A MOTORCYCLIST has died in a two-vehicle crash on the Sunshine Coast.
A car and a motorcycle collided at the intersection of Meta Street and The Esplanade at Mooloolaba on Saturday afternoon.
The motorcyclist died at the scene. There were no other injuries.
Police are investigating.
MULTIPLE fire crews are fighting a large bushfire threatening homes near Rockhampton.
The blaze broke out about 2.50pm on Saturday and is burning in the vicinity of Shamrock Street, Mount Morgan.
Crews are backburning to contain the fire and protect several properties.
TASMANIA'S major bushfires have been downgraded and a major highway has been re-opened as interstate crews get set to fly in to help the fire-fighting effort.
The Tasmania Fire Service (TFS) downgraded a fire at Bicheno in the state's east to advice level, the third most serious level for bushfires. It had been at the emergency warning level earlier on Saturday.
The Tasman Highway was reopened after the downgrade.
The development means there are no more emergency warning-level bushfires in Tasmania.
Fires at Nubeena, Forcett and Lake Repulse are listed in the watch and act category by the state fire service.
A crew of 65 Victorian firefighters is preparing to head to Tasmania on Sunday night for four days.
It is feared that more than a 100 properties have been lost in the fires.
The Forcett blaze on the Tasman Peninsula, east of Hobart, has claimed least 80 properties and left thousands of people isolated overnight.
Recreational and commercial vessels were used to bring in thousands of meals and other essential supplies and to evacuate people on Friday and Saturday.
Police said 600 people, many of them visitors to the area, were likely to spend a second night at convict ruins. There were 2000 people at a temporary refuge in Nubeena and another 100 at the Dunalley Hotel.
The road into the peninsula, the Arthur Highway, has been closed since Friday.
Acting police commissioner Scott Tilyard said he was hopeful some vehicles could be escorted from the peninsula.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard threw the federal government's support behind the firefighting and support efforts in Tasmania and said disaster assistance would start flowing in coming days.
Insurers declared the bushfire-hit towns a catastrophe and police powers were increased when the Tasman Peninsula was declared a serious-incident site.
Electricity company Aurora said it could take several weeks to restore power in some areas, with 300 poles down on the Tasman Peninsula.
Property losses have been huge, with 30 per cent of the buildings in the small community of Dunalley destroyed, including the school and police station.
At Connellys Marsh, 40 per cent of the buildings are gone, along with three houses at Copping and several at Primrose Sands.
Twenty houses have been lost around Murdunna and there are reports of more at Eaglehawk Neck.
No deaths or serious injuries have been confirmed, despite conditions comparable to 1967 when 2000 homes and 62 lives were lost.
BRITAIN'S biggest-selling tabloid, The Sun, has hit back at Argentina's President Cristina Kirchner's renewed claim over the disputed Falkland Islands in an open letter to her in a Buenos Aires newspaper on Friday.
A day after Kirchner published her own open letter in two British newspapers urging Britain to give up the South Atlantic islands, The Sun placed an advert in the Buenos Aires Herald warning Argentina to keep its "hands off" the Falklands.
"Until the people of the Falkland Islands choose to become Argentinian, they remain resolutely British," The Sun said in its reply to Kirchner, printed in English and Spanish in the English-language Herald.
"British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands dates back to 1765 - before the Republic of Argentina even existed."
The letter concludes: "In the name of our millions of readers, and to put it another way: 'HANDS OFF!'"
Home to 3000 people, the windswept islands have been administered by Britain since 1833 after a British expedition took formal possession of West Falkland in 1765, according to Britain's Foreign Office.
But the archipelago, known in Spanish as Las Malvinas, is also claimed by Argentina. The two countries fought a brief but bloody war in 1982 that left 255 British troops and 649 Argentinians dead.
Tensions between Britain and Argentina rose last year on the 30th anniversary of the conflict. Kirchner has clashed publicly with British Prime Minister David Cameron over the issue.
