A number of gang members are expected to attend gathering in eastern Bay of Plenty.

Money raised on a Givealittle will be used to help the couple’s daughters.

A host of government departments are now probing the allegations.

A man died after falling from a 600-metre-high cliff in Norway that was featured in a Mission: Impossible movie.

Preikestolen, known in English as "Pulpit Rock", is a cliff in south-western Norway overlooking the Lysefjord. It is one of Norway's most famous mountain routes and receives more than 300,000 visitors a year, according to the country's official tourism website.

Nina Thommesen, a local police lawyer, confirmed that a man in his 40s died on Monday. She said the man was travelling alone and was found with her phone and his ID. He has not yet been officially identified, but police say they are "reasonably certain" of his identity.

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"Police are investigating the case as a fall accident," Thommesen said. "We have no assumption that anything criminal occurred."

Two witnesses were questioned on Monday, including one who saw the incident occur. He explained that the man slipped and fell.

Although it is "Norway's most iconic natural monument," according to the non-profit organisation that manages the site, Preikestolen gained fame when it appeared in the sixth Mission: Impossible film, starring Tom Cruise.

It was used as a filming location, in place of Kashmir — in Mission: Impossible – Fallout for an action sequence at the end of the 2018 film, where the film's two central characters fall off the cliff.

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Tenants say they are sick of having to pay their rent through third-party RentTech apps, which can charge hundreds of dollars a year in fees.

More than 7000 renters have so far signed an online petition calling for rental laws to be changed to stop real estate agents from pressuring them into using the apps to pay rent.

NSW renter Sarah, who asked for her real name to be withheld, told 9news.com.au she was sent an email by her real estate agent Ray White in July last year, asking her to start paying rent though the Ailo app.

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The Ailo property management platform is not owned by the Ray White company, but was co-founded by Ben White, who is the great-grandson of Ray White and a former Ray White director.

"The Ailo app was presented as the only accepted method for paying the rent," Sarah claimed.

"No other options were mentioned. We were told that we had to use the Ailo app from then on.

"It's ridiculous. It should not be allowed."

Under current rental laws, New South Wales tenants must be offered one fee-free method to pay their rent.

However, Sarah said the only fee-free method offered by Ailo was "unnecessarily difficult and time consuming".

Ailo only allows one-off transfers to be made for free. Direct debit incurs a charge of 0.25 percent from a bank account, or 1.5 percent from a Visa or Mastercard.

At her current rent of $900 per week, Sarah would be slugged with a $9 fee per month to use the direct debit option, or $54 per month for the rent to be paid with her credit card.

To avoid any fees, Sarah must go into the app each month and set up a cumbersome, one-off transaction.

"(It) takes 2 days to process the payment, and I am required to leave the rent money in my bank account for the 2 days waiting for the app to process the payment," Sarah said.

"The fee-paying options in the Ailo app would take the money from my account instantly, and remember my account details for future payments.

"As a renter you always feel powerless, even without a housing crisis to make matters infinitely worse," she said.

"This is yet another way to try and wring more money out of you in the form of fees to actually pay your rent. 

"They know you'll do anything to avoid having to go back out there and find somewhere else to live."

A spokesperson for Ray White denied renters were being forced to use the Ailo app.

"There is a choice on how to pay the rent, no-one is being forced to use the Ailo app," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said Ailo was independent of Ray White. 

"It has its own shareholders and its own relationships with real estate agencies in both the Ray White network and outside it."

Ailo co-founder Ben White said 40 percent of renters paid their rent on the app without any fees.

"As far as we are aware, Ailo has the widest number of payment choices for renters, and offers the most number of ways for renters to pay rent without attracting a fee," he said.

Queensland renter Warren, who asked for his surname to be withheld, said he had been twice pressured to sign up to a third-party rental app to pay the rent for his Bundaberg home.

The last time his real estate agent, LJ Hooker, tried to force him to sign up to the OurTenant app was in 2021.

