A young man washed off rocks while fishing at a remote South Taranaki beach began swimming to shore before another wave pushed him under, a local councillor who lives at the beach says.The man hasn’t been seen since.Brian Rook…

Multiple neighbourhoods in Shanghai were placed back under lockdown only a day after city-wide restrictions were lifted, as China's stringent zero COVID-19 strategy continues to haunt the financial hub.

Shanghai lifted its two-month lockdown on Wednesday, allowing most of its 25 million residents to leave their communities.

But nearly two million people were still confined to their homes in areas designated as "high risk" by the government.

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At a news conference Thursday, Shanghai officials said seven new COVID-19 cases were detected in the city's Jing'an and Pudong districts, resulting in four neighbourhoods being swiftly sealed off and designated as "medium-risk areas" – meaning residents will be confined to their homes for 14 days.

Their 26 close contacts and 106 secondary contacts had been placed in government quarantine, and more than 470,000 people had been tested, according to officials.

The reversion to lockdown is the latest reminder that despite the easing of restrictions, the government's zero COVID-19 policy – comprised of mass testing, extensive quarantine and snap lockdowns – will continue to dominate everyday life.

While Shanghai's businesses and shops were allowed to reopen and subway and buses resumed services, residents still need a negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours to use public transport and enter public spaces.

The sense of joy and relief from the lifting of the lockdown among residents soon turned into mounting frustration as long lines formed at testing sites across the city throughout Wednesday and Thursday.

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Some stretched for hundreds of metres in the blazing summer heat, and others lasted late into the night, according to videos posted by residents on social media.

A testing site put up a notice warning residents the wait could take four and a half hours.

Shanghai officials on Thursday acknowledged and apologised for the long wait, citing a lack of resources and facilities – despite authorities having built more than 10,000 testing sites and trained thousands of workers to swab throats.

Some of the testing sites had not been put into operation, while others only opened for a short period of time in the day and were understaffed, officials said, vowing to improve the situation.

Many residents are still haunted by fears of a renewed lockdown.

On Thursday morning, crowds were filmed fleeing from the International Finance Centre mall in the Lujiazui financial district after it suddenly stopped people from entering or exiting – a common practice at venues where positive cases are found, according to videos circulating on social media.

The mall later issued a notice saying it had reopened at 12.30pm after carrying out a full disinfection, without confirming whether there had been a positive COVID-19 case at the site.

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Shanghai's poorly managed lockdown led to widespread food shortages and lack of access to medical care, causing an outpouring of anger and frustration among residents.

But China's leader Xi Jinping has vowed to carry on with the zero COVID-19 policy, even as the rest of the world learns to live with the virus and move on from the pandemic.

On Thursday, the People's Daily – the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece – declared on its front page that "the battle to safeguard Shanghai has achieved major phased achievements" under the leadership of Xi.

"Shanghai is actively exploring new mechanisms for normalized prevention and control in the mega-city, and accelerating the return of economic and social development to the normal track," it said.

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Damages from the February floods that devastated parts of Queensland and New South Wales have been totalled at $4.3 billion, the fourth highest damage bill from a natural disaster in Australia's history.

The devastation is costing twice the amount billed during the 2011 floods in Queensland and has surpassed damages from the 1989 Newcastle earthquake.

Only 1999's eastern Sydney hailstorm ($5.57 billion), Cyclone Tracey hitting Darwin in 1974 ($5.04 billion) and Cyclone Dinah in 1967 ($4.69 billion) cost insurers more, the Insurance Council of Australia said, using values normalised to 2017.

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Insurance premiums are being pushed up substantially in the wake of the disaster, with 216,465 damage claims made so far.

Karen Kiddy from Paddington in Brisbane said despite not being impacted by the floods, she was shocked to find her latest insurance bill had jumped more than $5000.

"The lady told me that every renewal now with Westpac has automatic flood cover," Kiddy said.

The ICA said climate change was increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, impacting the availability and affordability of insurance.

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"Insurance is a matter for the insurance companies and through the federal government," Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said.

With flood events expected to become increasingly common due to climate change, all levels of government are now considering what can be done to mitigate future impacts.

The deployment of the military was considered a crucial aspect of the federal government's disaster response to the flood disaster, but Labor Senator Murray Watt said a more strategic approach was needed for the utilisation of troops.

"We want to take a good look at how much we rely on them and whether there are other ways we can make sure people get the support they need while not putting too much pressure on the Defence Force" Watt said.

But the premier and Brisbane's lord mayor, Adrian Schrinner, said the deployment of troops was crucial during Queensland's time of need.

"The army has a seat at the table and that's absolutely critical," the premier said.

Schrinner said the army provided a boost of hope for those struggling to clean their flooded homes and streets.

"When the Defence Force personnel turned up you could see it was a sense of relief," he said.

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The state agency investigating the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde has determined that the commander facing criticism for the slow police response was not carrying a radio as the massacre unfolded, a Texas state senator said on Friday.

Sen. Roland Gutierrez told The Associated Press in a brief telephone interview that a Texas Department of Public Safety official told him school district police Chief Pete Arredondo was without a radio during the May 24 attack by a lone gunman at Robb Elementary School that left 19 students and two teachers dead.

Seventeen more people were injured

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Authorities have not said how Arredondo was communicating with other law enforcement officials at the scene, including the more than a dozen officers who were at one point waiting outside the classroom where the gunman was holed up.

Arredondo heads the district’s small department and was in charge of the multi-agency response to the shooting.

He has not responded to multiple interview requests from AP since the attack, including a telephone message left with district police Friday.

The apparently missing radio is the latest detail to underscore concerns about how police handled the shooting and why they didn't confront the gunman faster, even as anguished parents outside the school urged officers to go inside.