Cameron said on Thursday that the islanders had a strong desire to remain British and would have a chance to express their views in a referendum on their political status in March.
The islanders are expected to vote strongly in favour of continued union with Britain.
Census data released in September showed that 95 per cent of residents considered themselves to be either Falkland islanders, British, or from Saint Helena, another British overseas territory in the South Atlantic.
A GUNMAN with a semi-automatic pistol has killed seven people and wounded 11 others during a drug-fuelled rampage in a slum near the Philippine capital.
The ordeal, which ended when police shot the man dead, has again raised concerns about the country's lax gun controls after the week began with two children dying from bullets fired by revellers to celebrate New Year's Eve.
Two girls, aged three and seven, as well as a pregnant woman, were among the seven confirmed fatalities in Friday's rampage, according to police in Kawit town on the outskirts of Manila where the killings occurred.
"It was random. He would fire at anybody who crossed his path," investigating officer Arnulfo Lopez told AFP, adding the shooting spree lasted for about half an hour.
Residents of the rundown town hid in their homes and gardens as the man, a former low-level local politician named Ronaldo Bae, roamed through narrow streets and a market firing what police said was a .45 semi-automatic pistol.
"As we were hiding out in the muddy yard, I was thinking about my nephews and niece (in their house)," resident Edwin Lacorte told AFP.
"I wanted to go back. The children were crying for help but what can you do, the man has a gun."
Lacorte's niece was the murdered seven-year-old girl.
Bae lived in a nearby house and most of the victims were his neighbours.
One of the others killed was 56-year-old Alberto Fernandez, who was shot as he stood on his porch, according to the victim's brother-in-law, Lito Ronquillo.
Ronquillo spoke to AFP in the narrow street where the initial shootings took place. A bullet hole could be seen in a window above the porch where Fernandez died.
Bae then walked towards a nearby market, shooting more people before returning home where police demanded he surrender, according to Lopez, the local police officer.
"He opened fire on the police. So a gunbattle ensued which resulted in the death of the suspect," Lopez said.
Bae had once served on a local council but was also a known drug dealer and had been taking methamphetamines since New Year's Eve, said Juanito Victor Remulla, the governor of Cavite province which includes Kawit town.
Kawit police chief Superintendent Dionisio Borromeo also told reporters that "paraphenalia" used for methamphetamines, known locally as shabu, had been found at Bae's home.
Friday's shooting came after the New Year's Eve deaths of a seven-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy by celebratory gunfire triggered outrage and condemnation of the Philippines' poorly enforced gun laws.
TASMANIAN police are investigating reports of a death in a huge bushfire in the state's south that has destroyed homes, and damaged a school and an RSL club.
Police say up to 65 buildings could have been damaged or destroyed in the small community of Dunalley, 55 kilometres southeast of Hobart.
Damaged buildings include the local school, the RSL club, a service station and houses, ABC television reported.
Around 15 houses at nearby Boomer Bay could also have been lost as the impact of catastrophic fire conditions in southern Tasmania begins to emerge.
Tasmania deputy police commissioner Scott Tilyard said a team was on the ground to investigate a fire crew's concerns that a man may have been trapped while trying to defend his house.
"We can't at this early stage rule out that there has been loss of life," Mr Tilyard told reporters in Hobart.
He said around 50 people were awaiting the arrival of police boats to help them leave the waterfront near the top of the Tasman Peninsula where they had taken refuge.
The Tasman Peninsula, including the popular Port Arthur tourist destination, was completely cut off by the closure of the major Arthur Highway.
Around 600 people were taking refuge at temporary accommodation at Nubeena and 1500 people were reported to have visited the Port Arthur convict ruins on Friday.
"Those people are being looked after as best we can," Mr Tilyard said.
"The main thing is they are safe."
People had also been told to leave the beachside town of Dodges Ferry.
Fire crews were monitoring potential spot fires further south at Eaglehawk Neck and banking on a southerly change due late on Friday night to stop the fire from spreading.
