A man who allegedly crashed into several cars and a house in Devonport before allegedly hijacking a car shouted that people should “repent” as the world was going to end, a local woman claims.Holly Georgia was at home on Thursday…

An urgent rescue has freed a whale that became tangled in shark nets off the Gold Coast.

The whale became stuck off Kirra, with Sea World rescuers and authorities swiftly on the scene.

It was a delicate operation but rescuers managed to get the whale loose and it swam away unharmed.

READ MORE: World's most famous UFO case won't go away 75 years later

It's the third whale this week to run afoul of shark nets in Queensland's south-east, heating up the debate over whether the nets should be used at all.

Critics have pointed out what a danger they pose, particularly through whale migration season.

You can watch the rescue unfold in the player above.

James Caan, the veteran screen actor known for his work in such films as The Godfather, Misery and Elf, has died, his family said in a statement on his verified Twitter account. He was 82.

"It is with great sadness that we inform you of the passing of Jimmy on the evening of July 6," the statement read.

"The family appreciates the outpouring of love and heartfelt condolences and asks that you continue to respect their privacy during this difficult time."

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They did not disclose a cause of death.

Caan first found fame playing Chicago Bears halfback Brian Piccolo in Brian's Song, a widely seen 1971 TV movie.

The tear-jerking film chronicled Piccolo's real-life battle with terminal cancer and drew praise for its treatment of the interracial friendship between Piccolo and a Black teammate, Gale Sayers.

His next film, 1972's The Godfather, made Caan a star.

Although he was not Italian, Caan was cast as hotheaded Sonny Corleone, oldest of mobster Vito Corleone's three sons, who is memorably gunned down by rival gangsters in an ambush at a tollbooth.

In a 2021 interview for CBS Sunday Morning, Caan said he based Sonny's persona on the late comedian Don Rickles.

"It wasn't imitating Don Rickles. It was having that drive, that thing, you know? I was just locked into that," he said of his performance.

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The role earned him an Oscar nomination.

Caan also appeared in a flashback in The Godfather, Part II.

The curly-haired actor was known for playing tough-guy characters in such films as Thief and Rollerball.

But he was a versatile actor who also exuded vulnerability in movies like Misery, the 1990 Stephen King adaptation about a mild-mannered romance novelist held captive by an obsessive fan.

He is probably best known to younger audiences for his role in 2003's Elf, the Christmas tale in which he played Will Ferrell's Scrooge-like father, a workaholic children's book publisher unhappy to learn he has an abnormally cheerful grown son who wears an elf costume and pours maple syrup on his spaghetti.

It was not a cuddly role, but Caan, playing the straight man to Ferrell's exuberant manchild, brought a welcome dash of cynicism – and many tight-lipped looks of exasperation – that tempered the movie's sweetness.

In the same CBS interview, Caan said he almost turned down the Elf role over the film's title alone but Ferrell convinced him to join the project.

Caan was born in 1940 in the Bronx borough of New York City to Jewish immigrants. His father was a butcher.

He played football at Michigan State and later began studying acting as a student at Hofstra University, where one of his classmates was Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola.

READ MORE: World's most famous UFO case won't go away 75 years later

After appearing in a few plays on and off-Broadway, Caan moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s to launch a film career.

Coppola gave him one of his first roles, as a drifter in the 1969 drama The Rain People.

Caan's other memorable movies included the Howard Hawks Western El Dorado, James Toback's The Gambler and A Bridge Too Far (1977), Richard Attenborough's ensemble World War II epic.

Later in his career, he appeared on TV in the drama Las Vegas and in the rebooted Hawaii Five-0 series, alongside his son Scott Caan.

More recently, actor Damian Conrad-Davis played Caan in The Offer, the 2022 Paramount+ miniseries about the making of The Godfather.

Entertainers in Hollywood and beyond paid tribute to Caan on Thursday.

"James Caan. Loved him very much. Always wanted to be like him. So happy I got to know him. Never ever stopped laughing when I was around that man. His movies were best of the best. We all will miss him terribly. Thinking of his family and sending my love," said Adam Sandler, who worked with Caan on the 2012 movie comedy That's My Boy.

"Losing Ray Liotta and James Caan within months of each other just tells me God is up there making one helluva mobster movie," tweeted comedian Johnny Taylor Jr.

"Very sad to hear the news that James Caan has died. Heartbroken for his family & his friends. Wonderful to know him & call him a pal," actor Gary Sinise said on Twitter.

"Jimmy was so supportive of Gary Sinise Foundation & my work w/ our veterans. He will be missed. Thank you my friend. Rest In Peace. God bless you."

Passengers travelling on an Emirates flight to Brisbane were stunned when they noticed a huge hole in the side of the aircraft while they were disembarking.

Those on board the Airbus A380 from Dubai to the Australian city became aware of the damage as they exited the plane following the roughly 14-hour flight on July 1.

Images of the aircraft shared on social media reveal the extent of the puncture, which was due to a ruptured tyre caused by a "technical fault" during the journey, according to the airline.

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https://twitter.com/JacdecNew/status/1543146274505072640

One of the passengers on board has since taken to Twitter to describe the "terrifying" incident, which took place "during cruise".