While the OurTenant app does offer a fee-free direct debit option, payments via credit card incur a 1.95 percent fee.

Warren, who was employed by an international company, was being paid into an overseas bank account at the time and said the direct debit from a local bank option did not suit him.

Pushing back, Warren cited Queensland rental laws which say the method of payment can only be changed if both the tenant and landlord agree. 

The real estate agent insisted the previous way he had paid his rent was "no longer available".

The emails did not stop until Warren went to the Queensland Office of Fair Trading, who confirmed he was able to continue to pay his rent in the usual way.

"These apps can cost a fair bit of money if you're a renter. It's bulls**t. Everyone's just been paying rent normally for years," Warren said.

"I'm stubborn and I think they disliked the fact that they had a tenant they couldn't push me around."

A spokesperson for LJ Hooker said its offices were all independently operated and used different technologies to manage rental properties.

"We understand that these solutions offer tenants multiple payment methods, including a fee-free method to pay rent, in accordance with the differing laws in each state and territory," the spokesperson said.

NSW Tenants' Union CEO Leo Patterson Ross said while there were some protections in place for renters, they weren't always clear, and the bigger problem was that the housing crisis meant renters often felt like they couldn't stand up for their rights.

"People don't feel like they have a lot of choice," Patterson Ross said. 

"We've got people who are desperate for a home. So they will kind of be pushed into using anything, even if it's unclear whether it goes against regulations. It puts you in a very tough spot to negotiate." 

A lack of resources to investigate and hold real estate companies accountable was also a problem, he added.

"The problem is that the regulators … aren't given the resources to actually regulate the current rules, let alone looking at what's coming down the pipeline. 

"It's very disappointing, very frustrating for a lot of people that this hasn't been addressed, but it kind of speaks to the lack of oversight into the rental sector."

Ross said the laws needed to be made clearer of what was acceptable and what was not, and the governments needed to step in and actively regulate the industry. 

While current reviews of the rental laws in NSW and at the federal level were examining privacy issues, which were pertinent to these apps, other issues with rent tech were yet to be looked into, he added.

Contact reporter Emily McPherson at em********@******om.au

A tornado that ripped through suburban Detroit in the US earlier this week downed trees that smashed through the roof of Abby Sata's family home, sending water gushing below.

Though they now have a giant crane taking trees off the house, they were lucky no one was hurt.

The tornado that damaged Sata's home in Livonia, Michigan, tore through several neighbourhoods and felled a tree that killed a toddler on Wednesday. It developed so quickly that there was no advance notice from the National Weather Service or others that would have normally led to the activation of warning sirens.

READ MORE: Flood and evacuation warnings issued as downpour continues

Sata, 21, said she got a storm warning on her phone but no indication that a tornado was lurking.

"I was in shock," she said. "It would have been very helpful. Even three seconds before the tornado would have given me a heads-up."

The twister in Livonia "spun up almost as quickly as it started to dissipate," said Jaclyn Anderson, a meteorologist with the Detroit office of the National Weather Service. The tornado, which was of a type known for being weak and brief, travelled a path of about 8 kilometres.

More powerful tornadoes generated from intense storms could stay on the ground for up to 160 kilometres and were much easier to anticipate and issue warnings for, she said.

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While tornado forecasting equipment has improved "tenfold" over the past few decades, relying on a combination of weather radar and local observations, Anderson said short-lived tornadoes could still be "quite challenging when it comes to getting warnings out".

Forecasters create tornado outlooks every day, factoring in different weather elements, said Victor Gensini, an associate professor at Northern Illinois University who studies tornadoes and extreme weather. But sometimes those conditions happen on a small scale — for instance, a sudden breeze coming off a lake.

It has been a grim spring for tornadoes in the US. April had the second-highest number of tornadoes for that month on record in the country.

In suburban Maryland, a line of storms produced unusually strong tornadoes that felled trees, damaged buildings and downed power lines Wednesday night.

