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Xmas Island gets rescue help: fed govt

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:47:57 GMT

West Australian Coroner Alastair Hope on Thursday announced his findings following an eight-month inquest into the deaths of 50 people who were aboard a boat that crashed into rocks on the island on December 15, 2010. He recommended increased surveillance to detect approaching asylum seeker boats along with better rescue vessels and equipment for police and rescue volunteers on the island.

Responding to his findings, Defence Minister Stephen Smith and Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare said they would be the subject of exhaustive consideration by the federal government. They noted that many recommendations from three other government inquiries into the tragedy had already been implemented and some of them overlapped with the coroner's 14 recommendations.

Mr Smith said the coroner's report would be a tragic reminder of the terrible events for families of the victims and for the naval and customs personnel who put themselves at risk to save lives. He said he was pleased the coroner had underlined the bravery of those men and women of HMAS Pirie and ACV Triton.

Mr Clare said that since the tragedy Customs had doubled the number of vessels available around Christmas Island during the monsoon season and had stepped up aerial surveillance for asylum seeker boats. Trials of a land-based radar were also underway on the island to boost surveillance, he said.

Search and rescue equipment on the island was also in the process of being improved including new rescue vessels and improvements to boat ramps. "We do need to do much more to reduce the risk of people dying at sea," Mr Clare said, noting cases of other asylum seeker boats sinking with loss of life.

"These aren't just numbers, they're people, they're mums, they're dads, they're children. "It's incumbent upon all of us, the Labor Party and the Liberal Party, to work together to do everything we possibly can to reduce the risk of people dying at sea."

Panel doesn’t envision Oasis condotel project on Deer Island Plans now go to Biloxi Council for a decision

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 11:19:39 GMT

BILOXI -- Larry Mitrenga’s dream of building a resort on the west end of Deer Island off the coast of Biloxi was voted against Thursday by the Biloxi Planning Commission. The Commission was unanimous in its vote to recommend denying the zoning change, except for August Parker, who abstained. The Oasis at Deer Island next goes to the Biloxi Council for a decision. Mitrenga described the resort with eight three-story buildings, a pavilion for special events and a tiki bar. He intended to make all 96 units hotel rooms, he said, until people who learned about the project contacted him to say they wanted to buy a condo for weekend getaways.

The site is about a half-mile off the East Biloxi coastline, roughly across from the former Tullis Manor site. The north end of the property is waterfront. Bobby Heinrich, a consultant on the project, said Mississippi Power has agreed to provide electrical service to the island through under the water. The developers propose using city water and sewer, also brought to the island through underwater connections, transporting compacted trash to the mainland by boat and putting fire-sprinkler systems in all the buildings. There would be an on-site medical facility and a heliport for emergency transport.

“Think of a cruise boat,” Heinrich said. He said the island would have everything guests would need for emergency care. Mitrenga’s attorney, Michael Cavanaugh, said the zoning change from agricultural to waterfront is merited because of the change in the character of the neighborhood. Since Hurricane Katrina, he said, most of the East Biloxi coastline has been rezoned to waterfront.

Edward Shambra, the city’s executive planner, said the neighborhood is not across the water on Beach Boulevard. “The neighborhood is the island itself.” He said the 8-acre site is about 1 percent of the total island amid hundreds of acres of undeveloped land owned by the state. Commission Chairman David Washer read letters from the secretary of state and Department of Marine Resources objecting to the resort and the impact it could have on the ecosystem. “I expected to see environmentalists today,” he told the Planning Commission. “I don’t see them.”Mitrenga said given the chance, he believes the Oasis would become a national tourist destination.

Many in NY cheer delay of animal disease lab move

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 11:46:02 GMT

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (AP) — The Obama administration has put the brakes on a plan to build a new lab that studies contagious animal diseases, a decision that has pitted disappointed Kansans hopeful about growth against New Yorkers fighting to keep about 200 jobs at a Cold War-era facility on a tiny island.
Proponents say the new lab, estimated to cost $650 million, is needed to protect the nation's livestock industry, while skeptics argue that such an investment in an economic crisis is unwise.

"The prospect of taking a wrecking ball to a multimillion-dollar Homeland Security investment in the study of foot-and-mouth disease at Plum Island to accommodate another several hundred million-dollar research lab right in the middle of cattle country has always seemed like the height of irresponsible government spending," said Bob DeLuca, president of the Group for the East End, which focuses on environmental issues on eastern Long Island.

