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New York City's deadliest fire in more than three decades killed 19 people, including nine children, on Sunday local time at a high-rise apartment building in the Bronx.

Flames shot from apartment windows as smoke filled the building. One resident rescued by firefighters said he'd become numb to fire alarms because of frequent false alarms.

Stefan Ringel, a senior adviser to Mayor Eric Adams, confirmed the death toll. He said the children killed were 16 years old or younger.

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Thirteen people remained hospitalized in critical condition, Mr Ringel said. In all, more than 60 people were hurt. Most of the victims had severe smoke inhalation, Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said.

Mayor Adams called the fire's toll "horrific" and said "this is going to be one of the worst fires that we have witnessed during modern times".

Firefighters "found victims on every floor and were taking them out in cardiac and respiratory arrest," Commissioner Nigro said.

"That is unprecedented in our city."

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Approximately 200 firefighters responded to the building on East 181st Street around 11am on Sunday. Initial reports said the fire was on the third floor of the 19-story building, with flames blowing out the windows.

News photographers captured images of firefighters entering the upper floors of the burning building on a ladder, multiple limp children being given oxygen after they were carried out, and evacuees with faces covered in soot.

Building resident Luis Rosa said he was woken by a fire alarm, but dismissed it at first, thinking it was one of the building's periodic false alarms.

But when a notification popped up on his phone, he and his mother began to worry. By then, smoke began wafting into his 13th-floor apartment and he heard sirens in the distance.

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He opened the front door, but the smoke had gotten too thick for an escape, he said.

"Once I opened the door, I couldn't even see that far down the hallway," Mr Rosa told The Associated Press.

"So I said, OK, we can't run down the stairs because if we run down the stairs, we're going to end up suffocating."

"All we could do was wait," he said.

Another resident, Vernessa Cunningham, said she raced home from church after getting an alert on her cellphone that the building was on fire.

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"I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I was in shock," Ms Cunningham, 60, said from a nearby school where some residents gathered.

"I could see my apartment. The windows were all busted out. And I could see flames coming from the back of the building."

The fire originated in a duplex apartment spanning the second and third floors, Commissioner Nigro said. Firefighters found the door to the apartment open, he said, which apparently allowed the fire to quickly accelerate and spread smoke upward.

The fire is not believed to be suspicious, but the cause is under investigation, officials said.

The 120-unit building in the Twin Parks North West complex was built in 1973 as part of a project to build modern, affordable housing in the Bronx.

The drab brown building looms over an intersection of smaller, aging brick buildings overlooking Webster Avenue, one of the Bronx's main thoroughfares.

By Sunday afternoon, all that remained visible of the unit where the fire started was a gaping black hole where the windows had been blown out. Apartments as high as the 12th floor also had broken windows.

The intersection was choked with police and fire vehicles, and onlookers were still snapping cellphone pictures of the structure as darkness fell.

"There's no guarantee that there's a working fire alarm in every apartment, or in every common area," US Representative Ritchie Torres, a Democrat who represents the area, told the AP.

"Most of these buildings have no sprinkler system. And so the housing stock of the Bronx is much more susceptible to devastating fires than most of the housing stock in the city."

Commissioner Nigro and Mr Torres both compared the fire's severity to a 1990 blaze at the Happy Land social club where 87 people were killed when a man set fire to the building after getting into an argument with his former girlfriend and being thrown out of the Bronx club.

Sunday's death toll was the highest for a fire in the city since the Happy Land fire. It was also the deadliest fire at a US residential apartment building since 2017 when 13 people died in an apartment building, also in the Bronx, according to data from the National Fire Protection Association.

That fire started with a three-year-old boy playing with stove burners and led to several law changes in New York City, including having the fire department to create a plan for educating children and parents on fire safety and requiring certain residential buildings to install self-closing doors.

