TV star and crocodile hunter Steve Irwin is dead after being stung by a stingray on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

australia, crocodile hunter, dead, great barrier reef, steve irwin, stingray, When Animals Attack, animal attack, attack, wild animals

From the Royal Gazette:

An angler was almost killed when a giant bill fish leapt from the sea, speared his chest and knocked him off his boat in a freak accident at the weekend.

Ian Card, from Somerset, was impaled by the blue marlin and forced overboard during an international sports fishing tournament on Saturday morning.

His father Alan, skipper of the commercial fishing vessel Challenger, watched as the struggling creature — estimated to weigh about 800lb and measuring 14ft in length — flew through the air and struck the 32-year-old, who was acting as mate, just below his collarbone with its sword-like bill. “The fish was airborne going across the full width of the boat and my son was standing up about eight feet from the stern,” said Mr. Card. “It impaled him with its bill, a bill of about two-and-a-half or three feet long. All in one motion the fish flew across the cockpit and took him out of the boat. He landed about 15ft away. The fish was on top of him. He was underwater and he had his arms wrapped round the fish and the fish was pushing him under.

”I lost sight of him for a few seconds. As a father looking at a son that’s just been impaled it’s quite an experience. That’s a sight I’ll never forget. I knew there was no good going to come out of it.“

He said his son emerged alone surrounded by a pool of blood some 50ft behind the boat. ”He put his hand up to his chest and his fingers disappeared,“ said Mr. Card, 58. ”He had a wound in his chest about as big as your fist.“

The rest of the story explains that Card was rescued from the water and survived the stabbing. The marlin, however, may strike again.

Alan Card, blue marlin, blue marlin spears fisherman, fish, fishing, Ian Card, marlin, stabbed, When Animals Attack, animal attack, attack, wild animals

The members of this Taiwanese scooter gang might really be cooler than me. Well, they would be cooler if the scooter gangs weren’t also known to be violent:

A scooter gang viciously attacked and injured 12 teenagers — three critically — while on a violent joyride in Taipei County’s Tucheng City…

The gang of more than 20 scooter-riding thugs, who brandished large knives and baseball bats, went after most of their hapless victims as they were barbecuing for the Mid-Autumn Festival. Four teens have been taken into custody in connection with the attacks.

Apparently my understanding of scooters is very different from theirs. It’s sad, but the contradiction between a ridiculous looking scooter and an act of violent boggles me to smirking. They’d probably kick my ass.

(aside: why are the gangs known for their scooters and not for their violence? Are all Asian scooter gangs violent?)

Taipei, Taiwan, Tucheng City, attack, gang, gang violence, gangs, scooter, scooter gang, scooters, silly, violence

My hosting provider sent along the following message:

We have experienced a DDOS attack today January 4th, which resulted in latency across the entire network. During this time your domain, email, ftp and other services may have appeared to be offline, or intermittent. Our techs have been working as quickly as possible to block the attack and get the network back up to speed.

I was relieved to know that the unexpected downtime was the result of something I’d done. The problem, and I can feel for my hosting provider here, is that DDOS attacks aren’t so easy to block (while also leaving the network open enough to be usable), so I wouldn’t be surprised if performance here is rather variable for a while.

ddos, attack, downtime, site news