town has come a long way. Its transformation began in 1996, with the government's Punggol 21 vision to create a waterfront town.

Mdm Koh Geok Kee, a sales assistant, said: "When I first moved here, I had to wait... Wait for the shopping areas to be built, more buses and the beach area. At first it was very dirty, but now it's very clean, so I like it more and more."

Ong Jun Long, a student, said: "It's very quiet and it has all the facilities we need, especially with the new waterway that allows people to enjoy the natural side of life."

Observers said the development of Punggol could provide a glimpse into the future of Singapore as the government looks for new plots of land to build new towns. The Population White Paper released on Tuesday listed Bidadari, Tengah and Tampines North as possible sites, especially now that 700,000 housing units are expected to come on stream until 2030.

For these areas, experts said Punggol offers several lessons.

William Lau, president of the Singapore Institute of Planners, said: "Punggol 21 is experimental, a test bed for a higher density plot ratio and in a fairly remote part of Singapore to turn around, to make something attractive. So the canal, river, as well as the ease of connection into the city are added points that are already on the ground.

"HDB also has a different theme in Jurong East. Jurong East is on an 'eco' theme and is based on Jurong lake district because it's a wetland with a lot of lakes, to capitalise on them (and turn it) into an 'eco' new town.

"So we must look at the attributes of the various land available, and we must bring them in, embrace them and (make it) part of our design element. By doing so, not only do we have a slice of historical background that we can capitalise on to make them unique, but at the same time, there is a branding retention of the past and adds a uniqueness to the place."

But observers said the challenge of building new towns is in calibrating the balance between residential space and amenities.

Mr Lau added: "We do note that in many developing countries, new towns are not complete, a lot of apartments and residentials stand alone in the middle of nowhere. With the Singapore government, we plan to have a complete, integrated township -- where ideally, you're able to find employment, you're able to find a house over your head and the various array of activities that's necessary to complete your lifestyle.

"So from going to the bank, hawker centre, to the wet market, to the malls and to exercise, fields, education for children -- all these are brought under the neighbourhood as a complete stop. And therefore, the complete experience of quality living can be self-contained."

Associate Professor Paulin Straughan, a sociologist with the National University of Singapore, said: "To make these towns attractive for new families, infrastructure should be ready. So to have the rail system or bus services set up, to have service providers, amenities, restaurants, supermarkets to be there.

"And before the number of residents grows, as long as your transportation infrastructure is in place, people from outside the neighbourhood would be able to come by. And once you have all that in place, then once you set up the homes, I think there will be lots of takers."

The right mix will not only attract residents, it will also enable businesses to survive in the new neighbourhood, said experts.

-CNA/ac

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Gunman Kills Bus Driver, Takes Child as Hostage

A gunman shot and killed a school bus driver in Midland City, Ala., Tuesday afternoon and escaped the scene with a 6-year-old passenger, which has prompted a hostage situation that is still going on this morning.

The suspected gunman is identified as Jimmy Lee Dykes, a 60-something military veteran, a police source told ABC News. Dykes and the child are in an underground bunker behind his home.

Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson said Tuesday night that the police had information that the little boy "is OK right now." The boy was delivered some needed medication, police told ABC News.

The police have not identified the child or the dead bus driver.

"Extremely sensitive situation. ... Our agents are working very hard with the locals for the best possible outcome to this situation," a federal law enforcement source told ABC News this morning.

Danny Tindell/Dothan Eagle

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Some people in the area were evacuated Tuesday evening, and everyone in the immediate area was notified of the situation, according to Olson.

"Stay at home and pray," Olson told homeowners living in the area.

Olson said multiple agencies have responded to the hostage situation. The FBI has assumed the lead in the investigation, and SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams were surrounding the bunker as of Tuesday night.

The incident began a little after 3:30 p.m. local time Tuesday. An unidentified girl, who was on the bus, told ABC News Radio the bus driver had stopped to drop off some children. The alleged gunman boarded the bus and handed the driver a note, she said.

"And then I don't know what happened after that but he started telling them he needed a kid because of the law coming after him," she said.

Dykes got on the bus and originally demanded that he get two children as hostages. All the children on the bus managed to escape except the 6-year-old boy, a police source told ABC News affiliate WDNH.

"He shot the bus driver, and the driver's foot was on the gas and we went backwards. And everybody started screaming. And then the bus driver was still there and we all got off the bus and went to a neighbor's house," the girl said.

Dykes was scheduled to be in court today for a trial related to charges of menacing, according to court records obtained by WDNH.

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Netizens call for better road safety after Tampines accident

SINGAPORE: Netizens are calling for better road safety following the horrific accident at Tampines on Monday evening which killed two boys.

On January 28, two brothers died after they were hit by a cement truck near Dunman Secondary School at Tampines Street 45.

The story grabbed attention online and gone viral overnight.

Shortly after the accident, gruesome pictures of the aftermath were circulated widely on social media.

This has led to netizens urging authorities to improve road safety.

Facebook user Titan Cruz said that the government should look into setting up bicycle lanes leading to popular locations to accommodate a growing number of cyclists.

Another user, Mr Habib said that it is time the authorities look at issues like vehicles not slowing down or stopping at pedestrian crossings at junctions.