Sunday's fire happened just days after 12 people, including eight children, were killed in a house fire in Philadelphia. The deadliest fire prior to that was in 1989 when a Tennessee apartment building fire claimed the lives of 16 people.

At least 164 people have been killed and more than 5000 detained during violent upheaval in Kazakhstan this week, as unrest swept the nation and the death toll ticked even higher.

Deadly protests that erupted in in the Central Asian country in recent days have seen the government resign and the declaration of a state of emergency as troops from a Russia-led military alliance have been deployed to help contain the unrest.

The death toll – a significant increase from Friday's count of 44 – was announced Sunday on state-run TV channel Khabar 24, citing the Kazakhstan Ministry of Health.

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The unrest is the biggest challenge yet to autocratic Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev's rule, with initial public anger over a spike in fuel prices expanding to wider discontent with the government over corruption, living standards, poverty and unemployment in the oil-rich, former Soviet nation, human rights organisations report.

At least 5135 people have so far been detained for alleged participation in Kazakhstan protests, Kazakh state media reported today, citing the country's Internal Affairs Ministry.

Meanwhile, police have opened some 125 criminal cases related to incidences of violence, including on the charges of violence, murder, robbery, state media reported.

"Peacekeeping" forces from member states of Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) have fully deployed to Kazakhstan and are now completely operational within the country, CSTO commander general Andrey Serdyukov told a news briefing on Sunday.

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The CSTO – which includes Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan – deployed forces following an an appeal from Mr Tokayev for help from the alliance after unrest broke out across Kazakhstan on Wednesday, including in the largest city, Almaty.

Mr Serdyukov said the forces are "performing tasks to protect important military, state and socially significant facilities in the city of Almaty and adjacent area," and will remain in the country until the situation is "fully stabilised."

High-profile officials, including the country's former head of Kazakhstan's National Security Committee Karim Massimov, have been detained on suspicion of treason, state media reports.

The country's central bank has also temporarily suspended currency exchanges in what it says is needed for both the exchangers themselves and their employees and customers, Khabar 24 reported.

The banking system will be restored in stages depending on the priority of social significance of services for the population and business, Khabar 24 also reported.

The payment system for loans, pensions, allowances and salaries will is expected to resume working as usual throughout the country from Monday.

READ MORE: Nine children dead in 'unprecedented' New York fire disaster

The European Union has made clear it "strongly condemns" the widespread acts of violence in Kazakhstan and outside military support "should respect the sovereignty and independence" of the country, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement on Saturday.

"We deeply regret the loss of life and strongly condemn the widespread acts of violence," he said.

"Outside military support should respect the sovereignty and independence of Kazakhstan as well as the fundamental rights of all citizens," he added.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis has prayed for the victims of the violent protests seen in recent days in Kazakhstan, he said Sunday after his weekly Angelus prayer.

With CNN

The president of Turkmenistan is calling for an end to one of the country’s most notable but infernal sights — the blazing natural gas crater widely referred to as the “Gates of Hell.”

The desert crater located about 260 kilometres north of the capital, Ashgabat, has burned for decades and is a popular sight for the small number of tourists who come to Turkmenistan, a country which is difficult to enter.

The Turkmen news site Turkmenportal said a 1971 gas-drilling collapse formed the crater, which is about 60 metres in diameter and 20 metres deep.

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To prevent the spread of gas, geologists set a fire, expecting the gas to burn off in a few weeks.

The spectacular if unwelcome fire that has burned ever since is so renowned that state TV showed President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov speeding around it in an off-road truck in 2019.

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But Mr Berdymukhamedov has ordered his government to look for ways to put the fire out because it is causing ecological damage and affecting the health of people living in the area.

With Associated Press

An elderly man is lucky to be alive after a massive Eucalyptus tree fell on his Melbourne home.

It cut the power to more than 2000 homes on its way down, and trapped the man and his sick wife for hours.

The roots of the massive tree in Heathmont in the city's east had been soaked after days of storms.