Adrienne Esposito, executive director of the New York-based Citizens Campaign for the Environment, gushed when told this week that President Barack Obama recommended no additional funding for construction of a new biosecurity lab. Obama also directed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to reassess the viability of the National Bio- and Agro-defense Facility planned near Kansas State University.

"If nothing is broken, why are they trying to fix it?" Esposito asked of the Plum Island laboratory, which sits on an 840-acre, pork chop-shaped island about 100 miles east of New York City. "I think even the president realized it would be a big mistake to move. This is nothing but a boondoggle, a money grab that the president has stopped."

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a House appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday that the lab remains necessary and that Obama's budget request for the next fiscal year includes $8 million for research in Kansas. She predicted the project will move forward if Congress provides the funding.

"We've had trouble with getting the money for the NBAF for the last three years," she said in response to committee Chairman Robert Aderholt's question about whether Homeland Security is committed to a lab on the mainland. "It has been peer-reviewed and put in Kansas, near a lot of other resources. That makes sense to put it there."

Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts said the state's delegation has been "working overtime, across party lines" on the lab project with federal agencies. Spokeswoman Sarah Little said Roberts remained focused on shepherding the lab through the appropriations process, calling it a "critical national security priority."
On the other side of the country — and the political aisle — Democratic Rep. Timothy Bishop, whose eastern Long Island district includes Plum Island, countered that Republicans would ordinarily be pleased that the president was halting potentially wasteful spending.

"In the fiscally constrained environment that we are in, I don't think there is the need to spend upward of $1 billion on a new facility when there is a perfectly good one, doing perfectly good work already here," he said.

Homeland Security, which took control of operations at Plum Island after the federal agency was formed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, has spent $35 million on improvements at the lab in recent years, including an expansion of large-animal research rooms, renovation and expansion of the necropsy facilities, and infrastructure and security upgrades.

The department has argued that a modernized lab in Kansas that could study diseases affecting both animals and humans is needed and that the Cold War-era Plum Island center, which studies only animal diseases, is approaching the end of its usefulness. Officials in New York point to the recent upgrades — and the fact that dangerous human diseases are already being studied at places like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta — as arguments opposing a new facility.

Dr. Ron DeHaven, vice president of the American Veterinarian Medical Association and former administrator of an Agriculture Department agency that performs research at Plum Island, said the improvements on Plum Island in recent years were intended as a stop-gap measure until a new facility was built.
"Five years ago, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that the facility at Plum Island was outdated," he said. "From the get-go that money was intended to be a temporary fix; there was never an expectation the improvements would do anything more than be a bridge to a new facility."
Recruiting scientists to work at the remote island — which played a role as the ruse to get fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter to cooperate with FBI trainee Clarice Starling in "The Silence of the Lambs" — has been a problem, DeHaven said.

"When you mix the high cost of living and the remoteness or where it is, we had problems with recruiting the best scientists," he said. Like others, he said concerns about contamination leaks at a new facility are overblown. "Bio-containment has improved greatly," he said, pointing to the CDC in Atlanta. He said a new facility is needed somewhere, despite the cost of $650 million or more. "An outbreak of foot-and-mouth would impact our economy by that much in the first six hours," he said.

Besides the Homeland Security review, the National Academy of Science is amid a second review of the proposed Kansas site, focusing on concerns that the nation's heartland may not be a suitable location to study infectious animal diseases because of its proximity to so many cattle farms. When it was opened in the 1950s, the federal government chose Plum Island — the site of a former Army fort — because it was off the mainland.

In an earlier study, the academy identified a 70 percent chance that a release of foot-and-mouth disease could occur at the new lab during its projected 50-year lifespan. Damage to the livestock industry could total as much as $50 billion, officials have said. Foot-and-mouth virus is so contagious it has been confined only to the Plum Island lab, where accidents have already happened.

The Bush administration acknowledged in 2008 that a release of the virus into cattle holding pens on Plum Island in 1978 triggered new safety procedures. The release was one of about a half-dozen accidents that have occurred at the lab, but the only one in which pathogens escaped into the atmosphere; the others were all confined. There was no known environmental impact, and there are no cattle farms on eastern Long Island.

The AP has previously reported that a simulated outbreak of the disease in 2002 — part of a government exercise called "Crimson Sky" — ended with fictional riots after the simulation's National Guardsmen were ordered to kill tens of millions of farm animals, so many that troops ran out of bullets. In the exercise, the government said it would have been forced to dig a ditch in Kansas 25 miles long to bury carcasses. In the simulation, protests broke out in some cities amid food shortages.

