Bridgette O’Shannessy, a 32-year-old Australian woman, was the victim of a horrific shark attack while free-diving off a reef in Adelaide last Friday. The attack left her with severe facial injuries, including having to have shark’s teeth surgically removed from her skull.

According to Perth Now, Bridgette O’Shannessy is an environmental consultant and university student, and she was diving with her partner Brian Gordon Roberts when this incident happened.

Brian pushed the shark away before putting pressure on her wounds. Ms O’Shannessy was rushed to Flinders Medical Centre. She remains there after undergoing two surgeries for extensive injuries and nerve damage. Mr Roberts used social media to announce Ms O’Shannessy was in a stable condition when she left the surgery.

“Unfortunately, Bridgette was hit by a white pointer at Port Noarlunga Reef yesterday. She’s doing really well considering the circumstances,” he wrote.

Mr Roberts thanked supporters for their well wishes and said he had been passing them on to her.

Off-duty lifesaver Ray Tomlinson, who had been in the water only minutes before the attack, told 9News he raced in when he heard her cries for help on Friday afternoon.

“I basically went over to assist getting the craft up onto the beach and securing it, at which time I realised there was a patient in the boat,” Tomlinson said.

Mr Tomlinson worked alongside Mr Roberts, who was applying pressure to injuries on her face and head. 

“He had applied pressure for quite a while, and the patient wasn’t under any stress,” Tomlinson said.

Three tourists from Bangladesh, who were staying in an exquisite houseboat in Srinagar, have died in the devastating fire at Dal Lake’s Ghat number 9. The exact cause of the fire is still not known and an investigation is in progress, officials said.

The fire broke out in one of the houseboats — traditionally made of wood — on Saturday morning and spread to others moored alongside. Five houseboats were reduced to cinders before fire officials could bring the blaze under control. Several tourists were rescued, but three visitors from Bangladesh died.

“The fire erupted at 5 am and the police, fire officials and the state disaster relief force reached the spot,” said Aijaz Asad, the District Magistrate of Srinagar. “Since houseboats are made of wood, once a fire starts it engulfs an entire houseboat,” he said.

“We couldn’t make out how it happened,” said local boatman Mohammad Yaqoob, speculating that it could have been caused by friction. “Within minutes, everything was gone. We have lost everything. Nothing could be salvaged,” he said.

Kashmir’s famous houseboats are literally struggling to stay afloat.
The houseboat owners’ association say the number of houseboats have come down to 750 from 2000 in the last three decades.

Reason — a court-imposed ban on the construction of new houseboats. Aging houseboats are not getting repaired on time either because of delay in official permission and difficulty of availing cedar wood. Houseboats are made of exquisitely carved wood including cedar.

The boatmen say they need more firefighting infrastructure in the Dal.

Abdul Razak, who has been a boatman for the last 50 years, said he is more shocked about the loss of three lives than the loss of the houseboats.

“I’m deeply saddened by the death of the three persons in the fire. A houseboat can be built again but these three lives can never come back,” he said.

Underscoring the need for firefighting system in the lake, he said this lacunae is the biggest problem. “Our appeal to the government is for fire tenders in the lake,” he said.

Last year, seven houseboats were burnt in two separate fire incidents in Nageen and Dal Lake.

As the boom of firecrackers filled the air across the country celebrating Deepavali with gusto, seven villages in Erode district of Tamil Nadu decided to mark the festival with just lights, and no sound, in a gesture considerate of the winged inhabitants of the bird sanctuary nearby.

The villages are located around Vadamugam Vellode, 10 kilometres from Erode where the bird sanctuary is situated.

Thousands of local bird species and migratory birds from other regions visit the sanctuary between October and January to lay eggs and hatch them.

As Diwali usually falls in the month of October or November, the more than 900 families living around the bird sanctuary took the decision to save the birds and not scare them off by bursting crackers.

They have been following this conservation approach for the past 22 years.

The villagers said that during Deepavali (Diwali), they buy their children new clothes and allow them to only burn sparklers, and not burst crackers.

This year as well, the villages of Sellappampalayam, Vadamugam Vellode, Semmandampalayam, Karukkankattu Valasu, Pungampadi and two other villages upheld the respectful tradition of a silent Deepavali.

As the families joyfully celebrated Deepavali in their own way, thousands of birds remained safe and blissfully unaware at the sanctuary, with no incident reported on Saturday and Sunday.