The invasive noble false widow spider was first spotted in Porirua last year.

The Police Eagle helicopter and ambulance crews were sent to the scene.

About 10,000 Tasman homes lost power after trees brought down lines.

The man was carried out ‘taco style’ on a stretcher in heavy rain.

Residents in North Queensland are being told to prepare for life-threatening flash floods as more wild weather hits the area.

After a heavy day of rain yesterday, Townsville is forecast to receive another 140mm and Cairns could cop 100mm of rain in just one day.

Last night 7000 homes and businesses lost power across the state, predominantly in Mount Isa.

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Parts of western Queensland could suffer 300mm of rain, with multiple flood warnings put in place by the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), including on the coast and in the interior.

Queensland Premier David Crisafulli said the state is prepared.

"I want to give people assurance that we've done a lot of work to pre-prepare for the disaster season," he said.

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"That really puts us in good stead and I am very confident about the way that we can handle events, both this one and in the future.

He also said the full impact the weather has had on farms is still unknown.

"There are certain areas that have had very large rainfall, and the impact on cattle will be determined in the days ahead," he said.

"It appears that the stock go into the event in a much better condition than they did in 2019.

"Many people will remember those images from 2019. They were harrowing.

"At this stage, it appears that the impact on stock will be far less than 2019.

"Obviously, there will be individuals that are impacted massively."

Residents in north-western Queensland, including Julia Creek and Cloncurry, are being warned the potential for flash flooding is so severe, it could be deadly.

Meteorologist Shane Kennedy said the worst of the rainfall was about to hit the state.

"We expect the bulk of the rainfall to be over the next two days… with heavy to intense rainfall across a broad area of northern Queensland.

"Around the Mount Isa region, the annual rainfall is typically around the 400mm to 500mm mark, and we're quite likely to be seeing that over just a week or two."

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The massive downpour is being caused by a monsoon trough that is set to linger over northern Queensland for several days, with strong coastal winds also contributing to heavy localised rainfall in areas such as Bowen and Cooktown.

There is the chance this flood could be record breaking, with Mission Beach already recording its biggest downpour after 360mm fell in just 24 hours.

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The weather is already causing roads to be closed, with authorities urging people not to drive in floodwaters.

"At the moment, there are 37 roads across the state that are out of action in different sections, and that shows you the impact across a large area of north and northwest Queensland," Crisafulli said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said five areas in particular would be heavily hit, and that Minister for Regional Australia Kristy McBain would meet members of the Queensland government today.

"Cloncurry, Carpenteria, Flinders, Mckinley and Richmond, are currently suffering," he said.

"There is a major flood watch on the Flinders River," he added.

The Queensland Premier urged people to use the Queensland government's official disaster website rather than Google Maps for information on road closures.

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One attendee described her day out as the ‘worst experience ever’.

Climate change worsened by human behaviour made 2025 one of the three hottest years on record, scientists said.

It was also the first time that the three-year temperature average broke through the threshold set in the 2015 Paris Agreement of limiting warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius since preindustrial times.

Experts say that keeping the Earth below that limit could save lives and prevent catastrophic environmental destruction around the globe.

READ MORE: New warnings for life-threatening flash floods as Queensland smashed by rain

The analysis from World Weather Attribution researchers came after a year when people around the world were slammed by the dangerous extremes brought on by a warming planet.

Temperatures remained high despite the presence of a La Nina, the occasional natural cooling of Pacific Ocean waters that influences weather worldwide.

Researchers cited the continued burning of fossil fuels — oil, gas and coal — that send planet-warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

“If we don’t stop burning fossil fuels very, very, quickly, very soon, it will be very hard to keep that goal” of warming, Friederike Otto, co-founder of World Weather Attribution and an Imperial College London climate scientist, told The Associated Press. “The science is increasingly clear.”

Extremes in 2025

Extreme weather events kill thousands of people and cost billions of dollars in damage annually.

WWA scientists identified 157 extreme weather events as most severe in 2025, meaning they met criteria such as causing more than 100 deaths, affecting more than half an area’s population or having a state of emergency declared.

Of those, they closely analysed 22.

