A video on a local community page showed flames completely engulfing the car.

A Queensland snake catcher got a lot less than he bargained for when he got the call to investigate some hissing sounds at a house in Townsville, in Far North Queensland.

James Bindoff, from Townsville Snake Catcher, said he took a call this morning from a very worried local at Heatley.

The caller had heard a loud hissing sound coming from a dog cage outside their property and thought it was coming from a large python.

READ MORE: Three people sitting in parked cars hit in 'targeted' Sydney shooting

But – when Bindoff went to investigate – there was no reptile in sight, just a very vocal rhinocerous beetle.

"It's a first for me," James Bindoff told 9news.com.au.

"It's only an inch and a half but you can hear it hiss from 10 metres away.

"Which is why they thought it was a big snake."

READ MORE: 'Targeted attack': Triple shooting rocks Sydney

The beetle was relocated to a neighbouring tree to continue its life cycle.

The insects only breed for two to four months during their adult stages and die shortly after laying their eggs in rooting wood, Bindoff explained.

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A person has been arrested for kidnapping Yanfei Bao, but there is still no news on where the missing real estate agent from New Zealand is.

Stuff understands the man was arrested at an airport.

Police said he had been remanded in custody and was due to appear in the Christchurch District Court on Monday.

READ MORE: Wintry blast looming for two Aussie states

"The investigation is ongoing, and several people are assisting police with inquiries," Detective Inspector Nicola Reeves said in a statement.

As part of those inquiries, police were seeking sightings of a silver Mitsubishi sedan, registration DPH101.

"We're interested in sightings of the vehicle from mid-week up until last night, but with a particular focus on the vehicle's location on Wednesday 19 July in Wigram, Hornby, Tai Tapu, Halswell, Redcliffs, and New Brighton," Reeves said.

Bao's sister, Huafei, said the family suspected the kidnapping was in relation to a cash buyer who was looking to get $600,000 ($550,949) from China to purchase a property.

From conversations with her sister, Huafei believed money had been tight for Bao.

Huafei was hopeful after hearing that Bao had been kidnapped.

"The thing I hope for most is to find my younger sister, and that she is OK," Huafei sobbed as she spoke to Stuff.

She said she had not slept and was feeling numb as she waited for news of her sister.

READ MORE: Three people sitting in parked cars seriously injured in 'targeted' Sydney shooting

Meanwhile, police continue to investigate a house linked to Bao's disappearance in suburban Christchurch.

In a development overnight, police confirmed they had seized a vehicle of interest in relation to the investigation, and had searched two properties, one in Bryndwr and one in Wigram.

Several people were assisting officers, police said.

The large bungalow at Iriquois Place in Wigram is down a driveway. It has a garden shed out front.

A resident earlier told Stuff they had seen Bao's car parked in the street on Tuesday afternoon, a day before Bao disappeared. He said he saw the same car on Wednesday morning parked in a similar place.

He believed he had seen a grey coat rolled up in the passenger seat.

On Sunday morning, a resident, who didn't want to be named, said he had only seen the people in the Iriquois Place house police were looking at a few times.

He said they said hello in a foreign language, and he thought the house was a flat people ran some businesses out of.

READ MORE: Man charged with murder after alleged stabbing death in Newtown

Previously, Stuff reported Bao spoke to a friend 45 minutes after she was last seen.

REINZ chief executive Jen Baird said real estate companies took the safety of their staff "very seriously".

"I am sure this situation will sharpen that focus. Everyone in the real estate industry has Yanfei's family, friends and colleagues in their thoughts and we are hoping and praying that she is found safe and well."

At 11.16am on Wednesday, Bao rang her friend Jin Tian and had a four-minute conversation with her.

During the conversation, Bao asked Tian how someone she was working with could transfer the money from China to pay cash for a house.

A screenshot showing the date, time and duration of the call was seen by The Press.

READ MORE: Hayley saw her uncle kill her nan and cousin. An app launched today might have saved them

Tian told The Press, in an exclusive interview, the conversation was in Mandarin and Bao sounded normal with nothing to indicate anything was wrong.

Bao had been going door to door for work at 10.30am on Vickerys Rd when she went missing in the Wigram suburb on Wednesday.

Detective Inspector Nicola Reeves said on Friday that one of her phones was found several kilometres west on the southern motorway near Blakes Rd.

At a press conference on Friday, Reeves said police were "growing increasingly concerned" for Bao and were treating her disappearance as unexplained.

Police had received 40 tips from the public, and were assessing the information.

Bao's distraught family, speaking from China, said they were heartbroken.

Bao's sister, Huafei Bao said: "My mum has been crying since, and passed out a couple of times and my dad is heartbroken. We are just ordinary people. What can we do? We are so far away."

Police contacted Huafei on Saturday night to ask for Bao's ex-husband's details in China, but have not received any further updates on Sunday morning.

Anyone with information that could help police's investigation is asked to report it.

