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News.com.au
20 hours ago
- News.com.au
Bride ‘livid' after shocking wedding cake fail
A bride was left horrified after she ordered her wedding cake from a bakery and received something far from what she had requested. Sharing her experience on the Reddit Wedding Shaming forum, the woman said the bakery made matters worse by refusing to refund the cake, which was clearly the wrong colour. 'I'm livid. We pick up our cake ON my wedding day and the colour is so off,' she said. 'We asked for a shade of dusty blue and sent two references for the colour. It's so ugly.' She then posted photos comparing her inspiration images with what she actually received, highlighting the many issues, including the colour mismatch. Not only was the cake a much darker shade of blue, but elements from the ethereal inspiration photo, like being covered in dainty flowers, were missing. Instead, just four randomly placed single flowers adorned the cake. Fortunately, the bride's sister stepped in at the last minute to 'save' the cake, with the bride confirming she did an 'amazing job'. She lightened the icing, added white draping, and placed a 'Mr and Mrs' cake topper on top. She also included more delicate-looking flowers to better match the original brief. Despite getting close to her dream cake in the end, the bride still wanted a refund from the bakery, but they refused. 'The lady on the phone was so rude and condescending,' the poster claimed. 'She told us to take pictures of the cake next to our wedding decor so she could make sure 'it ACTUALLY didn't match'. 'Well, we took pics alright. The first two photos are our reference images. I'll let you guess which picture after that was the 'before' from the bakery and which was the one my sister fixed.' Reddit users quickly sympathised with the bride. 'That dusty blue in the inspo is SO beautiful I'm so sorry they didn't deliver for you. Props to your sister,' said one user. 'Yeah, she's a miracle worker,' added a second. Some others, less impressed, believed the bakery's cake was actually better than what the sister made, even though it was the wrong colour. 'She draped fabric on the cake???' one commenter asked. 'I've never been to a wedding where it looks like the cake is getting married,' quipped another. 'This is a super weird fix. I get the colour was off, and OP should get a discount, but it's otherwise a nice cake. The fixed cake looks a mess and the fabric is a head-scratcher,' wrote another user. 'I'm sorry, but that's just horrendous. The weird, glopped-on frosting and all those flowers are just bad,' someone else added. According to Easy Weddings' 2025 Australian Wedding Industry Report, couples now spend an average of $650 on their wedding cake, a seven per cent rise from 2024. Meanwhile, one of the top five stressors for couples planning a wedding is 'finding reliable suppliers'.
ABC News
5 days ago
- ABC News
Plastic banana bags clean-up underway along polluted Far North Queensland creek
Lisa Barba loves casting a line in the creek that runs through her Far North Queensland cane farm. So she is fed up with the once-pristine waterway filling up with plastic banana bags from farms upstream. "It's unsightly because it's plastic and it's yucky." She said neighbouring residents were also frustrated by plastic bags strung up in trees along the banks of Liverpool Creek, which flows towards the Great Barrier Reef. Ms Barba believes 20 kilometres of the waterway needs cleaning up, and that most of the plastic has come from a landslide after flooding earlier this year. She has been cleaning up bags by hand on a section of creek that runs through her property. But the cane farmer wants more to be done. "I have a mate who's in a volunteer cleaning up group who's picked up bags, and the bags have had baby crabs in them," Ms Barba said. "They've died because they've been trapped in there. "My biggest hate is plastic going out onto the reef." Removing the banana bags is not easy because the waterway is home to saltwater crocodiles. So Ms Barba started an online action group three weeks ago, calling for support. "Finally now, we've got the ball rolling a bit, a lot more people are jumping on board." Ms Barba said politicians, environmental organisations, locals and businesses were getting involved. "It's a very hard job to do, so it really needs a specialist to come in and do it," she said. Cassowary Coast Mayor Teresa Millwood said the council had engaged a contractor to help after securing $30,000 from the Queensland Reconstruction Authority. Cassowary Coast Banana Growers Association chairman Dean Sinton said he was disappointed by the pollution and the organisation was working on a plan to limit the rubbish. "It's not a good look for industry," he said. "Those things can probably travel a long way and ecosystems and marine wildlife [can be impacted], which at the end of the day we don't want." Mr Sinton said he disposed of his banana bags through a waste management system on his farm. He said there were several schemes looking into ways to recycle and repurpose the plastic. "That's underway in a small scale … [it has] still got a way to go, but looking into the pipeline, it's going to be a resourceful way to dispose of waste plastics," Mr Sinton said. "The majority of industry is doing the right thing, we just need to sharpen the pencil up a bit and you know, get everyone on board."
