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New data from the Climate Council has predicted Queenslanders will be the worst affected by rising insurance costs, with 6.5 per cent of homes, compared to four per cent nationally, expected to be classified as "high risk" by 2030.

According to the modelling, increased frequency of extreme weather events like fires and flooding triggered by a warming climate will put more homes in the firing line, with 200,000 Queensland homes expected to be uninsurable within 10 years.

Queensland grandmother Lorraine Ormond has already been displaced by multiple flood events, losing her home in both the 2011 and 2022 floods.

READ MORE: Millions braced for mortgage pain, first rates rise in a decade

After losing her Goodna home in 2011, her insurers fought her claim for compensation and won, leaving her to clean up the aftermath.

This year, the uninsured home was destroyed again, forcing the grandmother to live in a rented caravan with her nine-year-old granddaughter, relying on donations from friends for a roof over her head.

"It's really hard, especially with the little one all you want is to get her back inside, get her comfortable," Ms Ormond said.

READ MORE: Russians plunder $7 million of farm vehicles from Ukraine

"I think it's just the devastation and how am I going to fix this up and how am I going to replace it.

"If we had our way, we'd be doing it through insurance, we wouldn't be waiting for basically handouts.

"We don't want handouts, we want to be able to insure. But we can't."

The Climate Council mapped out at-risk areas for riverine flooding, surface water flooding, coastal inundation, fire and extreme wind.

READ MORE: New Omicron sub-variant 'appears to be more transmissible'

The mapping shows if the country's emissions outputs don't change, 100 per cent of the homes in most Queensland suburbs will be at risk by 2100.

Nicki Hutley from the Climate Council said acting on emissions targets now is the only way to save countless homes down the track.

"This is the critical decade, to stop the outcomes that are forecast in our map," she said.

"For 2050 and 2100, we don't wat to see this get any worse than it already is."

Ms Ormond said further price hikes for disaster vulnerable regions will cause further devastation for those already struggling to insure their homes.

"Basically for the average person you can't afford insurance," she said.

"I think its horrible and I think something has to be done… there's gonna be a lot of people who are struggling."

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Russia resumed pulverising the Mariupol steel mill that has become the last stronghold of resistance in the bombed-out city, Ukrainian fighters said on Monday, after a brief ceasefire over the weekend allowed the first evacuation of civilians from the plant.

Meanwhile, a senior US official warned that Russia is planning to annex large portions of eastern Ukraine this month and recognise the southern city of Kherson as an independent republic.

Michael Carpenter, US ambassador to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said that those suspected actions are “straight out of the Kremlin’s playbook” and will not be recognised by the United States or its allies.

READ MORE: RBA increases interest rates for the first time in more than 11 years

In Mariupol, more than 100 people — including elderly women and mothers with small children — left the rubble-strewn Azovstal steelworks on Sunday and set out in buses and ambulances for the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, about 230 kilometres to the northwest, according to authorities and video released by the two sides.

Mariupol Deputy Mayor Sergei Orlov told the BBC that the evacuees were making slow progress and would probably not arrive in Zaporizhzhia on Monday as hoped. Authorities gave no explanation for the delay.

READ MORE: Russians plunder $7 million of farm vehicles from Ukraine

At least some of the civilians were apparently taken to a village controlled by Russia-backed separatists. The Russian military said some chose to stay in separatist areas, while dozens left for Ukrainian-held territory.

In the past, Ukraine has accused Moscow’s troops of taking civilians against their will to Russia or Russian-controlled areas. The Kremlin has denied it.

READ MORE: New Omicron sub-variant 'appears to be more transmissible'

The Russian bombardment of the sprawling plant by air, tank and ship picked up again after the partial evacuation, Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, which is helping to defend the mill, said on the Telegram messaging app.

Mr Orlov said high-level negotiations were underway among Ukraine, Russia and international organisations on evacuating more people.

The steel-plant evacuation, if successful, would represent rare progress in easing the human cost of the almost 10-week war, which has caused particular suffering in Mariupol. Previous attempts to open safe corridors out of the southern port city and other places have broken down, with Ukrainian officials accusing Russian forces of shooting and shelling along agreed-on evacuation routes.

READ MORE: Millions braced for mortgage pain, first rates rise in a decade

Before the weekend evacuation, overseen by the United Nations and the Red Cross, about 1000 civilians were believed to be in the plant along with an estimated 2000 Ukrainian defenders. Russia has demanded that the fighters surrender; they have refused.

As many as 100,000 people overall may still be in Mariupol, which had a pre-war population of more than 400,000. Russian forces have pounded much of the city into rubble, trapping civilians with little food, water, heat or medicine.

Some Mariupol residents got out of the city on their own, often in damaged private cars.

As sunset approached, Mariupol resident Yaroslav Dmytryshyn rattled up to a reception centre in Zaporizhzhia in a car with a back seat full of youngsters and two signs taped to the back window: “Children” and “Little ones.”

“I can’t believe we survived,” he said, looking worn but in good spirits after two days on the road.

“There is no Mariupol whatsoever,'' he said.

“Someone needs to rebuild it, and it will take millions of tons of gold.”

He said they lived just across the railroad tracks from the steel plant.

“Ruined,” he said. “The factory is gone completely.”

Anastasiia Dembytska, who took advantage of the cease-fire to leave with her daughter, nephew and dog, said she could see the steelworks from her window, when she dared to look out.

“We could see the rockets flying” and clouds of smoke over the plant, she said.

