MetService issued a swathe of alerts for the South and North Islands.

‘We have confidence as a business that the Whakapapa ski area is viable commercially.’

The prime minister has condemned any planned pro-Palestine rallies on the first anniversary of the Hamas terrorist attacks.

Anthony Albanese warned protesters "certainly shouldn't" take to the streets on October 7 and said any rallies would "cause a great deal of distress".

"Because it would be seen, I think, as incredibly provocative. It would not advance any cause," he told ABC Radio.

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"In a democracy, we allow for people, indeed, it's important that people be able to express themselves peacefully. 

"But October 7 will be one year since the largest number of deaths and murders, call it for what it is, of Jewish people, since the Holocaust. I'll be attending a vigil to commemorate that terrible day."

Albanese described pro-Palestine rallies on this day as having the potential to "cause disharmony".

"I think that people should recognise the sensitivity which is there and have a bit of common sense and see whether their cause will be advanced or whether it will be set back," he said.

"And my view very clearly is that there is nothing to be served by that."

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Opposition Leader Peter Dutton shared the prime minister's views on planned rallies next week.

He said the October 7 attack is an anniversary that "should not be celebrated" and called on the government to take action against protesters.

"At a state and federal level, the government should be doing everything they can to stop these protests from taking place," Dutton said.

NSW Premier Chris Minns also backed calls for police to block the rallies set to take place in Sydney on Sunday, the day before the first anniversary.

NSW Police made a submission through the Supreme Court to block the protest yesterday.

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"Our number one concern in New South Wales is peace and safety for New South Wales streets, and the police don't believe that can be done safely with the acceptance of the form one application this coming weekend," Minns said, acknowledging the application made by protester organisers to legally rally.

"I want to make it clear also that this will be a difficult weekend for Sydney. Obviously, tempers remain high."

Albanese said today he supported the police in "whatever action" they are taking to block the protests.

A Canadian man is behind bars after he allegedly attempted to smuggle 15 kilograms of methamphetamine through Sydney Airport in his suitcase.

The import was caught by Australian Border Force (ABF) officers when they examined the man's bags after he stepped off the plane from Vancouver, Canada, on July 31.

ABF officers found several vacuum-sealed bags allegedly containing a powdery white substance concealed in the suitcase.

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Further testing of the powder returned a positive result for methamphetamine.

The matter was referred to the Australian Federal Police (AFP), who arrested the man and charged him with one count of importing a commercial quantity of a border controlled drug.

The maximum penalty for this offence is life imprisonment.

The 38-year-old is due in court again today, after being refused bail for the offence on August 1.

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AFP Detective Acting Superintendent Dom Stephenson said the drug haul amounted to around 150,000 individual hits, had it reached Australian streets.

"Criminal groups will go to any lengths to bring illicit substances into our country," he sai.

"The devastating impact methamphetamine has on individuals and their families is well known – that's why we're committed to stopping it whenever we can."

The average prices of homes in wealthy suburbs across Sydney and Melbourne took a nosedive in the past three months.

When mother-of-two Tamara Dawes was diagnosed with breast cancer, she was just 42.

The primary school teacher was initially told the cancer hadn't spread.

But by the time she had surgery to remove the 95mm lump, along with her breast, it had reached some of her lymph nodes.

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Dawes, 46, from Lake Macquarie, NSW found the lump while monitoring a patch of eczema which had emerged on her breast.

While she was told there was no link between the skin condition and cancer, she thinks her body was trying to tell her something.

She was diagnosed quickly with HR positive, HER2 negative breast cancer, after her GP sent her for tests.

"I wasn't surprised but you can't ever be prepared." she said.

"It was at stage 3, when I had all the initial testing they said there was no lymph nodes but by the time I had the surgery it has spread to over half the lymph nodes they took out," she said.

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The mother of two daughters, Willow and Finley, had an immediate reconstruction followed by eight rounds of chemo and 25 rounds of radiation.

