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A Mount Eden prison inmate accused of escaping after he allegedly failed to return from a tangi last month has been arrested following a lengthy police chase yesterday evening in South Auckland.The 21-year-old could face up to five…

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Victoria has recorded another record high number of new COVID-19 cases as the government has announced it will be distributing millions of free rapid antigen tests.

In the past 24 hours, Victoria recorded 3767 new COVID-19 cases, jumping from 2738 recorded yesterday.

Five additional people have also died as a result of the virus.

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A further 397 Victorians are being treated in hospital with the virus, up from 361 the day prior.

Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley said today's rise in daily COVID-19 cases in the state was in keeping with the projections forecast by the Doherty Institute.

He said Victorians could expect to see the number of infections continue to rise, as was being seen in New South Wales.

More than 75,000 people came forward to be tested for the virus.

Currently there are 19994 active cases of COVID-19 in Victoria.

https://twitter.com/VicGovDH/status/1475949705897017344

Mr Foley said both the Omicron and Delta strains of the virus were "circulating widely" in the community.

He recommended venues and patrons to stick to seated service and being outside where possible when out.

Mr Foley further said booster shots were going to be critical in flattening the growing curve of COVID-19 infections.

"Victorians have been here before, I'm confident we can do it again," he said.

Free rapid antigen tests on the way to Victorians

Mr Foley said using rapid antigen tests is the way Victorians could have confidence going about their day.

He confirmed the Victorian Government had bought 34 million rapid antigen tests, which would be distributed widely for free, with the first deliveries arriving next week.

"Rapid antigen tests should be free, and we will be making them free," he said.

"Rapid antigen tests should be widely available, and we will be making them widely available.

"That will be part of a process that has fallen to the states. We would much prefer a national approach … failing that, as per usual the states have had to step up."

Mr Foley said the tests were not as effective as PCR tests, but were very valuable.

"They're not the gold standard, but they're increasingly effective."

At least five people positive after attending The Ashes at the MCG

Multiple people have tested positive for COVID-19 on rapid tests, after watching Australia retain The Ashes at the MCG.

At least five people have received positive results on rapid tests after being at the Melbourne sporting venue.

They are now getting PCR tests to confirm if they are infected.

READ MORE: Victorian Government assures public COVID-19 contact tracing data can only be shared in 'life or death matters'

https://twitter.com/IzaStaskowski/status/1475900840363769859

The state recorded 2738 new COVID-19 cases yesterday.

Testing lines continue to grow, with wait times of up to three four hours for a test, and some people not getting results back for five days.

However, the Victorian government is considering an overhaul to its isolation rules, with the potential for home rapid antigen tests to clear people from lengthy quarantine, according to The Age.

READ MORE: Victoria's COVID-19 cases surge but hospitalisations drop

There are 46 new community cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand today.The Ministry of Health has just released the information.It said a total of 71 Omicron cases have been detected at the border. Yesterday, it said the total was…

People in far north Queensland have been warned to prepare for heavy rain and damaging winds as monsoonal falls approach.

The Bureau of Meteorology said the storms were set to reach southern Cape York today, before moving across the Peninsula to reach the Coral Sea tomorrow morning.

Six-hourly rainfall totals between 100-140mm are likely, with isolated falls of up to 180mm along the coast.

LIVE UPDATES: NSW COVID-19 cases hit over 11,000

https://twitter.com/QldFES/status/1475951929091969027?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Damaging winds are set to peak at about 110km/hr north of Kowanyama, extending across the northern Peninsular.

And even more destructive winds, topping at 125km/hr, could be driven by thunderstorms north of Cairns.

Flash flooding is possible.

Brisbane is looking at a top of 27C, with possible showers.

READ MORE: 3500-year-old mummy 'digitally unwrapped'

There are flood warnings in place for multiple rivers in NSW, including the Namoi and the Warrego, after ongoing rain.

Sydney has seen minor showers, with a top of 25C today.

Bushfire advice remains in place for parts of Port Hedland, Margaret River, Victoria Plains, and the City of Swan in Western Australia, although as of yesterday the DFES has stated there is no threat to life and homes.

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Temperatures remain high in Perth with a top of 38C for today.

In Melbourne it's sunny, with a top of 24C.

There's rain in Darwin with the possibility of a storm, and a top of 33C.

Adelaide will reach 33C, and Hobart 23C.

In Canberra the day is fine with a maximum of 25C forecast.

Stay up to date with weather warnings at the BoM website.

Elon Musk's rocky year in China is ending on another sour note.

The tech billionaire's SpaceX satellites are catching heat in the country after Beijing complained that two satellites launched by the American aerospace manufacturer endangered Chinese astronauts.

In a report sent earlier this month to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, China claimed that two SpaceX satellites flew too close to the country's space station this year, forcing the station to make evasive manoeuvres to avoid collision.

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The two encounters "constituted dangers to the life or health of astronauts aboard the China Space Station," according to the report, which said the incidents happened in July and October.