The Justice Department has said it will review the law enforcement response.

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Focus has turned to the chief in recent days after Steven McCraw, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said Arredondo believed the active shooting had turned into a hostage situation, and that he made the “wrong decision” to not order officers to breach the classroom more quickly to confront the gunman.

Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde, complained on Thursday that Arredondo was not informed of panicked 911 calls coming from students trapped inside a classroom where the gunman had holed up.

The Democrat called it a “system failure.”

Police radios are a crucial source of real-time communication during an emergency and, according to experts, often how information from 911 calls is relayed to officers on the ground. It’s unclear who at the scene was aware of the calls.

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Uvalde police did not respond to questions about the calls on Thursday.

The news emerged amid tensions between state and local authorities over how police handled the shooting and communicated what happened to the public.

The gunman in Uvalde, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, spent roughly 80 minutes inside the school, and more than an hour passed from when the first officers followed him into the building and when he was killed by law enforcement, according to an official timeline.

Ramos slipped through an unlocked door into adjoining fourth-grade classrooms at 11:33, authorities said.

He rapidly fired off more than 100 rounds.

Officers entered minutes later, exchanging fire with Ramos, and by 12:03 there were as many as 19 officers in the hallway outside the classroom, McCraw said.

Authorities have not said where Arredondo was during this period.

Officers from other agencies urged the school police chief to let them move in because children were in danger, according to two law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they had not been authorised to discuss the investigation publicly.

A US Border Patrol tactical team used a school employee’s key to unlock the classroom door and kill the gunman around 12:50pm, McCraw said.

Law enforcement and state officials have struggled to present an accurate timeline and details of the shooting and how police responded, sometimes providing conflicting information or withdrawing statements hours later.

State police have said some accounts were preliminary and may change as more witnesses are interviewed.

Gutierrez said Friday that a Texas Department of Public Safety official told him that the Uvalde-area district attorney, Christina Mitchell Busbee, a Republican, had directed the agency to not release more information about the shooting investigation to the senator or the public.

The Department of Public Safety on Friday referred all questions about the shooting investigation to Busbee, who has not returned telephone and text messages seeking comment.

Gutierrez said on Thursday that many people should shoulder some blame in the Uvalde shooting, including the Texas governor.

“There was error at every level, including the legislative level. Greg Abbott has plenty of blame in all of this,” he said.

More than 30 people have died with COVID-19 in New South Wales and Victoria as new research shows doing CPR with face masks works.

NSW recorded 6594 COVID-19 cases and 18 virus-related deaths.

There are 1227 hospitalisations and 28 ICU admissions.

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Meanwhile in Victoria, the state recorded 16 virus-related deaths and 8445 new cases.

There are 509 people in hospital and 29 in ICU.

CPR with face masks deemed effective

As COVID-19 deaths remain stubbornly high in Australia, new international research has found it may be possible to perform mouth-to-mouth CPR while wearing a face mask to keep the virus at bay.

Mouth-to-mouth ventilation where a rescuer presses their mouth against the patient's mouth and blows air into their lungs is an integral part of life support.

"At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, CPR training in the Czech Republic and elsewhere was limited to either tuition in chest compressions alone (hands-only CPR) or schooling in bag-mask ventilation, due to concern about infection," the study said.

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Czech researchers tested masks, specifically a reusable FFP2 three-layer nanofibre self-sterilising respirator, while monitoring chest rising when performing mouth-to-mouth CPR.

Monitoring the chest rising was how researchers tested the effectiveness of transferring oxygen.

The study found more than 90 per cent of the breaths resulted in chest rising.

Dr Vaclav Vafek concluded performing mouth-to-mouth while wearing a face mask was effective more than 90 per cent of the time.

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"We cannot predict how serious the pandemic will be in the autumn and what the COVID-19 measures will be like then," Vafek said.

"Using this technique however, we will be able to continue to provide vital training in mouth-to-mouth resuscitation."

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Damaging winds are set to blow across parts of south-east Australia again this weekend as a second polar blast moves over the country.

South Australia will see wind gusts of up to 90 kilometres per hour in southern parts of the state.

The damaging wind is then set to move through Victoria tomorrow before hitting New South Wales on Monday.

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"Another mass of frigid air has its sights on Australia and some areas could see even lower temperatures, and more damaging winds, over the coming week," Weatherzone said.

"The strongest winds from this system will occur between Saturday night and Monday, with damaging gusts possible in parts of SA, TAS, VIC, the ACT, NSW and southern QLD.

"Wind should ease on Tuesday into Wednesday, although another frontal system could cause winds to restrengthen from Thursday and possibly linger into the weekend."

Residents in three states are experiencing the early bite of winter with minimum temperatures between eight and 11 degrees forecast this weekend.

"Temperatures will start to drop with the passage of the first front this weekend, before colder air continues to spread across southern, central and eastern Australia throughout most of next week," Weatherzone said.

It is the second cold air mass to travel up from Antarctica to Australia in a week.

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Over the next 10 days, most of Australia will experience cooler-than-average temperatures for this time of year.

Based on Weatherzone's forecasts, Sydney will stay below 19 degrees for the first fortnight of winter which hasn't occurred in more than 20 years.

Skiers and snowboarders are rejoicing as the particularly icy temperatures means snow resorts have opened early this weekend.

Up to 20 centimetres of snow is forecast on NSW snow fields.

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At Mount Buller in Victoria, Rhylla Morgan said there is already 45 centimetres of snow in the alpine area.

"Sometimes at this time of year we don't have any snow on the ground and those storms have just been blitzing the mountains and there's more coming this weekend," Morgan said.

"This kind of snowfall this early is pretty extraordinary."

Weatherzone warned severe weather warnings are likely to be issued this weekend in multiple states.

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