He also said they need to review the Traffic Act.

Mr Yuslan in his Facebook post suggested that a law be passed to allow children to cycle only at parks, and not along the roadside, and added that heavy vehicles should be banned from roads inside housing estates.

Another user Aries Wilson thinks that parents too, should be responsible for warning their children against cycling on the roads especially since Singapore's roads are not cyclist-friendly.

There has been an outpouring of grief and condolences for the boys.

The tragic accident prompted a Facebook post by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

Mr Lee wrote that his thoughts were with the family and called for netizens to show sensitivity and respect to the grieving family.

Member of Parliament for Tampines GRC, Baey Yam Keng, also posted a poignant picture of a bouquet of flowers which was placed at the junction where the accident happened.

Writing on his Facebook page, Mr Baey said the mother is naturally distraught and he is glad to see her family, church friends and Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) counsellors around her to render necessary support.

Mr Baey said he spent time with the boys' family on Tuesday and conveyed his condolences to them.

The SAF also offered their deepest condolences to Third Warrant Officer Yap Poh Kwee and his family as they grieved over the tragic loss of their sons.

- CNA/fa

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Egypt Army chief warns state could "collapse"

CAIRO Egypt's army chief warned Tuesday of "the collapse of the state" if the political crisis roiling the nation for nearly a week continues.

The warning by Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, also the defense minister, comes as the country sinks deeper into chaos and lawlessness. Attempts by the Muslim Brotherhood-backed president to stem a wave of political violence appear to have made no headway.

Some 60 people have been killed in the unrest that began last Thursday.

El-Sissi's warning came in an address to military academy cadets. His comments were posted on the armed forces' official Facebook page.

"The continuation of the conflict between the different political forces and their differences over how the country should be run could lead to the collapse of the state and threaten future generations," he said.

President Mohammed Morsi, right, meets Lt. Abdul Fattah El-Sissi, Minister of Defense at the presidential palace in Cairo, Egypt, Dec. 13, 2012.

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AP

It is unclear whether el-Sissi, the former head of military intelligence, meant to try and coax anti-government protesters off the streets with his dire warning, or whether he was himself questioning President Mohammed Morsi's ability to quell the unrest.

Protesters battled police for hours in Cairo on Monday and thousands marched through Egypt's three Suez Canal cities in direct defiance of a night-time curfew and state of emergency, handing a blow to the Morsi's attempts to contain five days of spiraling political violence.

Nearly 60 people have been killed in the wave of unrest, clashes, rioting and protests that have touched cities across the country but have hit the hardest in the canal cities, where residents have virtually risen up in outright revolt.

The latest death came on Monday in Cairo, where a protester died of gunshot wounds as youths hurling stones battled all day and into the night with police firing tear gas near Qasr el-Nil Bridge, a landmark over the Nile next to major hotels. In nearby Tahrir Square, protesters set fire to a police armored personnel carrier, celebrating as it burned in scenes reminiscent of the 2011 revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak.

CBS News' Alex Ortiz reports that the lobby and shops in the ground floor of Cairo's sprawling Intercontinental Hotel were smashed up and looted by a gang of people during the melee on Monday. It was unclear whether the looters were part of the opposition protest, or simply criminal elements taking advantage of the lack of security in the area. Nobody was injured at the hotel, which is frequented by Westerners.

"I will be coming back here every day until the blood of our martyrs is avenged," said 19-year-old carpenter Islam Nasser, who wore a Guy Fawkes mask as he battled police near Tahrir square.

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Egypt declares new state of emergency

Angry and at times screaming and wagging his finger, Morsi on Sunday declared a 30-day state of emergency and a nighttime curfew on the three Suez Canal cities of Suez, Ismailiya and Port Said and their provinces of the same names. He said he had instructed the police to deal "firmly and forcefully" with the unrest and threatened to do more if security was not restored.

But when the 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew began Monday evening, crowds marched through the streets of Port Said, beating drums and chanting, "Erhal, erhal," or "Leave, leave" — a chant that first rang out during the 18-day uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak in 2011 but is now directed at Morsi.

"We completely reject Morsi's measures. How can we have a curfew in a city whose livelihood depends on commerce and tourism?" said Ahmed Nabil, a schoolteacher in the Mediterranean coastal city.

In Suez and Ismailiya, thousands in the streets after curfew chanted against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group from which he hails. In Suez, residents let off fireworks that lit the night sky.

"Oh Morsi, Suez has real men," they chanted.

In Ismailiya, residents organized street games of soccer to emphasize their contempt for the curfew and state of emergency.

On Morsi's orders over the weekend, army troops backed with tanks and armored vehicles have deployed in Port Said and Suez — the two cities worst hit by the violence — to restore security, but they did not intervene to enforce the curfew on Monday night.

The commander of the Third Field Army in charge of Suez, Maj. Gen. Osama Askar, said his troops would not use force to ensure compliance. Army troops in Port Said also stood by and watched as residents ignored the curfew.

Adding to Morsi's woes nearly seven months into his turbulent presidency, the main political opposition coalition on Monday rejected his invitation for a dialogue to resolve the crisis, one of the worst and deadliest to hit Egypt in the two years since Mubarak's ouster.

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