Rebecca Masters Yashee Sharma 9news.com.au Tue, 20 Jan 2026 11:55 UTC
A dingo; Fraser Island K'gari.
A local mayor has described the escalating aggression of dingoes on K'gari as police await a post-mortem examination on the body of a Canadian teenager found on the beach yesterday morning.
The 19-year-old woman told friends and colleagues at a backpackers' hostel where she worked that she was going for a swim about 5am.
Two men later found her body with significant injuries surrounded by a pack of up to a dozen dingoes near Orchid Beach, north of Maheno Wreck.
Police hope a post-mortem examination on the body, scheduled for tomorrow, will help determine whether the woman died as a result of drowning or being mauled by dingoes.
Local Fraser Coast mayor George Seymour told Today this morning the woman's death was a "shocking tragedy".
He said it had been 25 years since the last fatal dingo attack on the island but there had been "an escalation of aggressive dingo activity" in recent years.
An intense geomagnetic storm triggered the possibility of northern lights being sighted across Canada and the northern half of the United States on Monday night, along with parts of Europe, including Germany, Switzerland and Ukraine.
'Rare' geostorm showers Earth
The solar storm—which is the largest in over two decades—is the outcome of a mass eruption of charged particles that left the sun on Sunday and are forecasted to arrive Monday and Tuesday, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
A geomagnetic storm is a major disturbance in Earth's magnetic field due to a solar storm. Monday night's storm was "very rare," NOAA said.
The geostorm acquired G4 conditions at 7:38 pm GMT (8:38 pm CET) on Monday, putting it in the second-highest category, the agency added.
Spaceweather, an astronomy platform, reported that the ejection cloud covered the distance from the sun to the earth in nearly 25 hours. Usually, a similar cloud would take three to four days to make the journey.
Zane Lilley The Connexion Mon, 19 Jan 2026 20:22 UTC
Heightened tier-three weather alerts remain in force across southern France today as heavy rainfall that began over the weekend continues.
Several rivers in Aude and Hérault have burst their banks, leading to powerful currents running through towns and cities and submerging cars.
Homes in parts of Narbonne (Aude) were evacuated on Sunday evening (January 18) as a precaution against the risk of flooding. Residents of single-storey houses in two districts - Maraussan and La Mayolle - were asked to move to nearby emergency shelters.
People living in several surrounding communes were also evacuated, with military personnel deployed to assist the operation.
Schools in Narbonne are closed today and school transport has been suspended across the commune.
A very strong magnitude 6.0 earthquake occurred in the South Pacific Ocean 110 km (68 mi) from New Caledonia shortly after midnight, on Tuesday, Jan 20, 2026 at 12.02 am local time (GMT +11). The depth of the quake could not be determined, but is assumed to be shallow.The quake was not felt (or at least not reported so).
Earthquake details
Date & time Jan 19, 2026 13:02:20 UTC - 7 hours ago
Local time at epicenter Tuesday, Jan 20, 2026, at 12:02 am (GMT +11)
Status confirmed (manually revised)
Magnitude 6.0
Depth 10 km
Eight people killed in three separate avalanche accidents in Austria were citizens of the Czech Republic and Austria, authorities said on Sunday.
The deadliest incident on Saturday occurred in the Grossarl Valley in the state of Salzburg, where three men aged 53, 63 and 65 were killed. A 60-year-old woman also died after being buried by snow.
The victims were part of a group on an alpine ski course offered by the Austrian Alpine Club, the organisation announced on Sunday.
"Risk competence and safety awareness are top priorities in our courses. This accident hurts deeply," said Jörg Randl, head of mountain sports for the club.
A deadly weekend in the Alps saw six skiers including a British national die in avalanche-related incidents.
In all five incidents skiers were off-piste despite warnings from state forecaster Météo France and prefectural authorities about the risk of the activity.
On Saturday (January 10), two skiers died in Val-d'Isère (Savoie) after an avalanche buried them in 2.5 metres of snow. Members of their group skiing with them alerted authorities but they were announced dead at the scene following emergency services arriving.
A third skier died in the Arêches Beaufort resort (also in Savoie). Skiing off-piste, he was caught in an avalanche alongside a companion.
A patroller at the resort noticed from snow patterns that an avalanche was imminent. He launched his detector and soon after found the two skiers trapped in the snow.
A 5.8-magnitude earthquake struck northwestern Kashmir on January 19, 2026, triggering rockfalls and suspected landslides in parts of Gilgit-Baltistan, where steep terrain is highly vulnerable to slope failures after seismic activity.
According to the initial quake details shared by officials, the tremor occurred at 11:21 AM at a depth of 10 kilometers.
The epicenter was recorded in northwestern Kashmir near 36.80°N latitude and 74.42°E longitude. The shaking was felt across GB, as well as Islamabad and several areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, including Peshawar and surrounding districts.
In mountainous belts such as the Hunza and Nagar valleys, the quake reportedly caused debris to loosen and tumble down slopes, raising concerns over further landslides near roadside stretches. Footage circulating online showed dust clouds rising from hillsides as rocks and earth slid downward, pointing to immediate instability in the aftermath of the tremor.
A rare snowfall covered parts of the Sunshine State on Sunday for the second year in a row, while freezing temperatures will continue to grip parts of Florida into early this week.
A storm system brought up to 2 inches of snow to southern portions of Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, including Pensacola, on Sunday morning, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
The snowfall occurred almost a year to the day after parts of Florida received record snow in mid-January 2025 — when Pensacola received between 6 to 8 inches of snow.
And while Sunday's snowfall is over in Florida, a blast of arctic cold that has been felt across parts of the state since Friday is not.
Piton de la Fournaise, an active volcano on Réunion Island, erupted on Sunday, January 18, at 7:42 p.m. local time (4:42 p.m. in Paris), without any particular threat to safety, the Piton de la Fournaise Volcanological Observatory (OVPF) specified.
According to the OVPF, "the eruptive fissure(s) opened on the northern flank of the volcano ." The eruption is located in a completely uninhabited area, posing no particular threat to the safety of people, property, or the environment.
The Piton de la Fournaise volcano had been showing signs of activity for several weeks . Significant seismic activity was recorded by the instruments of the volcanological observatory.
Zoe Hussain New York Post Mon, 19 Jan 2026 11:56 UTC
A man was mauled to death by a pit bull dog inside a Staten Island home on Sunday afternoon, according to cops and sources.
Police responded to a 911 call about a vicious animal inside a home on New Dorp Lane just after 4 p.m., according to the NYPD.
After arriving, officers found a 59-year-old man who had multiple wounds on his body that appeared consistent with dog bites, cops said.
The unidentified man was pronounced dead on the scene. It's not immediately clear if he lived in the home where the gruesome attack took place or if others were inside at the time.
The dog, identified as a pit bull, was taken to the ASPCA, according to law enforcement sources.
The city's Medical Examiner will officially determine the man's cause of death, police added.
Comment: Related: Recovery continues after 8 skiers killed in avalanches in Austria