“Coconuts, everywhere. Trees branches coming down… This storm is serious”: WATCH

“Coconuts, everywhere. Trees branches coming down… This storm is serious”: @VanDamCNN in Miami Beach #Irma https://t.co/fM51TPBf2N http://pic.twitter.com/EQZKhdXKrR

— CNN International (@cnni) September 10, 2017

This boat is taking the environmental revolution around the seven seas; CLIP

This boat is taking the environmental revolution around the seven seas. http://pic.twitter.com/bBJlwIdvj5

— SBS World News (@SBSNews) July 7, 2017

Air Asia Plane Shaking: Pilots Should Never Tell You to Pray

After Air Asia flight D7237 from Perth began shaking violently, the plane’s pilot should not have asked passengers to pray.

An AirAsia plane on Sunday experienced an in-flight problem with an engine and made the decision to return to Perth, Australia, from where it had departed an hour and a half earlier. The description of events had all the trademarks of an internal failure of one of the engine’s turbine sections. The out-of-balance condition for an engine so massive is going to be noticeable—certainly to the average passenger—and cause for alarm. According to news reports, the plane was rattling heavily for a long period of time.

Pilots such as myself practice such abnormal events in a simulator during initial training and each and every year thereafter. And while such incidents are not routine, neither do they carry the dire sense of urgency that a non-pilot might assume. We practice such scenarios in the highly unlikely event that we experience such an occurrence (which has never happened to me in my over 20,000 hours of piloting), we will have conditioned ourselves so as to minimize our “startle” response and react to the problem in a calm and direct manner.

But apparently the flight situation rattled the pilot enough that he asked the passengers twice to pray. If that weren’t enough cause for alarm, there was at least one follow up message from the cockpit, “Our survival depends on your cooperating. Hopefully everything will turn out for the best.”

I do not know exactly why the pilot thought it necessary to ask for divine assistance. But after 30 years of fielding questions and concerns from thousands of people who have a fear of flying, I assume that saying this would only confirm to any scared passengers that they were in serious trouble.

Pilots have a responsibility that extends far beyond passenger safety. They can greatly influence passengers’ emotional states by reassuring them through regular announcements. Many of the people who take my classes report that they like hearing from their pilots. In fact, they are uncomfortable when the pilots do not say anything, even when things are going well.

The airline’s mistakes continued after the flight landed. One passenger felt that AirAsia provided no medical support or information about replacement flights after they had gotten off of the plane. The passengers would have been better served if following such a potentially traumatic incident, the airline provided someone to talk to immediately who was knowledgeable about traumatic stress and could reassure them that while the flight was upsetting, at no time were they in real danger.

Airlines and pilots need to prioritize not only keeping their passengers safe, but also making them feel safe. Hopefully AirAsia (and other carriers) will learn from this incident and handle potentially traumatic situations better going forward.

Ron Nielsen is a retired airline captain and founder of FearlessFlight.com.

Source: Air Asia Plane Shaking: Pilots Should Never Tell You to Pray | Fortune.com

Scarborough Beach UK yesterday [not Perth W.A.]

 

WA faces water and power price rises

State Treasurer Ben Wyatt has warned Western Australians they face increases in fees and charges that will likely be exacerbated due to funding hits received in the federal budget.

Mr Wyatt will deliver his first state budget in September and must come up with a repair plan for coffers that are currently more than $3 billion in deficit, with the net debt at a record $30 billion-plus and forecast to peak at more than $40 billion.

“The entire budget is predicated on increases … I don’t want to increase them dramatically, I assure you of that,” he told reporters.

“Unfortunately we are left in a position where those power bills and those water bills will go up.”

Mr Wyatt says he has been hit with a “dramatic” funding black hole due to Tuesday’s federal budget delivering a $417 million cut in education funding for the next four years and a $100 million health cut.

He complained that he was repeatedly having to deal with new issues in respect of revenue forecasts, spending, future funding assumptions, and that the federal government’s eyes were firmly fixed on the east coast of Australia.

Mr Wyatt said WA should receive a significant amount of a $10 billion National Rail Program announced in the budget, given its own Perth Metronet expansion project was well advanced.

WA should receive above a per capita allocation of $1 billion given it’s “woefully unfair” GST returns, he said.

The WA Government received a Commonwealth commitment of $1.6 billion towards road and rail infrastructure projects, including Metronet which has a $2.5 billion first stage cost.

WA Opposition leader Mike Nahan urged the premier to break his promise and proceed with the $1.9 billion Perth Freight Link he cancelled when elected in March because it would create 6000 jobs.

The budget papers stated that the Commonwealth would still make $1.2 billion in funding available for the PFL.