While she has finished mayor treatments for now, she still sees all her specialists annually.

"They don't make any big announcements," she told 9News.

"I am just on a maintenance programme."

She is also on hormone medication as well as treatment for osteoporosis caused by her treatment.

Now, a new clinical trial could help patients like Tamara, who are diagnosed at a young age.

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Called OLIO, study Chair Dr Stephen Luen, says the research hopes to identify a new and improved treatment for young women with the type of breast cancer Dawes had.

"This research is looking at the unique biological features of these women and how this knowledge can help us improve treatments and ultimately improve outcomes," Luen said.

"Young women often have more aggressive breast cancers and lower survival rates, and the only way we can address this is to do this vital research."

The OLIO study will be open at 21 sites in Australia and will recruit 50 participants.

Founded in 1978, Breast Cancer Trials conducts a national and international clinical trials research program into the treatment and prevention of the disease.

Dawes said she felt a lot of information is targeted at much older women.

"All the information and booklets you get when you're diagnosed they have older people in it," she said.

"Investing time and research into younger people is so important."

Do you have a story? Contact journalist Sarah Swain on ss****@******om.au

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says he was freed after years of incarceration because he pleaded "guilty to journalism".

Assange gave evidence of the impact of his detention and conviction to the legal affairs and human rights committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France.

The Parliamentary Assembly includes lawmakers from 46 European countries.

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Assange was released in June after five years in a British prison after he pleaded guilty to obtaining and publishing US military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that concluded a drawn-out legal saga.

Prior to his time in prison, he had spent seven years in self-imposed exile in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he claimed asylum on the grounds of political persecution.

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"I am not free today because the system worked," Assange said in his first public remarks since he was released.

"I am free today after years of incarceration because I pled guilty to journalism."

He added: "I pled guilty to seeking information from a source. I pled guilty to obtaining information from a source. And I pled guilty to informing the public what that information was."

The transition from years of confinement in a maximum security prison to addressing the European parliamentarians has been a "profound and a surreal shift," Assange said as he detailed the experience of years of isolation in a small cell.

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"It strips away one's sense of self, leaving only the raw essence of existence," he said, his voice cracking while he offered an apology for his "faltering words" and an "unpolished presentation."

"I'm not yet fully equipped to speak about what I have endured — the relentless struggle to stay alive, both physically and mentally," Assange said.

The Australian internet publisher was accused of receiving and publishing hundreds of thousands of war logs and diplomatic cables that included details of US military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His activities were celebrated by press freedom advocates, who heralded his role in bringing to light military conduct that might otherwise have been concealed.

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Among the files published by WikiLeaks was a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.

Critics say his conduct put American national security and innocent lives — such as people who provided information to US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan — at risk, and strayed far beyond the bounds of traditional journalism duties.

The yearslong case ended with Assange entering his plea in a US district court on the Northern Mariana Islands, an American commonwealth in the Pacific.

Assange pleaded guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defence information.

A judge sentenced him to the five years he had already spent behind bars in the UK fighting extradition to the United States.

Assange returned to Australia a free man in late June.

At the time his wife, Stella, said he needed time to recuperate before speaking publicly.

His appearance today comes after the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly published a report on Assange's detention in a high-security UK prison for five years.

The assembly's human rights committee said Assange qualified as a political prisoner and issued a draft resolution expressing deep concern at his harsh treatment.

Experts are investigating a suspicious attack on a young fur seal that had to be euthanised after sustaining severe injuries on an eastern Victorian beach.

A member of the public contacted Victoria's Marine Response Unit with a report of a beached juvenile fur seal at Lake Bunga beach near Lakes Entrance about 8am on 17 September.

It's understood the seal was unharmed and resting in the morning, but about 6pm that evening the same passerby returned to the beach and found the animal had sustained facial wounds and serious back injuries.

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Human and dog footprints were also found around the seal, along with a large stick which was not there in the morning.