The General Services Administration, which is charged with selling the island to defray the costs of building the Kansas lab, has repeatedly delayed its release of a draft environmental impact statement originally promised in summer 2010 and most recently expected at the end of January. No sale can take place until an environmental review and public hearings are held. An administration spokesman did not respond to inquiries Tuesday to explain the latest delay.

SOLDIER INJURED IN CHRISTMAS ISLAND CRASH

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:11:10 GMT

An Australian soldier has been seriously injured in a car crash on Christmas Island. The Australian Defence Force (ADF) on Sunday said two members were involved in a single-vehicle accident on the island on Saturday.

Local emergency services attended the scene and provided first aid before taking both to the Christmas Island Hospital. "One member was very seriously injured and is being aero medically evacuated to Perth to receive specialist medical care," the ADF said in a statement.

The other was released from hospital without injury. The two from the 1st Combat Engineer Regiment had travelled from Darwin to Christmas Island to conduct project work for Border Protection Command. The Defence Community Organisation is organising for the injured soldier's family to travel to Perth under the Australians Dangerously Ill Scheme.

Island, Cabbage Cay, Bahamas

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:31:11 GMT

Cabbage Cay is private, 35 acre, fee-simple island, located in the World Famous Bonefish flats, within the inner bay of North Eleuthera. Cabbage Cay is just a few minutes west of Harbour Island, and less than two miles north of the North Eleuthera airport. In addition to the airport, the Fast Ferry provides 90-minute service to Nassau.

Surrounded by the Commonage, assures you of a private getaway for years to come. A main road has been pushed through the island, several smaller roads for access, and a road/driveway to Lot #11, (the building site for the first home). The island has been platted for 23 private home sites.

In addition to purchasing the island, the plat, a Bahamian Company, the first set of approved house plans, the development plan, and major construction equipment may be purchased. Some of the current equipment includes: a D6 CAT bulldozer, Ford diesel back-hoe, office trailer, storage trailer, 14Ã? Troller boat w/25 hp motor, commercial cement mixer, commercial generator/welder, and two-stage compressor.

Current development plans call for individual owners building private homes under the protective covenants available with the present plan. The new owners may wish to purchase any or all of the above items, or decide to build a private/exclusive retreat for themselves.

The island carries up to 24Ã? elevations, three fine sandy beaches, lush vegetation, protected anchorage area, and abundant wildlife. Turtles, fish, and birds abound. Due to the close proximity of various Harbour Island marinas, the new owners would probably keep their larger boat at one of these well-maintained facilities, and use their tender for transportation.

The waters around the island are capable of carrying a 135Ã? ocean barge for major building supplies, as exercised by the present company for the initial equipment. Several smaller barges are available.

At its current pricing, Cabbage Cay offers one of the best values in the Bahamas. Cabbage Cay has it all: privacy, adequate elevations, hurricane protection, abundant wildlife, beautiful beaches, close proximity to air and sea transportation, telephone transmission capability to Harbour Island, and one of the best values in the Caribbean.

Isla de sa Horseshoe, Spain

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:53:16 GMT

The Isla de sa Ferradura sits in the Bay of San Miguel just off the north coast of Ibiza, Spain. This 14 acre resort island is fully developed with a hacienda, kitchen, pool, bar and even a wine bodega. With 300 days per year of sunshine, and a view of the bright blue Mediterrannean Sea, this truly is living large. Most people will never be able to experience even a vacation here. The island rents out for about US$230,000 per week. Price : US$39,700,000.

Musha Cay, Bahamas

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:06:49 GMT

Musha Cay is actually 4 private islands owned by renowned magician David Copperfield. The islands are located 85 miles southeast of Nassau, Bahamas, and has its own runaway for top secret celeb landings. This private island resort has 5 houses. The resort offers activities such as snorkling, diving, windsurfing, a gym, and walking paths, but you could always choose to sunbathe on one of Musha’s seven gorgeous private beaches. Also, Copperfield reportedly has found the “Fountain of Youth” on the island. Price : US$32,250 per day for 12 or fewer people.