ABC News
6 days ago
- ABC News
Washington DC crash investigation shows chopper flying above altitude limit
Investigators probing the January midair collision of a passenger plane and a US army helicopter over Washington that killed 67 people have found the chopper was flying higher than it should have been and its altitude readings were inaccurate. The details came out of the first day of National Transportation Safety Board hearings, chaired by Jennifer Homendy, in Washington, where investigators aim to uncover insights into what caused the crash between the American Airlines plane from Wichita, Kansas, and the Black Hawk helicopter over Ronald Reagan National Airport. The board opened the three days of hearings by showing an animation and playing audio and video from the night of the collision, as well as questioning witnesses and investigators about how the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the army may have contributed to the nation's deadliest plane crash since November 2001. The board's final report will not be released until sometime next year, but it became clear on Wednesday how small a margin of error there was for helicopters flying the route the Black Hawk took the night of the nation's crash. The January night-time incident was the first in a string of crashes and near misses this year that have alarmed officials and the travelling public, despite statistics that still show flying remains the safest form of transportation. The hearing opened on Wednesday with a video animation showing where the helicopter and airliner were leading up to the collision. It showed how the helicopter flew above the 200 feet (61 metres) altitude limit on the helicopter route along the Potomac River before colliding with the plane. Investigators said the flight data recorder showed the helicopter was actually 80 to 100 feet higher than the barometric altimeter the pilots relied upon showed they were flying. So the NTSB conducted tests on three other helicopters from the same unit in a flight over the same area and found similar discrepancies in their altimeters. Sikorsky Aircraft's Dan Cooper said when the Black Hawk helicopter involved in the crash was designed in the 1970s, it used a style of altimeter that was common at the time. Newer helicopters have air data computers that did not exist back then that helped provide more accurate altitude readings. Chief Warrant Officer Kylene Lewis told the board that she would not find a 80 to 100 feet discrepancy between the different altimeters on a helicopter alarming because at lower altitudes she would be relying more on the radar altimeter than the barometric altimeter. Below 500 feet, Ms Lewis said she would be checking both instruments and cross-referencing them. She said as long as an altimeter registered an altitude within 70 feet of the published altitude before take-off, the altimeter was considered accurate under the checklists. Army officials said a discrepancy of 70 feet to 100 feet between the Black Hawk's altimeters was within the acceptable range because pilots were expected to maintain their altitude plus or minus 100 feet. The greater concern is that the FAA approved routes around Reagan airport that included such small separation distances between helicopters and planes when planes were landing. "The fact that we have less than 500 foot separation is a concern for me," said Scott Rosengren, chief engineer in the office that manages the army's utility helicopters. But Rosengren said that "if he was king for a day" he would immediately retire all the older Black Hawk models like the one involved in this crash and replace them with newer versions of the helicopters. Army officials and the head of a local medevac helicopter company that flies around Washington told the board they believed air traffic controllers would never let them fly the helicopter route involved in the crash anytime a plane was approaching the runway. Chief Warrant Officer David Van Vechten said after the crash, he talked to many of his fellow pilots and everyone had the same assumption that controllers would never allow them to fly across the path of the runway the American plane was approaching before the crash. Citing the numbers for runways, Mr Van Vetchen said that "100 per cent of the time when I was on route four and 33/15 was active" he would be instructed to hold until after the plane landed or took off from that runway. During the two minutes before the crash, one air traffic controller was directing airport traffic and helicopters in the area, a task that involved speaking to or receiving communications from several different aircraft, according to the NTSB's History of Flight Performance Study. The air traffic controller had spoken to or received communications from the Black Hawk helicopter, an airplane that was taking off, an Air Force helicopter, an airplane on the ground, a medical helicopter and an inbound flight that was not the American Airlines plane that would crash. "All aircraft could hear the controller, but helicopters could only hear other helicopters on their frequency and airplanes only other airplanes," the report stated. "This resulted in a number of stepped on transmissions as helicopters and airplanes were not aware when the other was communicating." Stepped on transmissions are those that are unheard or blocked because of other transmissions. The NTSB report provides a list of 29 separate communications between the airport tower and other aircraft during approximately the 1 minute and 57 seconds before the collision. Previously disclosed air traffic control audio had the helicopter pilot telling the controller twice that they saw the airplane and would avoid it. Officials on Wednesday also raised the use of night vision goggles, which limit the wearer's field of view, on the helicopter as a factor. The animation ended with surveillance video showing the helicopter colliding with the plane in a fiery crash. Investigations have already shown the FAA failed to recognise a troubling history of 85 near misses around Ronald Reagan National Airport in the years before the collision, and that the army's helicopters routinely flew around the nation's capital with a key piece of locating equipment, known as ADS-B Out, turned off. US senator Ted Cruz, a Republican, introduced legislation on Tuesday to require all aircraft operators to use both forms of ADS-B, or Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast, the technology to broadcast aircraft location data to other planes and air traffic controllers. Most aircraft today are equipped with ADS-B Out equipment, but the airlines would have to add the more comprehensive ADS-B In technology to their planes. The legislation would revoke an exemption on ADS-B transmission requests for Department of Defense aircrafts. National Transportation Safety Board chair Ms Homendy said her agency had been recommending that move for decades after several other crashes. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that while he would like to discuss "a few tweaks," the legislation was "the right approach." He also suggested that the previous administration "was asleep at the wheel" amid dozens of near-misses in the airspace around Washington's airspace. AP