"Was absolutely terrifying at first and the cabin crew knew something serious may have happened – were immediately in contact with the cockpit," wrote Andrew Morris, an English professor at the UK's Loughborough University.

"Shortly after, they resumed as normal. Their calm demeanour was reassuring – they knew it was not catastrophic."

While it's unclear exactly how long the plane had been in the air for when the issue occurred, some reports suggest that it may have been around 45 minutes into the flight.

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'Technical fault'

Commercial aviation website Aviation Herald reports that the crew advised air traffic controllers at Brisbane Airport of the situation ahead of time and requested that the plane be met by emergency services on landing.

Emirates later released a statement stressing that the rupture did not impact "the fuselage, frame or structure of the aircraft."

"Our flight EK430 flying from Dubai to Brisbane on July 1 experienced a technical fault," reads the statement.

"One of the aircraft's 22 tires ruptured during cruise, causing damage to a small portion of the aerodynamic fairing, which is an outer panel or the skin of the aircraft."

READ MORE: World's most famous UFO case won't go away 75 years later

The airline went on to confirm that the aircraft had landed safely in Australia, and passengers had disembarked as scheduled.

Damage to the exterior of the wide-body airliner has since been repaired.

"The fairing has been completely replaced, checked and cleared by engineers, Airbus and all relevant authorities," adds Emirates.

"The safety of our passengers and crew has always been our top priority."

The incident came just days after the much-loved A380 superjumbo, in decline prior to the pandemic, was given something of a reprieve, when German airline Lufthansa announced plans to redeploy the plane from summer 2023.

The Airbus A380 has been on its way out since Airbus announced in 2019 that it was ceasing production of the airliner.

CNN has contacted Emirates for further comment.

READ MORE: Struggling airports facing busiest day since pandemic

Seventy-five years ago a mysterious discovery on US ranchland triggered the world's most famous UFO, or Unidentified Flying Object, case.

On July 8, 1947, a newspaper in the city of Roswell, New Mexico, ran a story about the United States military confirming debris from a crashed "flying disk" had been found in the area weeks earlier.

Despite a statement from the US Air Force the next day that the wreckage – composed of metallic-looking objects including rubber strips, tinfoil and sticks – was from a weather balloon, the events had captured global attention.

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Former NASA chief historian Roger Launius told 9News the "flying saucer" report was initially put out by the US military for expediency.

"Apparently, it was better from the Air Force's perspective that there was a crashed 'alien' spacecraft out there than to tell the truth," he said.

"But it triggered a media frenzy … officials in Roswell were inundated by journalists."

The red herring was an attempt to divert the public gaze from the US military's top-secret Project Mogul, involving high-altitude reconnaissance balloons.

Much larger than a conventional weather balloon, a typical Mogul balloon was twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty.

They were developed by the US to spy on Soviet Russia's atomic bomb program.

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"A flying saucer was easier to admit than Project Mogul," Launius said.

In 1947 at the early stages of the Cold War, truth was not a priority for the US government, he said.

But if the military hoped to dispel interest in Roswell with its insistence a balloon had crashed, supported in an official 1948 report, it reignited decades later.

"We get to the late 1970s and early 1980s … and that period saw a real spike in extraterrestrial interest, from movies to books and other things," Launius said.

Among the most outlandish claims was a film released in 1995 apparently showing autopsies of alien bodies recovered at Roswell and moved to the Pentagon's top secret Area 51 site in Nevada.

It was later proved to be a fake.

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And two years later former US Army public affairs officer Walter Haut said of the Roswell incident in 1947: "We had in our possession a flying saucer."

Launius says claims such as these resulted in the Roswell Incident "getting better with time".

It also spawned books, films and television shows, such as The X-Files.

Determined to quash the frenzy, the US Air Force released an exhaustive report in 1994, titled The Roswell Report, Case Closed.

But despite the document offering numerous explanations to the claims of UFO conspiracy theories, including that reported bodies were crash dummies used in balloon testing, rumours of a cover-up continued.

The city of Roswell, meanwhile, cashed in on its fame.

It now home to a UFO Museum and remains a major destination for alien enthusiasts looking for more evidence of their beliefs.

Others such as Launius insist UFO sightings can only be judged on the evidence at hand.

"They're simply unidentified things you see in the sky. We've all probably seen them," he said.

"And, if you look long enough, you'll probably eventually figure out what it is you're looking at. It's not extraterrestrials."

But he also concedes public interest in Roswell will not go away any time soon.

"We'll still be talking about it in 25 years."

A South Australian farmer has had a bizarre shock after a baby seal was found in his a paddock, kilometres from the sea.

Farmer Ty Kaden said his neighbour called him on Thursday after finding the pup among the crops on his farm near Cowell on the Eyre Peninsula.

"Sure enough, we pulled into his driveway and yeah, right on the edge of the wheat crop was a baby, probably about a two or three foot (60-90cm) baby seal," he said.

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"We do live on the coast but this was about three kilometres inland."

Australian Marine Wildlife Research Rescue Organisation's Aaron Machado said it appeared to be an 18-month-old long-nosed fur seal.