With most of Mariupol in ruins, a majority of the dozen Russian battalion tactical groups that had been around the city have moved north to other battlefronts in eastern Ukraine, according to a senior US defence official who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the Pentagon’s assessment.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had said he hoped more people would be able to leave Mariupol in an organised evacuation on Monday. The city council told residents wanting to leave to gather at a shopping mall to wait for buses.

Mr Zelenskyy told Greek state television that remaining civilians in the steel plant were afraid to board buses because they feared they would be taken to Russia. He said he had been assured by the UN that they would be allowed to go to areas his government controls.

Also Monday, Mr Zelenskyy said that at least 220 Ukrainian children have been killed by the Russian army since the war began, and 1570 educational institutions have been destroyed or damaged.

In other developments, European Union energy ministers met Monday to discuss new sanctions against the Kremlin, which could include restrictions on Russian oil. Some Russia-dependent members of the 27-nation bloc, including Hungary and Slovakia, are wary of taking tough action.

Thwarted in his bid to seize Kyiv, the capital, Russian President Vladimir Putin has shifted his focus to the Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, where Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian forces since 2014.

Mr Carpenter, the US ambassador to the OSCE, cited information that Russia is planning “sham referenda” in the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” that would attach the entities to Russia. He also said there were signs that Russia would engineer an independence vote in Kherson.

He noted that local mayors and legislators there have been abducted, that internet and cellphone service had been severed and that a Russian school curriculum is soon to be imposed. Ukraine's government has said Russia also has introduced the ruble as currency there.

Russia said Monday it struck dozens of military targets in the region in the past day. It said it hit concentrations of troops and weapons and an ammunition depot near Chervone in the Zaporizhzhia region, west of the Donbas.

Ukrainian and Western officials say Moscow's troops are raining fire indiscriminately, taking a heavy toll on civilians while making only slow progress.

The governor of the Odesa region along the Black Sea Coast, Maksym Marchenko, said on Telegram that a Russian missile strike Monday on an Odesa infrastructure target caused deaths and injuries. He gave no details. Mr Zelenskyy said the attack destroyed a dormitory and killed a 14-year-old boy.

Ukraine said Russia also struck a strategic road and rail bridge west of Odesa. The bridge was heavily damaged in previous Russian strikes, and its destruction would cut a supply route for weapons and other cargo from neighbouring Romania.

The attack on Odesa came eight years to the day after deadly clashes between Ukrainian government supporters and protesters calling for autonomy in the country's east. The government supporters in 2014 firebombed a trade union building containing pro-autonomy demonstrators, killing over 40 people.

Also on Monday, Ukraine claimed to have destroyed two small Russian patrol boats in the Black Sea.

Mariupol, which lies in the Donbas, is key to Russia's campaign in the east. Its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, allow Russia to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and free up troops for fighting elsewhere.

Britain’s Defence Ministry said it believes more than a quarter of all the fighting units Russia has deployed in Ukraine are now “combat ineffective” — unable to fight because of loss of troops or equipment.

The Coalition government could suffer at the polls following today's interest rate increase, says Nine political editor Chris Uhlmann.

The RBA has increased the nation's official cash rate for the first time in more than 11 years, up 25 basis points from 0.10 per cent to 0.35 per cent.

"It's bad news for the coalition in an election," he said.

READ MORE: Millions braced for mortgage pain, first rates rise in a decade

Uhlmann said the only other time interest rates increased during an election campaign was in 2007, when incumbent Prime Minister John Howard lost to Labor's Kevin Rudd.

"John Howard always promised that interest rates would be lower under the government that he led," said Uhlmann.

"But at that stage we were going from 6.5 per cent to 6.75 per cent.

"It's a much different interest rate story from then and now."

An average owner-occupier with a $500,000 debt and 25 years remaining on their mortgage will now see repayments rise by $39.

Three million Australians have mortgages, so today's decision by the RBA has far-reaching financial consequences.

READ MORE: New Omicron sub-variant 'appears to be more transmissible'

Just weeks out from the election, there could be political ramifications with the Prime Minister distancing himself today from the RBA's decision.

Uhlmann said today's hike is a "recipe for inflation".

READ MORE: Russians plunder $7 million of farm vehicles from Ukraine

"When you've got a cash rate at near zero, you've got almost full unemployment, that is going to feed into the prices that you are seeing.

"We are coming off the back of emergency levels."

Uhlmann said the PM will be even more concerned about the price of a mortgage.

"Does he get punished for this?

"Do people hold him responsible for things which are really beyond his control?

"Certainly, the Labor Party is holding him responsible."

A steady stream of lava is flowing at the summit of Hawaii's Kīlauea volcano after the active shield volcano went into a period of intermittent pulsing.

Now, lava is once again filling the crater.

The recent volcanic activity has been confined to the Halemaʻumaʻu crater and is "likely to continue", the US Geological Survey (USGS) said.

READ MORE: RBA increases interest rates for the first time in more than 11 years

The eruption first began on September 29, 2021 — however in recent weeks the volcanic activity was stopping and starting.

"The crater floor has seen a total rise of about 99 metres," USGS said.

"The volume of lava effused since the beginning of this eruption was approximately 66 million cubic meters (18 billion gallons) as measured on April 6, 2022."

READ MORE: New Omicron sub-variant 'appears to be more transmissible'

Kīlauea is located in Hawaii's Volcanoes National Park.

While the eruption does not pose a risk to homes, volcanic gasses and "lightweight volcanic glass fragments" are deemed hazards should they fall downwind.

Kīlauea is considered one of the world's most active volcanoes.

"Since 1952, Kīlauea has erupted dozens of times," USGS said.

"Kīlauea ranks among the world's most active volcanoes and may even top the list."

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