US man kills bus driver, kidnaps child

A gunman boarded a school bus in Alabama, shot and killed the driver and kidnapped a young boy, police say.

A tense standoff moved into its second day as police negotiated with a US man suspected of boarding a crowded school bus, shooting the driver dead and taking a 5-year-old boy at random with him into a rural bunker.

Multiple neighbours identified the suspect as Jimmy Lee Dykes, a 65-year-old retired truck driver who had moved to the Alabama neighborhood on a rutted red clay road more than a year ago.

It didn't take long before he developed a frightening reputation as a volatile man with anti-government views who threatened his neighbours at gunpoint and was vicious to wandering pets.

The boy was watching TV and getting medication sent from home, according to state Rep. Steve Clouse, who met with authorities and visited the boy's family. Mr Clouse said the bunker had food and electricity.

Authorities lowered medicine into the bunker for the boy after his captor agreed to it, Mr Clouse said.

Dozens of cars for police and FBI agents blocked the road's entrance. At least one ambulance was parked nearby. Homes on the road had been evacuated after authorities found what they believed to be a bomb on the property.

Police man a checkpoint near the home where the alleged bus shooter is barricaded himself and a 5-year-old hostage in an underground bunker in Midland City, Alabama.

Police negotiators tried to win the boy's safe release.

"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 traumatised children after the attack.

The situation remained unchanged for hours as negotiators continued talking to the suspect, Alabama State Trooper Charles Dysart told a news conference late on Wednesday. Earlier in the day, Sheriff Wally Olson said 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 property, in which officers are heard saying that they were trying to communicate with Dykes through a PVC pipe leading into the shelter.

Authorities gave no details of the standoff, and it was unclear if Dykes made any demands.

Residents look over the school bus where a local man shot the driver dead and then kidnapped a boy just north of Midland City, Alabama. Picture: Danny Tindell

The standoff began after school Tuesday afternoon.

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.

When the gunman went down the aisle, authorities said, Poland tried to block him. That's when authorities say the driver was shot four times before the gunman grabbed the child at random and fled.

Neighbours said Dykes was a man who once beat a dog to death with a lead pipe, threatened to shoot children for setting foot on his property and patrolled his yard at night with a flashlight and a shotgun.

He had been scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday morning to answer charges he shot at his neighbours in a dispute last month over a speed bump on the road.

Mike and Patricia Smith, who live across the street from Dykes 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.''

Another neighbour, Ronda Wilbur, said Dykes beat her dog with a lead pipe for coming onto his side of the dirt road. The dog died a week later.

Police SWAT teams and hostage negotiators are gathered at standoff and hostage scene in Dale County near Midland City, Alabama. Picture: Montgomery Advertiser, Mickey Welsh

"He said his only regret was he didn't beat him to death all the way,'' Ms Wilbur said.

"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.''

Claudia Davis said he yelled and fired shots at her, her son and her baby grandson over damage Dykes claimed their 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.''

Law enforcement personnel near the home where the school bus shooting suspect is barricaded. Picture: Jay Hare

Court records showed Dykes was arrested in Florida in 1995 for improper exhibition of a weapon, but the misdemeanour was dismissed. The circumstances of the arrest were not detailed in his criminal record. He was also arrested for marijuana possession in 2000.

The crisis in the town of 2300 people played out while lawmakers in Washington held congressional hearings to address gun violence - part of an ongoing national discourse that has ramped up since the December massacre of 20 young children and six adults at Connecticut elementary school.

Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head during a shooting rampage in Arizona in January 2011, was testifying in favour of stricter gun controls.

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Heavily armed men come back down the hill from the direction of the suspect's home at the Dale County hostage scene near Midland City, Alabama. Picture: /Montgomery Advertiser, Mickey Welsh

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US weekly jobless claims rise

NEW claims for US unemployment insurance benefits rose last week but were still in line with an improving trend in the jobs market, government figures show.

Initial jobless claims, a sign of the pace of layoffs, rose by 38,000 to 368,000 in the week ending January 26, the Labor Department reported on Thursday.

The increase was well above the 345,000 claims expected by economists.

Claims had declined in the prior two weeks as the jobs market slowly improves.