This article originally appeared on Stuff and is republished here with permission.

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The Football Ferns were forced to evacuate their Auckland CBD hotel last night.

The party officially launched its 2023 election campaign in Wellington today.

The Victorian government is considering a sweep of changes aimed at improving the housing crisis across the state.

Premier Daniel Andrews didn't specify what measures could be introduced to help struggling renters but said "everything was on the table".

It comes as a senior government source with knowledge of the discussions told The Age that limiting landlords to one rent increase every two years was being considered.

READ MORE: Three people sitting in parked cars seriously injured in 'targeted' Sydney shooting

Landlords are currently permitted to raise rent every 12 months.

A tourism levy on short-term stays like Air BnB could also be on the cards.

"We will have more to say in a couple months time. I think when it's all announced and detailed, it will represent one of the biggest shake-ups in terms of delivering more housing," Andrews told media today.

"It won't be everything, there's always more that needs to be done. We obviously believe that reform in this space is needed. It's critically important.

"There is a very long list of different policy approaches, different things we can do."

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Chinese engineers have broken ground on a new super -deep borehole that will burrow far into the Earth's crust as the country steps up its search for natural resources hidden thousands of metres underground.

The hole will eventually reach 10,520 metres into the ground at the Sichuan Basin in southwest China, according to state-run news agency Xinhua.

The region is a major area for gas production and engineers expected to find a natural gas reserve there, the report said.

READ MORE: Three people sitting in cars shot in 'targeted' Sydney attack

The announcement came just weeks after China began drilling another super deep borehole which is slated to extend even further into the Earth with a planned depth of 11,100-metres.

That project is located at the Tarim Basin in China's northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang.

If completed, they would be among two of the deepest human-made boreholes in the world.

However, they would not be deepest.

That record currently lies with the now defunct Kola Superdeep Borehole in north-west Russia, a Soviet-era scientific drilling project that took 20 years to complete and went to 12,262 metres.

These ultradeep holes stretch greater than Mount Everest measuring from top to bottom, which is about 8,800 metres.

Humans have reached the moon but when it comes to exploring the land deep beneath our feet, we have only scratched the surface of our planet.

Drilling deep allows scientists to learn more about how the Earth was formed with the crust acting like a geological timeline of or world's formation.

But there are also strong commercial incentives – tapping into potentially lucrative energy reserves buried deep below.

Both the companies involved in the Chinese boreholes are major state-owned oil conglomerates.

The most recent project at Sichuan Basin is operated by PetroChina Southwest Oil and Gasfield Co, a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corporation, one of the biggest state-owned energy companies in China, according to Xinhua.

READ MORE: Wintry blast looming for two Aussie states

Painting it as a move of "great significance," the state news outlet said the effort is aimed at exploring deeply buried resources while "promoting the progress of the core technology and equipment capability of China's oil and gas engineering."

"The drilling will further reveal the secrets of evolution under the Sinian formation," it said, referring to the way in which rocks are arranged in the Sichuan Basin.

Chen Lili, deputy chief engineer of PetroChina Southwest Oil, told the state news outlet that they expected a raft of "world-class challenges" to overcome during the drilling process.

Unveiling the Xinjiang project previously, Xinhua dubbed it a "telescope" into the deepest end of the earth, with its 2,000-tonne design tasked to penetrate more than 10 continental strata.

It said the drilling setup can withstand 200 degree celsius and forces 1,700 times greater than that of atmospheric pressure.

In May, Sinopec Corp said it had struck sizeable oil and gas flows in an exploration well in the Tarim basin at a depth of 8,591 metres below the surface, Reuters reported.

China, the world's second-largest economy and the world's biggest carbon emitter, has huge energy needs. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has declared future energy security as a national security priority.

China has become a global leader in renewable energy – it is on track to double its wind and solar energy capacity and hit its 2030 clean energy targets five years early, according to a recent report.

But it is also the world's biggest producer of planet-heating pollution and is ramping up coal production.

The US is the world's second-biggest carbon emitter.

US climate envoy John Kerry met with Chinese officials in Beijing this week and called for faster action to confront the climate crisis.

Xi did not meet with Kerry this week. But while the US climate envoy was visiting, Xi told a national conference on environmental protection that China's commitment to its duel carbon goals – reaching a carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060 – is "unwavering," according to state news agency Xinhua.

"But the path, method, pace and intensity to achieve this goal should and must be determined by ourselves, and will never be influenced by others," he said.

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It was a night that started out like any other for Hayley Wormleaton, but one would end in horror, trauma and loss.

Hayley, then aged 19, was sitting in the bedroom of her home in Lalor Park, western Sydney in September 2015, when her uncle came home. 

He was not acting like himself.

"I heard my nan call out to me," Hayley said.

READ MORE: Three people shot in cars in 'targeted' Sydney shooting

"I then walked out of my bedroom door and (my uncle) was sitting on the lounge next to my nan, and he had a knife."