Atlantis Paradise Island, Paradise Island

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:38:58 GMT

Larger than life, as dramatically fanciful as it is magnificent in scope and concept, Atlantis, Paradise Island is a glorious and wonderfully playful celebration of the legends of the lost city of Atlantis reflected in unique entertainment attractions such as The Dig, a fanciful journey into the world of the ancient Atlanteans, water attractions, original artworks and in the design and decor throughout the resort. Atlantis is a resort experience that is truly in keeping with Kerzner Internationals reputation for creating not just a hotel, but an entire vacation destination, in fact, the worlds largest island resort destination.

The Royal Towers, with 1,201 guest accommodations set in two majestic towers, plus the Coral and Beach Towers provide the foundation for a 2,300-room resort that is as much fun for every kind and age of traveler as it is breathtaking and bold. In addition to a wide variety of accommodations, Atlantis offers innovative entertainment with the Caribbeans largest casino, 35 restaurants and lounges, extensive meeting facilities, including the largest ballroom in the Caribbean/Bahamas, and more than 11 million gallons of water activities and attractions, including water slides and rides, swimming pools, waterfalls, fountains, snorkeling and swimming lagoons, plus one of the worlds most beautiful beaches. The focal point of the 34-acre Atlantis Waterscape is the largest tropical marine habitat in the world, second only to Mother Nature herself, and home to 50,000 fish and sea animals from around the world.

The Island

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:45:53 GMT

In response to Steven Landsburg's article, Here is a simple island situation that will make this problem clear. Imagine everyone fishes to eat each day, and that Mr. Kendrick invents a net and a boat and begins accumulating fish in his hut. He saves a lot of fish; everyone else saves a few fish each year. (They salt and smoke the fish so that it lasts indefinitely.)

Soon, people tire of storing their fish and tire of hauling fish around the island to use as money. One man builds a strong stone building and starts a bank. He offers to store fish in his building and give out "fish certificates" in exchange. The certificates are easier to carry and people trade them as if they were fish. When someone needs to eat, they go to the bank and turn in the paper certificate and receive a fish in exchange. The banker cheats a little. He prints up a few certificates for himself from time to time and spends them, hoping no one notices. He calls this "quantitative easing," and says that it is necessary to keep the value of the fish certificates stable. Most islanders are not convinced.

The banker soon begins accepting other items to store in his vault. He estimates their value compared to fish, takes the cheese, wine or bag of spices, and issues fish certificates in exchange for the new forms of wealth. He also makes loans against homes. If a man wants to spend some of the value of his hut, he goes to the banker. The banker says "give me your house, and I will give you fish certificates in return. If you wish to live in the house as well, you can pay me a fee (interest) to live there." The islanders agree and begin to finance myriad other forms of wealth, like bigger huts, boats, complex fishing net factories, and so forth.

Soon, some of the biggest men on the island, who have been busy using their spare time to manufacture spears, swords and other weapons and armor, decide that they need more fish so that they can spend more time preparing to defend the island. They insist that defending the island is something everyone must help them do, and the island agrees to pay the men 20% of fish they harvest from the sea, so that they may focus on defending the island. Some people refuse to pay, and the men take it from them at spear-point.

Mr. Kendrick continues to invent better nets. He accumulates wealth, but loans it to other islanders so that they can spend more time looking for spices, or harvesting salt, or breeding better animals. They pay him a fee for this (interest), and he keeps all of the loan agreements in a vault at the bank. Bored with his life, all he does all day is ride his horses around the island, tying each to a different stable pen each night.

In this situation, what happens when the large men with spears decide that all of Mr. Kendrick's loan agreements (which pay interest), are sitting idle in the bank, and that it would be best for the island if they held up the bank, took the paperwork, and kept the interest payments for themselves? Who would be hurt, and who would benefit?

Maldives Resorts

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:20:12 GMT

A resort is an island and is more than a hotel. A resort features swimming pools, Restaurants, Coffee Shops, Bars, Bungalows or Rooms, Water Bungalows on stilts, Gyms Water Sports, Tennis, Badminton, Football, Skiing, Snorkeling & etc. When we speak of the Resort Hotel, it is of course one resort hotel on one island. There’s no place else like an island in the Maldives for the holiday of a lifetime. Resorts in the Maldives are truly magical. The natural beauties of these resorts are second to none.

Classified in different standards, some of these resorts are the best for diving in the world, whilst some of them have been blessed with exclusive features for the snorkeler and for the sun lovers, sand and the sea. Hotels/resorts are built on uninhabited islands and transfer to these islands resorts is commonly by local boats (dhoni), speedboats and by seaplane. Choose from our specially selected resorts, which are in fact amongst the best in the Maldives.