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An Australian husband and father is among the 10 people killed in a blast at a petrol station in Ireland.

James O'Flaherty, 48, who was originally from Sydney, was among those who died in last week's blast at the service station in Creeslough, a small village in north-west Ireland.

Police have released the names and photos of all 10 people who died, including a father and his five-year-old daughter.

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O'Flaherty, who lived with his family in Rinclevan, Dunfanaghy, will be laid to rest on Wednesday, according to a death notice.

A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade told 9news.com.au it was working with authorities to provide assistance and support.

"The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is aware of reports an Australian has been killed in an explosion at a petrol station in the Irish county of Donegal," the spokesperson said.

"We are working with local authorities and stand ready to provide assistance. Owing to our privacy obligations we are unable to provide further details."

Irish police said no one remained missing after Friday's explosion in Creeslough, County Donegal.

READ MORE: Man hit by car in front of his young daughter after confronting alleged burglar

Police are investigating the cause of the blast, and Superintendent David Kelly said evidence "is pointing toward a tragic accident".

Ireland's police force, An Garda Siochana, said the midafternoon explosion killed four men, three women, two teenagers and a girl of primary school age. Eight people were hospitalised — one in critical condition — after the blast destroyed the Applegreen service station in the community of about 400 people near Ireland's rugged Atlantic coast.

On Sunday (early Monday AEDT), the gardaí released names and photos of all 10 dead: James O Flaherty, 48; Jessica Gallagher, 24; Martin McGill, 49; Catherine O Donnell, 39; and her son, James Monaghan, 13; Hugh Kelly, 59; Martina Martin, 49; Robert Garwe, 50; and his daughter Shauna Flanagan Garwe, 5; and Leona Harper, 14. 

BBC reported the victims had been carrying out activities as mundane as buying a newspaper or some chips after school. 

Emergency responders from Ireland and neighbouring Northern Ireland joined in what police said on Saturday was "search and recovery" operation. 

Sniffer dogs combed the debris, and a mechanical digger lifted piles of rubble from the site on Saturday.

READ MORE: Flood warnings issued in Sydney and across state as rivers keep rising

The explosion levelled the service station building, which holds the main shop and post office for the village, damaged an adjacent apartment building and shattered the windows in nearby cottages.

"There were blocks thrown a hundred yards away from the scene," local medic Dr Paul Stewart told Irish broadcaster RTE. 

"The whole front of the building collapsed … and the roof of the first floor collapsed down into the shop. It's a miracle they got anyone out."

Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin said it was one of the "darkest of days for Donegal and the entire country."

"People across this island will be numbed by the same sense of shock and utter devastation as the people of Creeslough at this tragic loss of life," the prime minister said.

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Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue, who represents Donegal in Ireland's parliament, said the service station was well known across the country because of its prominent position on the area's main N56 road, and was "the heart" of the local community.

"People are shocked and numbed," he told Irish broadcaster RTE. 

"People have been rallying together and everyone's concern is with the families of those who have lost their loved ones and how they can support them."

Another local lawmaker, Pearse Doherty, said people in the community were in shock.

"(It's) something nobody ever thought could happen in a little village like this where everyone knows each other," he said. 

"A quarter past three yesterday, kids were coming out of school, people were going to collect their welfare payments. For such a nightmare to occur, that will take some time to sink in."

A Queensland snake catcher was shocked to find not one, but ten snakes, lurking in the ceiling of a Gold Coast home with scaled bodies caught hiding in insulation and high in the rafters.

Mitch Thorburn, from South East Reptile Relocations, was called out to the two bedroom home in Willow Vale a week ago Sunday and found a variety of species located in the crawl space.

He told 9news.com.au the callout smashed his previous record of eight snakes in one roof cavity, an accolade he had held since 2018.

READ MORE: Putin blames Ukrainian 'terrorist act' for attack on Crimea bridge

Thorburn said he received the call after the home owner spotted four snakes dangling from the ceiling. 

"When I got up there you could tell the roof had been inhabited by many snakes in the past, there were skins and snake poos scattered about," he said.

"But there was no real indication as to how many were up there.

"We originally thought it was just the four."

The four snakes were bagged without incident, then Thorburn glimpsed more scaled bodies.

READ MORE: SES receives 1000 calls for help as rivers rise in NSW

"We then found the additional six, which was pretty surprising to say the least," he said.

"I thought four was a pretty decent number so 10 was well beyond what I expected."

In total, Thorburn removed five common tree snakes, two brown tree snakes and three coastal carpet pythons over the course of 35 minutes.

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He said the reptiles were all released back into a suitable habitat – far from the home.

The callout comes as snake season gets off to a cracking start.

https://www.facebook.com/GoldCoastSnakeCatcher.SERR/posts/pfbid02mkJBmgrTm6ZQgzV1F18mcarq38MYw9DBTTPRKiubEEzSCSGAv5gVvNKTnpeNxxqql

Last week Steven Brown, from Brisbane North Snake Catchers, encountered a "weapon" seven foot brown snake in the backyard of a home in Brisbane.

Australia's snake season starts around September and runs to about April as the animals begin breeding.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is under pressure like never before following his disastrous decision to invade Ukraine, but how close is he to losing grip on power?

Defeats on the battlefield and a shambolic partial military mobilisation have triggered rare domestic criticism of the war effort and the Kremlin elite.