The four-week moving average, which also had fallen for two straight weeks to its lowest level since March 2008, rose by a mere 250 claims last week to 352,000.

Claims hovered in the 370,000 range for most of 2012.

The latest reading came ahead of Friday's highly anticipated January jobs report but the numbers were not part of the data used to prepare the report.

Analysts expect the US jobless rate ticked down to 7.7 per cent in January from 7.8 per cent in December.

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US consumer spending flat in December

US consumers held tight to their wallets in December, the key holiday shopping season, despite a rise in incomes, according to Commerce Department data.

Household spending edged up 0.2 per cent from November, only half the growth of the prior month and slightly below the consensus estimate of 0.3 per cent.

Consumer spending, the main driver of the US economy, slowed in late 2012 amid the government's looming fiscal cliff of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts set for January 1, which was partly avoided in a last-minute political deal.

Meanwhile, personal incomes rose for the eighth straight month in December, rising a much stronger-than-expected 2.6 per cent from the prior month.

The income increase was boosted by accelerated payments of bonuses and other forms of "irregular" pay in anticipation of changes in individual income tax rates, as well as lump-sum payments of social security benefits, the department said.

In the partial fiscal cliff deal, political leaders allowed Bush-era payroll tax cuts on social security benefits to expire and lifted taxes in other areas.

With inflation weak in a tepid economy, the December price index for consumer spending was essentially flat, while so-called real disposable income - excluding price changes - rose 2.8 per cent.

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Marriage is good for the heart: study

MARRIED people are less prone to heart attacks than singletons and more likely to recover if stricken, according to a Finnish study.

Researchers collected data on 15,330 people in Finland between the ages of 35 and 99 who suffered "acute coronary events" between 1993 and 2002.

Just over half of the patients died within 28 days of the attacks.

The team found that unmarried men in all age groups were 58-66 per cent more likely to suffer a heart attack than married ones.

For women the nuptial benefit was even greater - single women were 60-65 per cent more likely to suffer acute coronary events, the Finnish researchers wrote in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.

For both genders, wedlock also considerably lowered heart attack mortality.

Unmarried men were 60-168 per cent and unmarried women 71-175 per cent more likely to die of a heart attack within 28 days, compared to their unhitched counterparts.

"Single living and/or being unmarried increases the risk of having a heart attack and worsens its prognosis both in men and women regardless of age," the team wrote.

"Most of the excess mortality appears already before the hospital admission and seems not to relate to differences in treatment."

Speculating on the reasons, the team said married people may have a higher, combined income, healthier habits and a bigger support network.

"It may be assumed that resuscitation or calling for help was initiated faster and more often among those married or cohabiting," said the authors.

They could also not discount the psychological effects of marital bliss.

"Unmarried people have been found to be more likely depressed and according to previous studies depression seems to have an adverse effect on cardiovascular mortality rates," lead author Aino Lammintausta from the Turku University Hospital told AFP.

Previous studies on the health benefits of matrimony often had sketchy data on women and older people, the researchers said.

The new study showed that marriage protected women even more than men from out-of-hospital heart attack death.

The study included people from different race groups and social backgrounds and the findings "can roughly be thought to be applicable in other western countries", said Lammintausta.

Relying on data from population records, the team could not directly measure the effects for unmarried, cohabiting couples.

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Arnie calls for 'sexy' environmentalism

ARNOLD Schwarzenegger has called for an end to "doom and gloom" environmentalism as he hosted the first conference of his new green movement fostering action by local governments and individuals.

"If we want to inspire the world, it is time for us to forget about the old way of talking about climate change, where we crush people, where we overwhelm people with data," the former California governor, bodybuilder and film star said.

"There is a new way, a more sexy, a more hip way. Instead of using doom and gloom and telling people what they can't do, we should make them part of our movement and tell them what they can do," he said.

"I mean I still drive my Hummers but now they are all on hydrogen and biofuel ... We need to send a message that we can live the same life, just with cleaner technology."

Following his success implementing environmental legislation in California ahead of federal US action, Schwarzenegger's created the R20 Regions of Climate Action movement.