And this time of year, Machado said they could turn up in all sorts of weird places.

"June, July, August they are starting to venture for their first journey from mum or the colony and they quite often wash up a little bit malnourished, underweight and not looking too well, and they can venture out of their normal home range," he said.

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Despite giving its rescuers an icy reception, the little mammal was brought back to the beach.

"The last we saw of it was swimming out to water so hopefully it found some nice king george whiting to munch on," Kaden said.

Fresh produce has reached eye-watering prices in recent months and even aquarium creatures are being impacted by the cost-of-living rises.

Pig the dugong lives at SEA LIFE aquarium in Darling Harbour and his diet consists of lettuce, one of the vegetables with a skyrocketing price tag.

Recent wet weather wiping out crops, global supply chain issues, and the prices of fuel and fertiliser have led to a vegetable crisis in Australia.

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There is a shortage of lettuce and high demand has only pushed up the prices.

For Pig the dugong, this means his diet of 30 kilograms of lettuce a day is costing the aquarium a bucket load.

"It's about $300 a day to feed him, so a bit spenny," his keeper Emily Best said.

At the start of the year, the aquarium was spending $7200 a month on lettuce but in June they spent $18,000.

READ MORE: Almost 30,000 flood victims return home but emergency not over

Dugongs, which are an endangered species, usually eat sea grass in the wild however at the aquarium Pig's diet has been switched to cos lettuce which is the closest "dupe".

The aquarium can't harvest sea grass for Pig because it is also endangered.

"(Lettuce) being the only source of food he eats has caused us dramas in the budget department," Best added.

The recent wet weather in Sydney may be perfect for some birds but the floodwaters overwhelmed a flock of newborn ducklings.

Luckily, a rescue crew helped save the 3600 baby birds just in time.

The ducklings were born last night in Richmond before they were cut off from their owners' farm by rising floodwaters.

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Touchdown helicopter pilots Brett Kiteley and Ben Geaney knew they had limited to time to rescue the creatures before they were killed in the floodwaters.

"We had 48 hours to get them across or they'd perish," Geaney said.

All of the ducklings were loaded into the helicopter in crates before being transported to the safety of their owner's farm.

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"We pulled the seats out of the helicopter and headed up the Hawkesbury and loaded 3600 tiny little one-day-old ducklings into the back of the helicopter," Geaney said.

"We then headed across the river and dropped them off at their farm.

"They were great passengers, they didn't talk and they didn't push any buttons."

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The owners were relieved to have the ducklings back safe and sound.

"They were stoked," Geaney said.

"They didn't have a whole lot of options left."

Meanwhile, floodwaters have begun to recede in Sydney's north-west with thousands of residents returning home to assess the extent of the damage.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has decided to resign, his office says, ending an unprecedented political crisis over his future. This is how the British newspapers have reported the saga so far.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has decided to resign, according to local media, ending an unprecedented political crisis over his future.

Johnson had rebuffed calls by his cabinet to step down in the wake of ethics scandals. He gave in on Thursday after more than 40 ministers quit his government and told him to go.

He is expected to address the nation later on Thursday.

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https://twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/status/1544963163363344385

It's understood Johnson will stay in office while the Conservative Party chooses a new leader, who will replace him as prime minister.

Treasury chief Nadhim Zahawi was the latest to call on Johnson to resign on Thursday, just 36 hours after Johnson put him in the job.

Zahawi said Johnson knew "the right thing to do" was to "go now".

Zahawi was appointed late on Tuesday to replace Rishi Sunak, who resigned saying he could no longer support Johnson after a series of ethics scandals.

Education Secretary Michelle Donelan, who was also appointed on Tuesday following the resignation of her predecessor, announced her resignation Thursday morning.

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'Desperate, deluded', but dug in his heels

Johnson has previous rejected clamours for his resignation, digging in his heels even as dozens of officials quit and previously loyal allies urged him to go after yet another scandal engulfed his leadership.

In a dramatic move on Wednesday, a group of Johnson's most trusted ministers visited him at his office in Downing Street, telling him to stand down after losing the trust of his party. Even then, Johnson had instead opted to fight for his political career and fired one of the cabinet officials, Michael Gove.

It is rare for a prime minister to cling on to office in the face of so much pressure from his cabinet colleagues. The Guardian's frontpage on Thursday called him "Desperate, deluded".

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https://twitter.com/guardian/status/1544794682504478721

As of early on Thursday, five cabinet ministers had quit, including Donelan and Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis who told Johnson in his resignation letter that "we are … past the point of no return. I cannot sacrifice my personal integrity to defend things as they stand now".

Some 40 junior government officials have also left amid a furore over Johnson's handling of sexual misconduct allegations against a senior official that was the latest in a long line of issues that have made Conservative lawmakers uncomfortable.

"He's breached the trust that was put in him. He needs to recognise that he no longer has the moral authority to lead. And for him, it's over," Scottish National Party leader Ian Blackford told The Associated Press.

Johnson could not continue because his government did not even have ministers to attend to regular parliament business after so many resigned, Blackford added.