Hayley ran to her neighbour's house to ask for help.

Her nan also tried to run, but only made it to the neighbours' lawn before she was murdered.

Hayley called police and tried to run back to the home, as she knew there were children, her cousins, still inside the house with her uncle.

"I tried to go back out the front door, but my neighbour wouldn't let me," Hayley said. 

One of her cousin's managed to run to safety next door.

When the police arrived, Hayley went outside and saw the body of her seven-year-old cousin on the lawn. He too had been murdered by her uncle.

Hayley's 35-year-old uncle was convicted of two counts of murder and sentenced to a maximum of 40 years imprisonment.

Growing up, Hayley said she was surrounded by domestic violence and grew to accept it as normal.

"It was normal for me to wake up in the middle of the night with things being smashed and doors being kicked in and yelling and screaming and I would wake up and go to school the next day," Hayley said. 

"My nan used to have a saying, 'Whatever happens at home stays at home.'"

Eight years later, Hayley said she was now very aware that such violence is not normal.

'Power comes back': NSW Police launch app to help victim-survivors 

Hayley is sharing her story as NSW Police launch an app today, which is aimed at helping victims of domestic violence to discreetly document abuse and access support services.

Assistant Commissioner Stuart Smith the "Empower You" app was designed to do exactly that – empower victims of abuse.

"The 'Empower You' app was designed to be user-friendly, intuitive, and interactive, while still having the best safety features for user privacy and discretion," Smith said.

"It has inbuilt features to keep it private on any mobile, including passcodes and quick lock, and has a modest-looking icon that's designed not to alert perpetrators.

"The diary feature allows a victim to collect their thoughts – including photos of injuries and property damage, and screenshots of emails or messages – and document an incident when it happens, no matter how minor or whether they report it to police at that time.

"This is especially important in terms of coercive control, where we know a victim often feels helpless, so with 'Empower You', the abuse is clearly demonstrated, and the power comes back to the victim."

The 'Empower You' app is available in the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store, and NSW Police officers have QR codes on their MobiPOL devices to link to the app in the stores to download.

Victims of domestic and family violence can also seek advice and services by contacting 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) or visiting: https://www.1800respect.org.au.

Reports of domestic and family-related crime or abuse can be made by contacting or attending your local police station. In an emergency or life-threatening situation, contact Triple Zero (000).

A strong cold front is set to sweep across two Australian states in the coming days, bringing chilly temperatures and heavy showers.

Weatherzone predicts a burst of wet weather will hit Queensland from tonight, with some parts of the state expected to pick up a month's rain in one or two days.

It comes as temperatures are set to drop across South Australia as the state is hit with its third and final cold front.

READ MORE: Three people sitting in parked cars seriously injured in 'targeted' Sydney shooting

Queenslanders will start to see a "wintry mix of cold temperatures, thick cloud and rain" in the coming hours as an upper-level cut-off low-pressure system crosses the eastern parts of the country.

The system will move south from tonight and until Tuesday.

Weatherzone predicts heavier rain will hit parts of central and southeast Queensland from tomorrow, with some models suggesting 30-50mm could fall early next week.

"Some areas that have the potential to collect 30 to 50 mm would be receiving a full July's rainfall in one or two days," Weatherzone said.

"These falls would be welcome for the region, with large areas of the state receiving well below average rain in the last couple of months."

READ MORE: Man charged with murder after alleged stabbing death in Newtown

Meanwhile, South Australians will experience a string of chilly days.

A cold front will cross over central and south-eastern parts of the state from this afternoon, bringing a burst of cold winds and showery conditions.

Temperatures have remained low across the country's south over the past week, thanks to "intense cold air", Weatherzone said.

New South Wales, Victoria, southern South Australia, Western Australia, and far south Queensland have all recorded sub-zero temperatures.

READ MORE: Aussie receives acclaim for volcano shot – but nobody knows who he is

Weatherzone said the balmy conditions were "unusually colder than normal in certain regions".

Melbourne is forecast to reach just a top of 14 degrees today and Canberra just 15 degrees, while Sydney should get to 17 degrees and Adelaide to 15 degrees

Brisbane is forecast to reach 22 degrees, and Hobart 14 degrees.

Darwin will get to a sunny 31 degrees and Perth 20 degrees.

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A man has been charged with murder after allegedly stabbing another man in Sydney's inner west.

Police found the victim suffering from multiple stab wounds after they were called to a unit block on Forbes Street in Newtown about 7pm on Friday night.

The 63-year-old man was treated by paramedics but died at the scene.

READ MORE: Three people sitting in parked cars seriously injured after public shooting in Sydney

Police arrested a 43-year-old man yesterday at a unit block on nearby Golden Grove Street.

He was taken to Newtown Police Station where he was charged with murder, and use weapon to avoid lawful apprehension.

The man was refused bail but is now currently undergoing assessment at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.

His court date is yet to be confirmed.

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