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Fred Dummet was putting out his bins when the tree fell — missing him by centimetres.

It smashed the balustrade of his home, and his sick wife's beloved rose bushes.

Luckily she was inside, and he's insured.

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"I counted my blessings this morning son, look at the rail," he said.

"Panic stations, that was it. I was lucky I didn't get hit."

The tree took out at least six powerlines when it collapsed about 10am.

Neighbour Kate Haley said she heard "a massive bang".

She was among thousands left with no power, which has now been restored.

Queensland has recorded more than 18,000 new COVID-19 cases after online rapid antigen test (RATs) results were included in the daily total for the first time, while Premier Annastacia Palaszcuk announced students will not return to school at the end of the holidays.

Ms Palaszcuk confirmed 4320 of the new cases are from RATs.

This brings active cases to 18,573 and the new cases come from 37,591 test results.

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https://twitter.com/qldhealth/status/1479989492949782529?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

There are 402 people in hospital, including 22 in ICU and five requiring ventilation.

The state yesterday launched its online registry for positive rapid antigen test results.

People who test positive at home can now visit the government's COVID-19 website and register their positive RAT result.

Yesterday, the state recorded 11,174 new COVID-19 cases, and today's jump in figures is due to the rapid antigen tests being included.

Health Minister Yvette D'Ath urged anybody who had tested positive with a RAT in the past 14 days to register their result to ensure numbers are as accurate as possible.

In yesterday's figures, there was one new death reported.

A previously reported death of a man in his 30s at his home in the Gold Coast earlier this month was also confirmed by the coroner to be a COVID-19 case, bringing Queensland's total number of fatalities during the pandemic to 10.

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Return to school delayed for Queensland students

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk confirmed a two-week delay to primary and high school students returning to the classroom.

Ms Palaszczuk said students will now return to class on Monday, February 7.

"It is sensible, it is logical to delay the start of the school year," Ms Palaszczuk said.

"This is a delay, but it is a necessary delay due to the influx of cases that are coming.

"We are expecting the peak at the end of January and start of February."

Ms Palaszczuk said year 11 and 12 students will commence remote learning from Monday, January 31 and special provision will be made for children of essential workers and teachers identified as close contacts when school returns.

Queensland Education Minister Grace Grace said the decision to delay a return to school was "common sense" due to the spread of Omicron and would allow more children aged five to 11 to get vaccinated now they are eligible.

"We knew the year was going to be disrupted when we start schooling due to staff numbers and breakouts in schools," Ms Grace said.

"We don't want to have a situation where parents are told at the last moment they won't be able to attend a certain school because it is shut down."

Ms Grace clarified the two weeks will be pupil-free days for teachers, who will be paid as such to prepare for remote learning or their yearly curriculum.

Students who need to attend school will be provided with supervision from a skeleton staff.

Ms Grace said "there are no guarantees" the school year won't be pushed back further and remote learning could make a comeback for all ages if Omicron numbers get too large.

'Close-contact' critical essential workers permitted to return to work

Health Minister Yvette D'Ath has confirmed critical essential workers in Queensland who are deemed close contacts will be allowed to work and the state needs to ensure critical services continue to operate ahead of the surge in Omicron cases.

Ms D'Ath said anyone identified as a critical essential worker in a critical industry, will be able to return to work if they are a close contact but must be asymptomatic, fully vaccinated and wear a mask at all times.

They will need to travel to and from work in personal transport and workers will still have to do a day six test and will only be released from quarantine for the purposes of work.

Ms D'Ath yesterday announced Queensland's public hospitals will suspend non-urgent elective surgery until March 1.

She said this will be reviewed at the end of January, and "hopefully" its end date could be brought forward.

By RNZ Dunedin’s sea lion population could be in for a record breeding season this summer, with 28 breeding age females on the Otago Peninsula.While not all of them would breed, about 20 pups are predicted this season.Department…