Indonesia halts search for missing AirAsia plane as night falls

 Indonesia called off until first light a search for an AirAsia plane with 162 people on board that went missing on Sunday after pilots asked to change course to avoid bad weather during a flight from Indonesia's Surabaya city to Singapore.

Indonesia AirAsia Flight QZ8501, an Airbus 320-200 carrying 155 passengers and seven crew, lost contact with Jakarta air traffic control at 6:17 a.m. (2317 GMT on Saturday). No distress signal had been sent, said Joko Muryo Atmodjo, an Indonesian transport ministry official.

On board were 155 Indonesians, three South Koreans and one each from Singapore, Malaysia and Britain, plus a French pilot, the airline said in a statement, correcting earlier information.

Tatang Kurniadi, head of Indonesia's National Committee of Safety Transportation, expressed hope of locating the aircraft quickly and said it was too early to detect any of the so-called electronic pings from its black box recorder.

"We are using our capacity to search on sea and land. Hopefully we can find the location of the plane as soon as possible," he told a news conference.

"What I need to emphasize is until now, we have not found out how the plane fell or what kind of emergency it was."

Indonesia AirAsia is 49 percent owned by Malaysia-based budget carrier AirAsia (AIRA.KL), which has had a clean safety record since it began operating 13 years ago. The AirAsia group also has affiliates in Thailand, the Philippines and India. The aircraft had accumulated approximately 23,000 flight hours in some 13,600 flights, according to Airbus (AIR.PA).

The pilots of QZ8501 "was requesting deviation due to en-route weather before communication with the aircraft was lost," the airline said in a statement. Singapore, Malaysia, Britain, South Korea and Australia offered to help in the search and any investigation. Malaysia said it was sending vessels and a C130 aircraft while Singapore had also sent a C130. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said a P3 Orion aircraft was on standby if needed.

ANXIOUS RELATIVES

Flight QZ8501 was between Tanjung Pandan on Indonesia's Belitung island and Pontianak, in West Kalimantan province on Borneo - almost halfway between Surabaya and Singapore - when it went missing. There was bad weather over Belitung at the time and the aircraft had been flying at 32,000 feet before asking to fly at 38,000 feet to avoid clouds.

In both Surabaya and Singapore, anxious relatives of people on the plane awaited news.

Louise Sidharta was at Singapore's Changi Airport waiting for her fiancée to return from a family holiday.

"It was supposed to be their last vacation before we got married," she said.

A man named Purnomo told TVOne in Surabaya of a lucky escape.

"I should have been on the flight," he said. "We, seven people, had planned to go to Singapore for vacation but this morning I had an emergency. I had my passport in hand."

Tony Fernandes, chief of Malaysia's AirAsia, said he was heading to Surabaya.

"My only thoughts are with the passengers and my crew. We put our hope in the SAR (search and rescue) operation and thank the Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysian governments," he said on Twitter.

AirAsia swapped its distinctive bright red logo for a grey background on its website and social media accounts.

The incident comes during a troubled year for Malaysia-affiliated airlines. Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 went missing on March 8 on a trip from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board and has not been found.

On July 17, Flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.

Indonesia AirAsia has a fleet of 30 Airbus A320s. The missing plane has been in service for just over six years, according to airfleets.net.

All AirAsia-branded airlines operate aircraft made by Airbus, which has orders for several hundred planes from the group. AirAsia is considered one of the European planemaker's most important customers.

Cyclone Hudhud blasts India's east coast, at least three dead

Cyclone Hudhud blasted India's eastern seaboard on Sunday with gusts of up to 195 kilometres an hour (over 120 mph), uprooting trees, damaging buildings and killing at least three people despite a major evacuation effort.

The port city of Visakhapatnam, home to two million people and a major naval base, was hammered as the cyclone made landfall, unleashing the huge destructive force it had sucked up from the warm waters of the Bay of Bengal.

Upended trees and wreckage were strewn across Visakhapatnam, known to locals as Vizag. Most people heeded warnings to take refuge, but three who ventured out were killed, officials said.

The chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, the state that bore the brunt of Hudhud's onslaught, said the extent of damage would only become known after the storm abates.

"We are unable to ascertain the situation. Seventy percent of communication has totally collapsed ... this is the biggest calamity," N. Chandrababa Naidu told Headlines Today television.

"We are asking people not to come out of their houses," Naidu said, adding that damage assessment would start on Monday. "We are mobilising men and material immediately."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi called Naidu and promised "all possible assistance in relief and rescue operations", his central government said in a statement.

The low toll reported so far followed an operation to evacuate more than 150,000 people to minimise the risk to life from Hudhud - similar in size and power to cyclone Phailin that struck the area exactly a year ago.

After a lull as the eye of the storm passed over the city, winds regained massive potency. Forecasters warned Hudhud would blow strongly for several hours more, before wind speeds halve in the evening.

"Reverse windflow will be experienced by the city, which will again have a very great damage potential," L.S. Rathore, director-general of the state India Meteorological Department (IMD), told reporters in New Delhi.

The IMD forecast a storm surge of 1-2 metres above high tide that could result in flooding of low-lying coastal areas around Visakhapatnam, Vijayanagaram and Srikakulam.

TERRIFYING WIND

A Reuters reporter in Vizag said the storm had smashed his hotel's windows and flooded the ground floor. It was difficult even to open the door of his room, he said, as wind rushing through the corridors drove it shut again.

