Page 8A ■ Thursday, December 16, 2010
Nation-World
Bismarck Tribune ■ Bismarcktribune.com
Soyuz crew blasts off into space By PETER LEONARD Associated Press
Associated Press
In this image taken from video and released by WJHG-TV, Clay Duke points a handgun at Bay City, Fla., school board members and staff on Tuesday.
Fla. shooter had a turbulent life “He didn’t want anyone to get hurt but himself. The economy and the world just got the better of him.” Rebecca Duke, wife of Clay Duke ing himself in the head. As board members gave television interviews about the harrowing experience, a sad and troubling portrait of Duke emerged. Born in Ocala, Fla., Duke graduated from high school in Tampa. Little is known about his early adult years — family members claimed he was in the Air Force for eight years, but that could not be confirmed. In the mid-1990s, Duke had drifted to the Florida Panhandle — not the spring break-filled sugar sand beaches, but the remote and wooded inland. The ’90s were a blur of court hearings and personal conflicts. He divorced a woman named Anita in 1995 and at some point, had a daughter. He was sued by a property management company in 1999. In 2000, he was convicted for waiting in the woods for ex-wife with a rifle, wearing a mask and a bulletproof vest. She confronted him and then tried to leave in a vehicle, and Duke shot the tires. His second wife, Rebecca, said the incident was a misunderstanding and that he went to his ex-wife’s house because the ex-wife “wouldn’t leave them alone.”
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Associated Press
The Soyuz-FG rocket booster with the Soyuz TMA-20 space ship carrying a new crew to the International Space Station blasts off from the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Thursday. toy tiger that Coleman brought as the crew’s mascot began floating in front of her, signaling the beginning of weightlessness as the spaceship reached an altitude of more than 125 miles above Earth, according to NASA television footage. The flight caps a decade of manned missions to the space station, which began
in October 2000. The departure of the Soyuz had been pushed back several days due the last-minute replacement of its re-entry module, which had been damaged during unloading earlier this year at the Baikonur cosmodrome in the Central Asian steppes. Replacing a key module
so late in the launch schedule had caused some apprehension, although Kondratyev shrugged such worries off at a final press conference. “All the procedures needed to check the integrity of the ship have been completed, and all those have shown positive results,” Kondratyev said.
Some hope for polar bears after all ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Two groups of scientists are suggesting a sliver of hope for the future of polar bears in a warming world. A study published online Wednesday in Nature rejects the often used concept of a “tipping point,” or point of no return, when it comes to sea ice and the big bear that has become the symbol of climate change woes. The study optimistically suggests that if the world dramatically changed its steadily increasing emissions of greenhouse gases, a total loss of critical summer sea ice for the bears could be averted. Another research group projects that even if global warming doesn’t slow — a more likely near-future scenario — a thin, icy refuge for the bears would still remain between Greenland and Canada. A grim future for polar bears is one of the most tangible and poignant outcomes of global warming. Four years ago, federal researchers reported that two-thirds of the world’s polar bear habitat could van-
Associated Press
A female polar bear rests with her cubs on pack ice in the Beaufort Sea in northern Alaska. ish by mid-century. Other experts foresee an irreversible ice-free Arctic in the next few years as more likely. The new study, which challenges the idea of a tipping point, says rapid ice loss could still happen, but there’s a chance that the threatened bears aren’t quite doomed. “There is something that can be done to save polar bears,” said lead author Steven Amstrup, the former senior polar bear scientist
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for the U.S. Geological Survey in Alaska. His research shows there’s a steady relationship between greenhouse gas emissions, sea ice and polar bear habitat. As emissions rise, sea ice and polar bear habitat decline. But unlike previous research, there’s no drop-off tipping point in
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Amstrup’s models. Essentially until all sea ice is gone permanently in the summer there is still a chance to prevent the worstcase, if global warming is stopped in time, Amstrup’s research shows. “Such a tipping point would mean that future reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would do little to save the polar bear,” said Amstrup, who is now chief scientist for the conservation group Polar Bears International. “It seems clear that if people and leaders think that there’s nothing they can do, they will do nothing.” Some exper ts called Amstrup too optimistic, but said his computer models made sense. “I wouldn’t say that we can rule out a tipping point, but it does show that a tipping point isn’t inevitable,” said Walt Meier, a senior scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.
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PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) — Clay Duke was a troubled, broke ex-con with bipolar disorder, an interest in anarchy, a wife whose unemployment benefits had run out and frustrations that reached their boiling point on a day circled on his calendar at home. The burly 56-year-old held a Florida school board at gunpoint Tuesday, saying he was prepared to die. He fired at board members, missing them by inches, then killed himself after exchanging gunfire with a security guard. D u k e ’s w i f e s a i d Wednesday he was an excellent marksman and probably missed the five board members — sitting steps away — on purpose. One board member even crept up from behind and hit Duke with her purse — but he only called her a name and didn’t shoot. “He didn’t want anyone to get hurt but himself,” Rebecca Duke said of the man she loved. She called him a “gentle giant.” “The economy and the world just got the better of him,” she said. In the moments prior to the shooting, Duke spray painted a circle and a large, red V inside of it on the meeting room wall and muttered about rising taxes and how his wife was fired from the school district. The school superintendent begged Duke not to shoot, but he did. No one but Duke was injured; a school security guard fired several shots and hit Duke three times in the back. In the end, Duke took his own life by shoot-
BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan — Astronauts from the U.S., Russia and Italy blasted off into the darkness early Thursday, casting a warm orange glow over the chilly plains of Kazakhstan with their Soyuz spacecraft as they began a mission to the International Space Station. Russia’s Dmitry Kondratyev, NASA astronaut Catherine Coleman and the European Space Agency’s Paolo Nespoli of Italy rode into space on the Soyuz TMA-20, which plans to dock at the orbiting laboratory on Friday. Family and colleagues of the crew waited nervously before the launch, which kicked off with a piercing white flash succeeded by a roaring wall of sound. Within seconds, the rocket seemed little more than a blur of incandescent flames fading into the distance. Officials at the viewing platform gave status updates at 20-second intervals over loudspeakers until reaching the nine-minute mark, indicating the ship had reached the relative safety of orbit, prompting a lively round of cheers. At that moment, a plush
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