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Although Gensini said that the national numbers were a little above average at the moment, it was too early to make definitive statements about the tornado year as a whole. He said the US could get as many as 1500 tornadoes a year, and this time of year was statistically the most likely for tornado activity in the US; many of them just were not in high-profile places or were not captured in clear images.

"The tornadoes that have occurred this year have been very visible," he said.

Gensini, who also studies how climate change is affecting tornado activity, said that the science of attributing twister-spawning storms to climate change was still in its infancy, and it could be hard to connect the dots to one individual tornado. But looking at broader-scale trends, his team has found an increasing likelihood of tornadoes developing in regions farther south and east in the US than in the past.

Tornado warnings were issued for parts of several other states on Wednesday night, including Ohio, New Jersey and Delaware. In Ohio, a suspected tornado ripped away a gas station canopy and heavily damaged a restaurant and a discount store early Thursday in the eastern village of Frazeysburg. Eight people suffered minor injuries, mostly from flying debris, said Jeff Jadwin, the emergency management director in Muskingum County.

While tornadoes are not unheard of in Maryland, they are relatively rare — especially outbreaks of the volume seen Wednesday night. At least five people were injured and the weather service issued 22 tornado warnings Wednesday, the fourth-most issued in a single day by the office that covers much of Maryland, the District of Columbia, northern Virginia and the eastern West Virginia panhandle, according to Kevin Rodriguez, lead meteorologist at the weather service office in Sterling, Virginia.

"It was a very busy night," said National Weather Service Hydrologist Jeremy Geiger. "It's one of those things, all the right ingredients that come together at the right time. So that's always the question."

Geiger said it wasn't a super high-energy storm system, but the wind shear and other factors gave it a boost and created the rotation that allows tornadoes to form.

He said the system was especially challenging because forecasters were issuing flash flood warnings and tornado warnings simultaneously, with some residents being advised to seek high ground and others sheltering in the basement.

In Gaithersburg, Maryland, George Mhaano told WJLA-TV that a crane might be needed to lift a tree off his home, so he would probably stay at a hotel. When the tornado hit, Mhanno said he heard loud thuds and banging on the window, so he hid in a bathtub. Later, firefighters came knocking and told him to get out, which he did.

"Thank God, I wasn't hurt. And thank God, everyone at my house was at church," Mhaano told WJLA-TV.

"This is just material. It can be replaced or fixed. No one got hurt, so that's all that matters."

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South Australian resident Lorna Henstridge, who is believed to be Australia's oldest woman, has celebrated her 110th birthday today.

Lorna was surrounded by her three children, seven grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren for the celebrations today.

She was born in Adelaide in 1914, meaning she lived through two world wars and two pandemics.

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"I'm very lucky to have this celebration, and it's almost overwhelming," Henstridge said.

She does a crossword every morning, goes for a walk and enjoys three coffee dates a week with her eldest daughter.

"I think perhaps I've always been very active… (I) did play sport quite a lot."

Henstridge also shared what was most important to her.

"I guess the main thing is to be respectful with other people and try and understand them always and learn a lot from everybody," she said.

Lorna spent much of her life in regional South Australia and up until the age of 105 she lived in her own home.

She now lives in an assisted living facility in Bordertown.

A Queensland man has been chosen as Domino's next pizza hand model after a nationwide search.

Matt Strain, a high school teacher from Logan, was selected for the $100 per hour job out of more than 100 applicants.

The 39-year-old will also get to taste test the food while he works on the latest campaign.

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Strain stood out to the judges due to his zest and sense of humour.

"It's not the hand modelling that's difficult, it's the standing actually," Strain told 9News Queensland.

His hands will feature in a new advertising campaign that includes a new product range.

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Domino's ANZ people business partner Matthew Baldwin said the search for a new hand model campaign went viral online and inspired some very creative applications. 

"We had people doing shadow puppets," Baldwin said.

While Strain doesn't have an agent yet but he is open to offers for other modelling gigs.