Despite Putin's bombastic speeches and veiled threats about using nuclear weapons, there is little doubt he's losing the seven-month-old war.

READ MORE: Putin blames Ukrainian 'terrorist act' for attack on Crimea bridge

Here is a look at what is facing Putin and how the war could play out in the coming months.

Will Putin be forced out of power?

Associate Professor Will Partlett, of Melbourne University, says Putin remains secure as Russian president because to date he is keeping key powerbrokers, such as the military high command and oligarchs, onside.

"The Putin regime will remain stable but increasingly ineffective," he told 9news.com.au.

He says the Ukraine war is marking the beginning of the end for Putin "but that beginning could take years" to unfold.

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Scapegoats for Putin's blunders 

The coming weeks could see senior Kremlin officials axed from their posts.

"Somebody will be a scapegoat for the failures and setbacks in the war in coming weeks … heads will roll at the top of the Kremlin," Partlett said.

Putin is safe in the top job because of a tradition dating back to the days of the Tsar – the Russian royal ruler – that the leader is always right and policy failures are the fault of subordinates.

One possible scapegoat for Putin is likely to be the much-criticised Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.

He is a close ally of Putin who has shown intense loyalty to the president, but that is probably not enough to save him.

"Heads will certainly roll – and it looks like Shoigu will go. It might take some of the pressure off," Partlett said.

READ MORE: Vladimir Putin's inner circle: The men behind Russia's war in Ukraine

How have Putin's war aims changed?

The Russian president has abandoned any notion of a decisive victory over Ukraine after his forces suffered major defeats and western military aid continues to flow for the Ukrainian war effort.

Instead Putin is looking to the recent mobilisation of about 300,000 Russian reservists as a way to stabilise the situation on the battlefield.

But, critically, the Russian army has suffered a mass loss of equipment – including thousands of tanks and armoured vehicles.

"His best hope is to basically freeze the war to stop Ukraine's momentum… and to drag it out through next year," Partlett said.

"There is no proper peace deal in sight … Putin's best hope is to wait out the West."

READ MORE: Would Russia really use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine war?

What's influencing Putin now?

Concerningly, Putin in recent years has moved from a pragmatist – willing to compromise in some cases with the West – to an ideologue influenced by hard-line nationalists.

The failure in Ukraine has now made him more beholden to figures such as the head of the secret service, Nikolai Patrushev, according to Partlett.

He says Putin is now fully in the grip of a conspiratorial ideology the US, Britain and other western nations want to split the Russian nation.

"Patrushev has pushed the line that Ukraine doesn't even exist as a country," Partlett said.

Invading Russian forces are accused of pillaging Ukraine's cultural treasures in occupied towns and cities.

A Perth father who survived a shark attack remains in a stable condition after undergoing surgery at Royal Perth Hospital.

Doctors were able to save Robbie Peck's arm in a delicate operation.

His brother-in-law posted a photo showing the father-of-three from sitting up in his hospital bed, giving a thumbs up and smiling.

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"Bonded by blood — literally," he wrote.

It was Clive Fondyke who came to Peck's rescue on Friday, using a makeshift tourniquet to stem his rapid bleeding, as they waited for help.

Peck had been spearfishing with friends at Port Hedland when he was savaged by a suspected bull shark.

His family is by his bedside as he faces a long road to recovery.

Chloe Hes and Ben Speedy were crowned the winners of this year’s Block NZ, but their victory was bittersweet.Their stylish terrace house fetched $1.145 million at auction, just $4000 above the reserve – the smallest winning profit…

A moment's loss of concentration is all it can take for drivers to lose track of their speed and break the road rules.

But now a new tool has been created to help keep that lead foot in check.

The Speed Adviser app, created by the NSW Government's Centre for Road Safety, can warn drivers if they travel over the speed limit — or if drivers enter a zone where a mobile speed camera may be operating.

READ MORE: 'R Plates' introduced on Australian roads

While the app has been around for several years, new verbal warnings have now been added to make it more user friendly.

"Perhaps you haven't been out for a while and you're not aware of the area if it's new — we want to alert people and let them know if they're speeding or perhaps need to adjust their behaviour," Roads Minister Natalie Ward said.

The app is available for both Apple and Android devices and will alert drivers verbally even if their phone is being used as a GPS.

The extra warning on the app doubles down on the government's decision to reinstate signage used by police checking driver speeds. 

Its removal last year was met with a fierce public backlash.

However, the decision only includes signage mounted on top of patrol cars and not warning signs placed ahead of areas where speed cameras are operating.

NSW Labor Leader Chris Minns said all warning signs should be returned.

"The best thing they can do is to put these signs back in front of the speed cameras, so we know to slow down and not commit the offence in the first place," Minn said.

When signs were posted in advance of speed camera vehicles in 2020, 38,743 fines were issued.

That soared by nearly 10 times to 361,896 in 2021 when warnings were taken away altogether.

So far this year, offences have dropped to just under 200,000 with the return of the top-mounted signs. But numbers are still five times higher than 2020.

Climate change protesters have been arrested after gluing themselves to a Picasso painting at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.

They were attached to the priceless artwork — an anti-war painting titled Massacre in Korea — for more than an hour.

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The surface of the painting is covered with glass, so the glue didn't directly damage it.

Extinction Rebellion has claimed responsibility.

"This painting shows the horrors of war," the organisation posted on Facebook.

"Climate breakdown will mean an increase in conflict around the world."