Huge plumes of smoke were visible from Hobart as the island capital sweltered through its hottest day on record. The temperature reached 41.8C at 4.05pm (AEDT), the hottest it has been since record keeping started in 1883.
Winds gusting to 100km/h whipped up the two largest blazes that had started on Thursday; at Forcett, near Dunalley, and Lake Repulse near Mt Field National Park northwest of Hobart.
Tasmania Fire Service (TFS) Chief Officer Mike Brown said conditions on Friday had reached the catastrophic level in the rating system that was developed after the Black Saturday fires in Victoria.
"We reached catastrophic fire danger ratings at times during this afternoon," Chief Officer Brown told reporters.
"I don't think we're quite out of the woods yet."
The threat posed by the second major fire, which authorities suspect was started by a campfire, had eased by Friday night.
A grass fire at Epping in the state's north had been contained, but reports had emerged of a property being lost near Bicheno on the east coast.
Mr Brown said the change would bring lower temperatures and higher humidity but little rain.
"Tonight we still consider that there's a serious danger," he said.
Acting premier Bryan Green said the state government would provide whatever emergency assistance was needed and would liaise with the federal government.
Authorities say smoke is likely to be visible for several hours and people sensitive to it should stay indoors.
A MAN has been charged after police allegedly uncovered thousands of pornographic images of children while executing a search warrant at a northern NSW unit block.
Police said Thursday morning's raid at Nambucca Heads led to the seizure of Apple Mac computers, portable hard drives, floppy discs and compact discs.
A 57-year-old Nambucca Heads man was arrested at the scene and has been charged with possessing child pornography.
He was refused bail and will appear in Kempsey Local Court on Friday.
A FIRE that destroyed two Ghost Gums painted by renowned Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira may have been deliberately lit, police believe.
The fire started around the trees on Larapinta Drive 16km from Alice Springs about December 30, causing them to topple over.
The trees were a stopping point for admirers of Namatjira's watercolour depictions of the Australian outback.
The Northern Territory's Minister for Indigenous Advancement, Alison Anderson, said on Thursday the loss of the trees would sadden many Territorians.
"The twin Ghost Gums were a wonderful reminder of his connection to the land and many who visited the site would have felt a connection to this great Territorian," she said in a statement.
Ms Stowe said the Department of Lands, Planning and the Environment notified police who believed the fire may have been deliberately lit.
"Only recently work was done around the trees to try and protect them from fires and allow as much moisture as possible to get to their roots," she said.
Born at Hermannsburg in the territory in 1902, Namatjira held his first exhibition in 1938 and painted for the following two decades, earning international acclaim before his death in 1959.
A LEADING insurance company says natural disasters cost the industry $US65 billion ($A62.20 billion) last year and Superstorm Sandy accounted for nearly two-fifths of the total.
However, Munich Re AG said on Thursday total insured losses from natural catastrophes were down from a record $US119 billion in 2011, when devastating earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand cost the industry dear.
The company said total economic costs in 2012 from natural disasters - including uninsured losses - amounted to $US160 billion, compared with the previous year's $US400 billion.
Sandy was blamed for at least 120 deaths when it battered eastern coastline areas at the end of October.
New York, New Jersey and Connecticut were the hardest-hit states.
Munich Re estimated insured losses from Sandy at $US25 billion and total losses at $US50 billion.
IN a scene voted the all-time favourite by James Bond fans, 007 is strapped to a table, a laser beam creeping towards his crotch. He asks his adversary: "Do you expect me to talk?"
Goldfinger exclaims: "No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die."
A poll of 2500 people in the homeland of her majesty's secret service were asked to name the best scene in a 007 film, with the sequence from 1964's Goldfinger emerging a clear winner with 10.3 per cent of votes.
On hearing the result, current Bond Daniel Craig acknowledged the scene "would take some beating".
The survey was conducted by Sky Movies HD at the end of 2012, a year which celebrated half a century of Bond films.