A vet assessed the seal and found it had a spinal fracture and several rib fractures and made the decision to euthanise the animal due to the severity of its injuries.

Experts at Melbourne Zoo will now conduct a necropsy on the seal to better understand the injuries which led to its death.

The Victorian government's wildlife and biodiversity watchdog, the Conservation Regulator is also investigating the suspicious incident.

Anyone with information on the incident is encouraged to confidentially report it to Crime Stoppers.

Australia is likely to see El Niño weather events become more frequent and more intense within the next 20 years, raising the risk of severe droughts and bushfires.

This is among the key findings of a new report into how climate change will alter weather patterns in different regions of the planet this century.

It comes after the fifth-ever strongest El Niño on record ended in April, following three consecutive La Nina years.

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While many of the changes to weather patterns identified in the report – such as increasing temperature extremes and rising sea levels – are well-known, the findings on the impact on El Niño are relatively new.

"Just a decade ago, climate models mutually disagreed on how ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation) would respond to global warming," said Professor Shang-Ping Xie, a Californian climate expert not involved in the research.

"Now, a consensus has started forming from model simulations that ENSO is likely to strengthen through the middle of this century."

However, that pattern would then weaken if greenhouse gas emissions continued to increase, as the balance between rainfall-reducing aerosols and rainfall-increasing greenhouse gases shifted.

In 2023, extreme weather events impacted communities across every inhabited continent, causing major flooding, droughts, and wildfires.

A world transformed

In tropical and sub-tropical regions, dramatic changes in rainfall are expected to impact billions of people.

Around 60 per cent of the world's population lives in the northern hemisphere monsoon regions, where summer monsoons can bring up to 80 per cent of the annual rainfall.

As greenhouse gases rises, monsoons are predicted to become more intense, bringing life-threatening floods and landslides as well as impacting agricultural yields.

The findings come just days after hundreds were killed in late-season flooding and landslides in Nepal, weeks after similar natural disasters devastated India and Vietnam.

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North-western Europe will be at increased risk of extreme storms, while more than half the population of India (55 per cent) will be living in regions of deadly heat by the end of this century.

Meanwhile, in the polar regions – particularly the Arctic – more and more precipitation will fall as rain rather than snow, accelerating ice melt and global sea level rise.

While the effects of climate change appear stark, the UK research team say they hope producing such accurate region-specific climate models will help inform international climate policies and prompt regional mitigation strategies.

"Regional information is essential for preparing for these extreme events and implementing effective, science-led adaptation measures," said study co-author Matt Priestley from the University of Exeter.

"Without investments into advanced climate modeling and monitoring systems, policymakers and local communities are left navigating climate risks with insufficient information, which can lead to inadequate or misdirected efforts."

The report was published in Frontiers in Science today.

A service station worker has been left traumatised after being threatened by armed intruders in an early-morning smash and grab.

Underwood Caltex, located in Logan, Queensland, was the target of two break-ins in a space of just a few hours.

9News obtained exclusive footage of thugs who first broke into the petrol station at 1.30am and stole thousands of dollars worth of cigarettes.

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Just a few hours later, the Caltex was targeted again.

This time, a female worker had clocked onto her shift when thieves busted in using a crow bar.

Footage showed the woman attempting to escape and screaming at the intruders to leave her alone.

The armed intruders forced the employee into the back room and demanded she open the safe.

They grabbed more cigarettes and cash and took off in the woman's stolen car.

The shaken victim was barely able to walk when police and paramedics arrived.

Business owner Ankush Dhir said his employee was "really traumatised" after the break-in.

"It's going take a couple of weeks for her to recover from that incident," he said.

"It's totally horrible and insane what we have seen.""

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Dhir said his business was out of pocket $30,000 in cash and about $60,000 in tobacco products.

It's not the first time this Caltex has been targeted.

Dhir told 9News his business has been been the victim of break-ins four times in less than a year.

Queensland Police are still investigating the two robberies.

It remains unknown if the break-ins are connected.