That included dangerous heat waves, which the WWA said were the world's deadliest extreme weather events in 2025.

The researchers said some of the heat waves they studied in 2025 were 10 times more likely than they would have been a decade ago due to climate change.

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“The heat waves we have observed this year are quite common events in our climate today, but they would have been almost impossible to occur without human-induced climate change,” Otto said. “It makes a huge difference.”

Meanwhile, prolonged drought contributed to wildfires that scorched Greece and Turkey.

Torrential rains and flooding in Mexico killed dozens of people and left many more missing.

Super Typhoon Fung-wong slammed the Philippines, forcing more than a million people to evacuate. Monsoon rains battered India with floods and landslides.

The WWA said the increasingly frequent and severe extremes threatened the ability of millions of people across the globe to respond and adapt to those events with enough warning, time and resources, what the scientists call “limits of adaptation.”

The report pointed to Hurricane Melissa as an example: The storm intensified so quickly that it made forecasting and planning more difficult, and pummeled Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti so severely that it left the small island nations unable to respond to and handle its extreme losses and damage.

Global climate negotiations sputter out

This year's United Nations climate talks in Brazil in November ended without any explicit plan to transition away from fossil fuels, and though more money was pledged to help countries adapt to climate change, they will take more time to do it.

Officials, scientists, and analysts have conceded that Earth’s warming will overshoot 1.5 degrees Celsius, though some say reversing that trend remains possible.

Yet different nations are seeing varying levels of progress.

China is rapidly deploying renewable energies including solar and wind power — but it is also continuing to invest in coal.

Though increasingly frequent extreme weather has spurred calls for climate action across Europe, some nations say that limits economic growth.

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Meanwhile, in the US, the Trump administration has steered the nation away from clean-energy policy in favor of measures that support coal, oil and gas.

“The geopolitical weather is very cloudy this year with a lot of policymakers very clearly making policies for the interest of the fossil fuel industry rather than for the populations of their countries," Otto said.

“And we have a huge amount of mis- and disinformation that people have to deal with.”

Andrew Kruczkiewicz, a senior researcher at the Columbia University Climate School who wasn't involved in the WWA work, said places are seeing disasters they aren't used to, extreme events are intensifying faster and they are becoming more complex.

That requires earlier warnings and new approaches to response and recovery, he said.

“On a global scale, progress is being made," he added, "but we must do more.”

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The tactical move cost Vivek Goel his chance at appealing, a court decision says.

NZTA warns SH1 northbound from Wayby to Te Hana is heavily congested.

An Oklahoma man firing a gun he bought as a Christmas present has been charged with manslaughter in the US after authorities say a stray bullet left his yard during target practice and fatally struck a neighbour who was sitting on a porch blocks away.

Cody Wayne Adams, 33, was charged on Friday in Stephens County with first-degree manslaughter. He was booked into jail and later released on a US$100,000 ($149,375) bond, court records show.

Stephens County deputies were called to a home north of Comanche on Christmas Day after Sandra Phelps was shot while sitting on the front porch of a home and holding a child, according to a sheriff's affidavit. Witnesses said Phelps said "ouch," and then collapsed.

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Investigators determined Phelps suffered a gunshot wound, and she was pronounced dead about 20 minutes after deputies received the call about the shooting, the affidavit states.

Authorities contacted Adams, who told deputies he had recently bought himself a .45-caliber handgun and had been shooting at a can in his yard, located about 800 metres from where Phelps was shot.

When deputies told Adams they suspected he shot Phelps, "Adams became visibly upset and began to cry," Stephens County Sheriff's Captain Timothy Vann wrote in the affidavit.

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A telephone message left Monday with Adams' attorney, Carl Buckholts, was not immediately returned.

Court records show Adams is scheduled to appear in court on February 25 and was ordered to have no contact with the victim's family.

Oklahoma law defines first-degree manslaughter as a homicide that occurs when perpetrated without a "design to effect death" while a person is engaged in the commission of a misdemeanor.

It is punishable by up to life in prison. Charging documents allege Adams engaged in conduct with a firearm that demonstrated a "conscious disregard for the safety of others," a misdemeanor crime in Oklahoma.

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