"I never imagined that a cyclone could be so dangerous and devastating," said one businessman who was staying in the hotel. "The noise it is making would terrify anyone."

An operations centre in state capital Hyderabad was inundated with calls from people seeking help, including 350 students stranded in a building with no food or water, said K. Hymavathi, a senior disaster management official.

Vizag port suspended operations on Saturday night, with its head saying that 17 ships which had been in the harbour were moving offshore where they would be less at risk from high seas.

The city airport was closed and train services suspended.

The IMD rated Hudhud as a very severe cyclonic storm that could pack gusts of 195 km/h and dump more than 24.5 cm (10 inches) of rain.

The cyclone was strong enough to have a "high humanitarian impact" on nearly 11 million people, the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS), run by the United Nations and the European Commission, said.

The evacuation effort was comparable to one preceding Cyclone Phailin, credited with minimising fatalities to 53. When a huge storm hit the same area 15 years ago, 10,000 people died.

Hudhud was likely to batter a 200-300 km stretch of coastline before losing force as it moves inland, forecasters said.

According to the IMD, peak wind speeds will drop to 60 km/h by Monday afternoon. Hudhud is expected to continue to dump heavy rains in northern and northeastern India and, eventually, snow when it reaches the Himalayan mountains.

Improve battery life on any mobile device

Poor battery life is a problem that affects all mobile users. This guide could help you better understand what is draining your battery.

We have written numerous articles with tips and tricks for improving battery life on iOS and Android, some of which you can find here, here, and here, but not everyone owns an iPhone or Android device. Despite which kind of mobile device you prefer, battery life tends to be an issue that we all face. Understanding what is draining your smartphone or tablet will help you squeeze the best possible battery life out of your device.
Display brightness

The screens on our mobile devices seem to be getting bigger and more vibrant with each passing year. We now have smartphones, like the LG G3 for example, with incredible 2,560 x 1,440-pixel resolution displays. While these screens are pretty to look at, they are killing our batteries. Unfortunately battery technology hasn't progressed nearly as fast as other sectors of the mobile industry.

Reducing the brightness of your display will help to improve battery life. You should also avoid using automatic brightness settings. This mode utilizes the phone's sensors, which, because they're in use all the time, actually drains your battery more rapidly than adjusting your brightness manually. Auto mode will also sometimes leave your display at a level that is far too bright for your environment.
No service

For cellular-connect devices, having no service can be a real pain. Unless a Wi-Fi network is available, your device becomes fairly useless if it doesn't have the ability to connect to the Internet. You may have also noticed that your battery drains more rapidly when you have an inconsistent signal. This happens because the device is continuously searching for a signal and attempting to communicate with a cell tower.

To conserve your battery, I recommend enabling Airplane mode or connecting to a Wi-Fi network (if available) if you will be in area with no service for an extended period of time.
Streaming video and playing games

As mentioned above, the display draws an incredibly large amount of power. Even more power is required when you are playing a game or streaming a movie. A few minutes of Angry Birds won't kill your device, but streaming an HD movie or playing a high-end video game can cut your battery life (and increase your data usage unless you are connected to a Wi-Fi network) by more than 50 percent.

If you will be away from your charger for a long time and don't have a portable juice pack, understand that battling your friends in the latest Clash of Clans war will see your battery life quickly reach zero.
GPS and location services

Have you ever noticed that your phone always seems to be on the verge of dying when you are lost? This is because of the GPS and navigation app you are using to try and get back home . Location services, which allow location-based apps and websites like Foursquare, Google Maps, and the camera to determine your location, can quickly drain your battery.

Using GPS and geotagging features, such as recording the location of your photos, sparingly will help keep your mobile device alive for longer. You can also disable location features for select apps and services in the settings menu of your device.

On an iPhone or iPad, head to Settings, select Privacy, and click on Location Services. Then, scroll down and choose System Services.
On a stock Android device, enter the settings menu, and click on Location.
For Windows Phone, click the Start button, select Settings, and tap Location
BlackBerry 10 users will find the option by entering Settings and selecting Location Services.

In addition to the GPS, having Bluetooth, NFC (if applicable), and Wi-Fi enabled will also cause some battery drain. If you don't use a pair of Bluetooth headphones or if your car doesn't have it, I recommend disabling it. The same goes for NFC, which many people don't actively use to begin with. As for Wi-Fi, I would toggle it on only when it's needed.
Background data

To ensure you never miss an email, headline, or an appointment, the apps on your mobile device are constantly pinging a server, satellite, or cell tower. This can sometimes lead to battery drain and even data overages. I recommend setting certain apps to only update and refresh over Wi-Fi, or not at all.

To disable background data on iOS, go into Settings, select General, followed by Background App Refresh. From here you can select certain apps you wish to prevent from running in the background or disable all of them.

On stock Android, enter Settings, select Data usage, click on an app, scroll to the bottom, and check the box that reads "Restrict background data." If you would like to restrict all background data, click the three-dot icon at the top-right corner of the Data usage menu and check the "Restrict background data" box.

Windows Phone 8.1 owners will find options to restrict background app data in the Data Sense app. As for BlackBerry 10 users, enter Settings, select Security and Privacy, followed by Application Permission, and change the Permissions bar to Run in Background. Once here, simply select an app from list that you would like to prevent from running in the background.