Although Anchorage is a somewhat bustling city of 300,000 people, skyscrapers, great nightlife and one of the best bars in America (Chilkoot Charlie's), it still remains on the edge of some truly wild territory filled with animals much larger, tootheir and hungrier than humans.
This fact was sadly reiterated on Saturday night when a teenage girl riding in an all-night bike race was mauled by a bear who was foraging near the course in Far North Bicentennial Park. The young girl was outfitted with bear bells and two lights so as not to scare any wildlife, but a state biologist says that gusty winds on the night of the race and the rush of the creek might have made it difficult for the bear to hear her approach. That, he said, might've spooked the animal and caused the attack.
Two weekends prior, a bear charged at a pair of runners in the same area--though that's not stopping Alaskans from getting out to enjoy nature. Says one local:
It's not going to stop me from going out of the house and enjoying the short summer. But I'm thinking we should buy some bear spray.
A German family was recently kidnapped aboard their yacht near Yemen by pirates who took them to the quasi-official Republic of Somaliland. A local man who described himself as an elder to the BBC told reporters that a mother, father and child had been captured and taken hostage in the mountains. The elder said he was doing his best to negotiate with the pirates.
Piracy is a major problem in the waterways surrounding the Horn of Africa, but it's usually freighters that come under attack. As for Somaliland, it's one of several disputed territories in Somalia. The area is plagued by lawlessness and has become a popular haven for pirates. Maybe soon it'll be the setting for the Hollywood blockbuster "Black Yacht Down."
In an imaginative and off-topic move, the folks over at Good magazine have just published a travel issue. We were pretty stoked about topics like what $500 will get you on the black market in Paraguay, taking a cross-country train and, our particular favorite, a travel guide to man-made disasters: five places in the US you wouldn't want to hang around too long.
These anti-destinations include the country's largest landfill (unsurprisingly located outside Las Vegas) and a 36-billion-gallon, 900-foot-deep, water-filled former copper mine that is all but inhospitable. Called the "Berkeley Pit," not even a pack of angsty teenagers crashing into each other would stand a chance in these waters. Good explains how a flock of Canada Geese famously landed on the water and quickly died from its high concentration of arsenic, cadmium, iron and manganese.
Like other travel guides, this one offers directions, places to eat, spots to sleep and info on the best time of year to visit each site. So if you've got some free time and a huge yacht, you can sail hundreds of miles out into the Pacific ocean to see the epic Eastern Garbage Patch or visit a perpetually burning underground coal fire in central Pennsylvania. Who needs the Maldives when we've got ecological disasters so close to home?!
Speaking of cheap buses, a Fung Wah coach jumped onto a New York sidewalk this morning, killing a woman who was waiting to board.
Amazingly, this accident might not be the fault of the chronically safety-challenged company: A dump truck coming off the Manhattan Bridge rear-ended the bus as it was idling and propelled it onto the curb and into a bank.
A few other people were injured in the incident but not as many as when a Fung Wah bus flipped over in September 2006. That crash hurt 34 passengers who are probably content to take BoltBus these days.
This weekend, The New York Times sent back a report from a visit to Shillong, a city that the paper says is the "hub" of India's rock and roll scene. The Times describes the town as full of Bob Dylan singalongs and guitar circles, but it's not all peace, love and music.
The city is located in the northeastern corner of India, an area that the Shillong Times says is "under Islamist rebel threat." Militants from nearby Bangladesh are a growing presence in the region and they're not rock fans.
Police are trying to figure out why human feet keep washing up on beaches along Canada's West Coast. Five severed feet have been found in an area south of Vancouver in the past year. The latest incident occurred on Monday at Westham Island.
The psycho responsible for the beached feet hasn't left many clues, and none of the body parts have been traced to their owners.
The foot that appeared on Monday was the first right foot to be involved in the mystery. The first four feet found were all chopped from people's left side. Perhaps there's a serial killer/performance artist out there in Canada who's trying to make some sort of political statement?
More likely, the foot-cutting psycho is probably a super-discerning foot fetishist with a beachfront condo. Either way, if you're visiting Vancouver any time soon it might be a good idea to wear closed toed shoes to avoid attracting any unwanted attention.
The past 24 hours have been filled with some pretty unhappy landings. Earlier this morning in Ormond Beach, Florida, a small passenger plane was forced to make an emergency landing on Interstate 95 after it inexplicably lost power. Southbound lanes on the highway had to be shut down to accommodate the plane just before noon.
And yesterday in Phoenix, a Southwest flight coming in from Austin, Texas caught fire on the runway at Sky Harbor Airport. All 127 passengers aboard the plane had to be evacuated after the back right landing gear burst into flames. A spokeswoman for Southwest said "another plane will be put into service as soon as possible." Good idea!
Sadly for all you pyros out there, this incident didn't result in any cool photos like the ones we saw after the infamous flaming JetBlue landing in 2005.
The Brazillian government is cracking down on masked militias after an incident last month where several journalists were tortured for more than six hours by a gang of armed thugs wearing ninja hoods. The reporters had gone undercover in one of Rio de Janeiro's infamous favelas to investigate the "illegal economy" in the notorious slums.
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by DanielR