Source: WA faces water and power price rises | Perth Now

BREAKING: 250 refugees feared dead. 2 migrant boats sink in Mediterranean

Up to 250 migrants are feared drowned after two refugee boats sunk in the Mediterranean Sea, the United Nations has said. A baby was among the bodies washed up on beaches in Libya following the latest disasters, which push the record death toll above 1,300 so far in 2017. The country’s coastguard picked up seven migrants who said they had been on an overloaded dinghy packed with 170 people, which sank on Sunday.

Omar Koko, a coastguard commander in the western city of Zawiya, said more than 30 women and nine children were among those feared drowned.

At least 11 bodies washed up on nearby beaches and were recovered by the Red Crescent, while at least 7,500 migrants have been rescued since Thursday.

Spokesperson Mohanad Krima said: “All the bodies are of female victims and there is a girl of less than one year old.”

Survivors of a second shipwreck were rescued by the Italian coastguard, telling authorities their boat started deflating under the weight of 130 people.

Based on its interviews with survivors in Sicily, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimated the number of dead at more than 80, with around 50 people rescued.

Migrant arrivals to Italy by sea are up about 30 per cent this year on 2016, when a record 181,000 people were rescued and taken ashore.

“The increasing numbers of passengers on board vessels used by traffickers, with an average of 100 to 150 people, are alarming and the main cause of shipwrecks,“ said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.

“Risks are increased by the worsening quality of vessels and the increasing use of rubber boats instead of wooden ones.”

As well as drowning, refugees have been killed by suffocation and hypothermia in sea crossings, as well as on land by being run over, electrocuted, shot and hit by trains.

Despite a dramatic increase in deaths at sea, humanitarian organisations operating rescue ships have come under attack for allegedly aiding smugglers.

NGOs have denied all accusations of collusion as Italy’s parliament carries out a fact-finding mission, while a prosecutor in Sicily has admitted he has no proof of coordination.

Boat crossings between Libya and Italy – now the deadliest sea passage in the world – have increased since the controversial EU-Turkey deal shut the comparatively shorter and safer crossing over the Aegean Sea.

MORE: Nearly 250 refugees feared dead after two migrant boats sink in Mediterranean | The Independent

Tell Trump that his “great friend” Pavarotti has been dead for a decade.

This week, Italian Prime Minster Paolo Fentiloni visited Trump in the White House to discuss a G7 meeting in Italy next month.  The two held a joint press conference where POTUS praised Italy for being “a beacon of artistic of artistic and scientific achievement” and for producing artists like “Giuseppe Verdi and Mr Pavorotti”. He then added that the legendary opera singer Luciano Pavarotti was “a friend of mine, a great friend of mine”.

It’s not apparent if the two ever met before Pavarotti’s sad death from pancreatic cancer. However, in 2002 Trump hired Pavorotti for a concert at one of his Atlantic City casinos – after an allegedly “lack-luster” performance Trump demanded a refund.

Pavarotti’s widow would also probably disagree with the President’s claims.

Last year, the family of the late singer asked Trump to stop using the singer’s music at his rallies. In a statement they said:

As members of his immediate family, we would like to recall that the values of brotherhood and solidarity which Luciano Pavarotti expressed throughout the course of his artistic career are entirely incompatible with the world view offered by the candidate Donald Trump.

As usual with a Donald Trump gaffe, Twitter has been having a lot of fun at his expense:

Source: Donald Trump calls Pavarotti his “great friend”. He’s been dead for 10 years | indy100

Shoppers blocked from Amazon, Ebay, Etsy, Alibaba if GST introduced?

Shopping sites Alibaba and Etsy have joined eBay in threatening to block Australian customers if laws to collect GST from online sales go ahead.

Their rival Amazon also expressed concerns at a Senate economics committee hearing on Friday, but stopped short of making the same threat.

Sales of less than $1,000 are not taxed under current laws but the government plans to remove this threshold for businesses with sales of more than $75,000 on July 1.

eBay’s regional boss Jooman Park agreed time would not fix the law as it was written and the e-commerce company would likely refuse to collect GST.

‘We run an $80 billion business based on one global platform. Your requirement is almost the same as just developing a separate Australian site,’ he said. Mr Park said Australians would just buy from smaller, less reputable, retailers in ‘dark parts of the web’ and lose eBay’s ‘advantage’ of trusted seller ratings.

MORE HERE: Shoppers could be blocked from Amazon, Ebay, Etsy, Alibaba | Daily Mail Online

Australia triumph over India in first cricket Test in Pune Steve O’Keefe takes 12 wickets in Pune

Australia won the first cricket test against India by a massive 333 runs on Saturday with two days to spare, ending the hosts’ 20-match unbeaten streak at home.

MORE: Australia triumph over India in first cricket Test in Pune | Daily Mail Online