A family who had allegedly been broken into three times in the last two years have had their luxury cars stolen from their garage in Brisbane. 

James Antliff and Elise Allisson have upped the security of their Paddington home each time they have been targeted but it didn't stop a group of teenagers.

CCTV exclusively obtained by 9News showed an allegedly stolen car pull up to their home while the family was asleep inside.

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The group then allegedly jumped a concrete wall, cracked a lock on a door and broke into the home.

They were seen celebrating when they discovered a BMW and Porsche in the garage.

"Took our bags and stole our car keys and drove off with both cars," Antliff told 9News.

"It's super frightening. We have my seven-year-old stepson inside when this happened," Allisson added.

The teens allegedly fled the scene in a fleet of cars, taking them on a joy ride across the south-east.

The BMW was later found ditched in Stafford Heights while the Porsche most recently was pinged on the Sunshine Coast and remains missing.

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Antliff said it was their fourth incident in two years.

"We've upped the security every time we've been broken into," he said.

"We've got security cameras, we got security alarms and all the doors were locked and even the front gate had a chain and padlock around it."

Youth crime has been a burning topic among state leaders ahead of the election in October.

"Youth criminals think it's party time while the party in power denies there is a youth crime crisis," Opposition Leader David Crisafulli said.

"No one will fix crime completely and anyone who tells Queenslanders they can is being dishonest," Premier Steven Miles said.

The events Australian World War II veteran Bill Purdy witnessed on this day from high above the English Channel eight decades ago have never left him.

On June 6, 1944, the Sydney man was a young Royal Australian Air Force pilot flying a Lancaster heavy bomber as D-Day, the world's largest seaborne invasion, was launched by Allied forces to liberate Europe from Nazi rule.

Purdy was among the 3000 Australian soldiers, sailors and airmen taking part.

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He had already notched up multiple bombing missions with the RAAF's number 463 squadron, but he had no inkling when he took off from his base in eastern England about the historic events unfolding that day.

"We didn't know until the night before that this was going to be the big attack to start the end of the war," the 101-year-old told 9news.com.au.

Purdy's aircraft was part of a force of about 150 Lancasters tasked with destroying a key German heavy gun battery at the Pointe du Hoc on Normandy's coast.

Allied commanders believed its destruction ahead of a massive beach assault by a force of 130,000 troops was crucial to the success of D-Day.

He recalls the poor weather that made flying treacherous but also offered the advantage of surprise.

"We went across through bad weather, which we never would have flown into normally, but that was why we went out I guess," he said.

"One of the reasons of the success was that the Germans thought that no one in their right mind would start an invasion when the weather was that bad."

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Then after his plane dropped its bombs and turned home, Purdy enjoyed a bird's eye view of the English Channel packed with invasion ships as they approached the Normandy beaches.

"You could just see an endless row of boats as far as the eye could see," he said.

"There were 5000 small boats bringing in the first 130,000 troops, and they were guarded by 300 ships of the line, including six battleships.

"And they were proceeded by 300 minesweepers to make sure everything was cleared."

"When you saw the whole of the sea was just covered with boats, I always reckoned I could have put my wheels down and taxied back home after it."

While the majority of Allied troops landing on D-Day were from the United States, Britain and Canada, forces from many other countries, such as Australia, were involved in the invasion.

They faced around 50,000 German troops.

A total of 4414 Allied troops were killed on D-Day. More than 5000 were wounded.

The exact German casualties aren't known, but historians estimate between 4000 and 9000 men were killed, wounded or missing during the D-Day invasion.

Purdy completed 37 bombing missions between April and August 1944.

In March 1945, he was posted back to Australia in March 1945 to serve in the Pacific against the Japanese.

Following the surrender, he was transferred to the reserves.

During the 1950s he and a friend from the RAAF founded a frozen food distribution company.

Purdy went on to enjoy a successful business career before retiring.

Today he lives on Sydney's North Shore.

– With Associated Press