It is aimed at getting other regions, states and cities to follow the Golden State's example in the absence of effective national and international agreements on reducing carbon emissions widely blamed for the Earth's climate becoming more volatile in recent decades.

"The old way was to wait for the capitals, or an international agreement to create a sustainable energy future, is over," Schwarzenegger, 65, told the conference of about 800 people in his native Austria.

"We believe in a new way, in moving forward at a subnational level. We can't be paralysed, waiting for an international agreement or federal action or anything else," Schwarzenegger said.

"I believe we should move forward at a subnational level, in the states, in the provinces, in the cities, in the private sector, in the academic sector and in the non-profits. These should be defined by our momentum, not our hesitation."

Attendees in Vienna included European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, but absent were green pressure groups such as Greenpeace or WWF, who complained last week that the event risked being "elitist" and "Greenwashing".

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Indon party chief arrested over corruption

INDONESIA'S anti-graft agency has arrested the head of the country's largest Islamic-based party, which is part of the coalition government, on suspicion of corruption, its spokesman says.

The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) said Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) chairman Luthfi Hasan Ishaaq allegedly accepted a sum of one billion rupiah ($A98,000) from meat importer PT Indoguna Utama to secure a government contract.

After questioning him since late Wednesday, "KPK investigators have formally detained" him on Thursday night, KPK spokesman Johan Budi told reporters.

"His alleged role is as a recipient of bribes in relation to beef imports," he said, adding: "It's suspected one billion rupiah was for Luthfi Hasan Ishaaq."

The Prosperous Justice Party has three ministers in President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's cabinet.

The detention of the PKS chairman could complicate matters for the party and ruling coalition in the run-up to the 2014 general election.

Yudhoyono's second presidential term, won on a corruption-fighting platform, has been dogged by investigations into several members of his Democratic Party and coalition government.

Communication and Information Technology Minister Tifatul Sembiring of the Prosperous Justice Party said on Thursday on Twitter that his party "respects the legal process" that is under way.

"We hope the process will take place in a just and honest manner based on prevailing laws and not influenced by political pressure," he tweeted.

The Prosperous Justice Party was founded after the 1998 fall of the Suharto dictatorship.

It has become the country's fourth-biggest party overall due partly to its clean and pious image in the most populated Muslim country in the world, of around 240 million people.

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China convicts Tibetan burning 'inciters'

A CHINESE court has convicted two Tibetans of murder for inciting others to burn themselves to death, giving one a suspended death penalty and the other 10 years in prison, state media report.

The judgments were believed to be the first of their kind since judicial authorities were told to charge with intentional murder those accused of encouraging or helping others to carry out the gruesome act.

In a similar case in a different province another six ethnic Tibetans were sentenced to between three and 12 years, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

But analysts said such prosecutions were unlikely to end the immolations.

Nearly 100 Tibetans have set themselves on fire since 2009 in apparent protest against Beijing's rule, which critics say represses Tibetan religious rights and erodes their culture as more majority ethnic Han move to Tibetan areas.

According to the Tibetan government in exile, 83 of them have died.

Beijing seeks to blame the Dalai Lama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, for the deaths.

Lorang Konchok, 40, and his nephew, Lorang Tsering, 31, "incited and coerced eight people to self-immolate, resulting in three deaths", Xinhua said, citing the court in the Tibetan-majority prefecture of Aba, in Sichuan province in the south.

Lorang Konchok, who was also accused of working with a media liaison at what prosecutors called an overseas Tibet independence group, was condemned to death with a two-year reprieve, which is often commuted to life in prison.

Five of the people recruited by the two defendants ultimately decided not to set themselves on fire, "after willfully abandoning their plans or after police intervened", Xinhua reported.

The second case, in the northwestern province of Gansu, involved six people convicted "for their roles in a local villager's self-immolation in October", it said, without specifying the precise offence.

China might be using the threat of criminal prosecution to try to deter such acts, said Steve Tsang, a China expert at the University of Nottingham in Britain, but added he doubted if such tactics would work or be carried out properly.

"They do want to stop it," he said. But "to stop something drastic from happening, you have to understand why people are doing it and you have to remove the cause of why people are doing it".

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