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Police are investigating reports of looting in flood-affected towns in North Queensland and will deploy extra patrols to the region.

As relentless rainfall caused floods across the north, residents were forced to either evacuate their homes or take necessary precautions if they chose to remain. 

Since Sunday, police have received three reports of looting and damage at evacuated homes in Ingham, Railway Estate and Rosslea.

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Townsville Superintendent Chris Lawson said high-visibility anti-looting patrols are being conducted across North Queensland, including Townsville and surrounding areas.

"The Queensland Police Service has zero tolerance for stealing, especially during a disaster," he said.

"I am disgusted by these reports of people in our community taking advantage of this weather event and the devastation it has caused across our region.

"As we move into the recovery phase, police will continue to target offenders and hold them responsible for their actions."

Extra police have been deployed to flood zones this week and are conducting 24-hour patrols to deter anti-social and criminal behaviour.

Investigations are ongoing and anyone whose home may have been targeted is urged to contact police.

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North Queensland, particularly Townsville and Ingham, has seen hundreds of millimetres of daily rainfall which has caused minor to major flooding across the region since last week.

Two people, a 63-year-old woman and an 82-year-old woman, have died in the floodwaters and a man remains missing in Ingham.

Ingham remains inundated with homes still at least partially submerged in floodwaters. Residents who evacuated are still unable to return.

Townsville residents who earlier evacuated have been told it is safe to return home.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, the worst of the deluge is over but thunderstorms are forecast for the coming days.

Premier David Crisafulli today reiterated that the region is still in a state of emergency and urged residents to follow the advice of authorities.

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New research shows that when an asteroid slammed into the moon billions of years ago, it carved out a pair of grand canyons on the lunar far side.

That's good news for scientists and NASA, which is looking to land astronauts at the south pole on the near, Earth-facing side untouched by that impact and containing older rocks in original condition.

US and British scientists used photos and data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to map the area and calculate the path of debris that produced these canyons about 3.8 billion years ago.

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They reported their findings on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) in the journal Nature Communications.

The incoming space rock passed over the lunar south pole before hitting, creating a huge basin and sending streams of boulders hurtling at a speed of nearly one kilometre a second.

The debris landed like missiles, digging out two canyons comparable in size to Arizona's Grand Canyon in barely 10 minutes.

The latter, by comparison, took millions of years to form.

“This was a very violent, a very dramatic geologic process,” said lead author David Kring of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

Kring and his team estimate the asteroid was 25 kilometres across and that the energy needed to create these two canyons would have been more than 130 times that in the world’s current inventory of nuclear weapons.

Most of the ejected debris was thrown in a direction away from the south pole, Kring said.

That means NASA’s targeted exploration zone around the pole mostly on the moon's near side won’t be buried under debris, keeping older rocks from four billion plus years ago exposed for collection by moonwalkers.

These older rocks can help shed light not only on the moon’s origins, but also Earth’s.

Kring said it’s unclear whether these two canyons are permanently shadowed like some of the craters at the moon’s south pole.

“That is something that we’re clearly going to be reexamining,” he said.

Permanently shadowed areas at the bottom of the moon are thought to hold considerable ice, which could be turned into rocket fuel and drinking water by future moonwalkers.

NASA’s Artemis program, the successor to Apollo, aims to return astronauts to the moon this decade.

The plan is to send astronauts around the moon next year, followed a year or so later by the first lunar touchdown by astronauts since Apollo.

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Two men have been charged after antisemitic graffiti was found on walls, bus stops and signs across Perth over the weekend.

Between 6.30pm on February 1 and 7.30am on February 2, police allege the accused men spraypainted antisemitic symbols on property in the Perth suburbs of Nedlands, Dianella and Dalkeith.

Police arrested and charged two men, both aged 27, today after searching homes in Dianella and Beechboro.

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Both men were charged with multiple counts of criminal damage in circumstances of racial aggravation.

The men were expected to front Perth Magistrates Court today.

A WA Police spokesperson said the force would not tolerate "vile acts of hatred and racism to go unchecked".

"We have zero tolerance for hate in our community and we will use every measure at the agency's disposal to protect our community and bring perpetrators to justice," the spokesperson said.

WA Police Minister Paul Papalia also condemned the acts and said the state will not tolerate anti-Jewish attacks following a string of similar antisemitic incidents on the east coast in Sydney and Melbourne.

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"In Western Australia, we said it would not be tolerated if you considered any behavior of that nature," Papalia told the media today.

"If you participated, be it walking through the streets in mobs inciting violence against fellow Western Australians, or scurrying around in the dark like rats, you would be hunted down, and you would be brought to justice, and that is what has happened here."

WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch said a taskforce quickly made arrests within hours of the graffiti appearing in Perth.

He said members of the community came forward with information and footage which led to the arrests.

"The most important part of this investigation for us was that our community stood up with everyone, stood up with the entire community, and stood up with those victims of this hate," he said.

"They helped us solve the crime. Our community helped us solve the crime. They came forward with their CCTV observations throughout the night in WA, we are very fortunate to have the capabilities."

The investigation into the graffiti remains ongoing.

Dedicated patrols have been targeting areas frequented by members of Perth's Jewish community since December.

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Donald Trump's plan to "take over" the Gaza Strip and force its residents to move elsewhere has been condemned by Middle East leaders.

Trump suggested displaced Palestinians be permanently resettled outside Gaza and proposed the US take "ownership" in redeveloping the area. He made the remarks in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A statement from Saudi Arabia Foreign Ministry said Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman was unequivocal in his position, despite Trump's announcement.

"The international community has a duty today to alleviate the severe humanitarian suffering endured by the Palestinian people, who will remain steadfast on their land and will not move from it," the statement read.

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"The duty of the international community today is to work to alleviate the severe human suffering endured by the Palestinian people, who will remain committed to their land and will not budge from it.

"This firm position is not subject to negotiation or outbidding."

The statement was issued several hours after Trump's press conference with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Hamas, unsurprisingly, also condemned Trump's plan.

"Instead of holding the Zionist occupation accountable for the crime of genocide and displacement, it is being rewarded, not punished," Hamas said in a statement. 

"We reject Trump's statements in which he said that the residents of the Gaza Strip have no choice but to leave, and we consider them a recipe for creating chaos and tension in the region."

Trump did not go into great detail as to the fate of Palestinians forced out of Gaza.

Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and the Arab League, as well as the Palestinian Authority, have already rejected the idea of relocating Gazans in other countries.

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Such a relocation is unfeasible, Monash University lecturer Ran Porat told 9News.com.au.

"It's the worst nightmare of the Egyptians. It's the worst, worst nightmares of the Jordanians," he said.

"The Palestinians are the rejected children of the Arab world. Nobody wants them."

But whether Trump follows through on his plan is a big question.

"It's not clear to me that President Trump has much of a detailed plan for actually taking over Gaza, let alone sending Gazans to other parts of the Middle East," Director of Research at the United States Studies Centre Jared Mondschein told 9News.com.au.

"More than anything else this appears to be the opening gambit of a negotiation."

Mondschien said this "maximalist first step" might force Gaza's neighbours to take more of an interest in resolving the situation themselves.

"Ultimately, few experts believe that actually relocating hundreds of thousands Gazans to Egypt and Jordan is likely to resolve anything," he said.

"But it certainly makes increased financial and/or political support by Egypt and Jordan seem like less of a burden."

About two million people live in the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated places on Earth.

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