China filed its complaint to the UN early this month. But the episodes didn't gain widespread attention in the country until this week.

Chinese State media scrutinised the incidents, which involved satellites that are part of SpaceX's Starlink constellation — a project that promises to beam high-speed internet across the entire planet.

The Global Times, a state-run tabloid, cited an expert Monday who speculated that SpaceX may have been "trying to test China's capability and response awareness in space."

The topic also attracted some 90 million views on Weibo, a Twitter-like social media service in China.

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Users criticised the "US Starlink satellites."

One person decried the network as a "rogue project" and a "kind of monopoly in the space race."

Another accused the United States of "provoking trouble."

Asked about the incident on Tuesday, a spokesperson for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on the United States to "take immediate measures to prevent such incidents from happening again".

"It is a typical double standard for the US to proclaim the concept of 'responsible conduct in outer space' while ignoring its obligations under international treaties on outer space and posing a grave threat to the lives and safety of astronauts," Zhao Lijian told reporters.

SpaceX did not respond to a request from CNN Business for comment about the document that China filed with the UN, nor to questions about whether the company was able to communicate with Chinese authorities during the incidents.

The UN's Office for Outer Space Affairs did not immediately respond to a request from CNN Business for comment. In its report, China asked UN Secretary-General António Guterres to remind countries of the organization's treaty governing outer space activity.

The US military's Vandenberg Space Force Base, which monitors space traffic and attempts to track potential collisions, did not respond to a request for comment about the UNOOSA report.

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A space traffic problem

People across the United States are already using the new Starlink network, and it's rapidly expanding across the globe as SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites and expands its service into new countries.

SpaceX's Starlink constellation already includes roughly 2,000 satellites, and it promises to far surpass that amount.

But that satellite constellation, other similar planned projects and increasing commercial and government activity in space has contributed to a growing problem: how to manage traffic in space.

Near-misses between objects in space happen all the time. And the apparent close calls documented in China's report to the UN may be symptoms of a larger problem plaguing space-faring nations: There is not a perfect, international solution for tracking and coordinating objects in space.

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Concerns about potential collisions will likely keep growing, and activities in space will become more dangerous as humans launch more objects into orbit.

It should also be noted that Russia and China have conducted anti-satellite, or ASAT, military tests that have essentially blown up satellites in orbit and created massive plumes of debris in space.

That debris whips uncontrollably through orbit, threatening any spacecraft, space station or satellite that might cross the debris field's path.

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, pointed out that the International Space Station has had to manoeuvre out of the way of debris created by China's 2007 ASAT test several times in recent years.

In other words: Every party involved shares a bit of the fault for how crowded Earth's orbit has become.

"This is another symptom that we're in a new era — a new space age that is both much busier much tenser," McDowell told CNN Business.

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It's not clear whether the Starlink satellites mentioned in the UN report attempted to move out of the way of China's space station on their own.

During October's close encounter, according to China, the satellite's "manoeuvre strategy was unknown and orbital errors were hard to be assessed," prompting the space station to evade the satellite and "avoid a potential collision."

The Starlink website, though, says that autonomous collision avoidance technology is embedded into its satellites, allowing them to automatically duck out of the way if they detect a potential crash with an oncoming piece of space junk, a space station or any other space-faring object.

McDowell told CNN Business that based on his data, the Starlink satellite that made a close approach to China's space station in July made a slight adjustment to its path that could indicate the autonomous system was working.

But he added that those systems are hardly effective if there's not more coordination.

"If I'm in China — even if I know that SpaceX has an autonomous system — I don't know that it's going to work this time," he said. "I don't know if it's switched on."

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Musk's reputation in China

The controversy could hurt Musk's reputation in China.

Musk spent years winning over authorities and Chinese citizens alike as his electric carmaker Tesla made inroads where other foreign firms could not.

Tesla was the only foreign manufacturer without a local partner to win a big tax break for its cars in 2019, and Musk famously danced on stage during the debut of the Shanghai-made Model 3 early last year, which went viral on Weibo.

Premier Li Keqiang once even said he would be happy to give Musk a "China green card" after the American entrepreneur said he "loves China very much".

But Musk's reception in the country has been damaged over the last year by a run of bad publicity, including a recall of virtually all of the Tesla cars that have been built in Shanghai.

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The company also faced protests by Telsa owners at this year's Shanghai auto show over poor car quality and various safety concerns flagged by Chinese regulators.

Musk, who has long shown an affinity for Chinese culture, has in the meantime been on a months-long charm offensive.

In July, he applauded the government on the 100th anniversary for the ruling Chinese Communist Party, tweeting: "The economic prosperity that China has achieved is truly amazing, especially in infrastructure! I encourage people to visit and see for themselves."

That came months after the world's richest man appeared for a rare interview with a Chinese state broadcaster, heaping praise on Beijing and saying that China would "become the biggest economy in the world."

Musk has also predicted that the country will eventually become Tesla's most important market.

And his many utterances have often created buzz within the country.

In November, Musk cryptically tweeted an ancient Chinese poem that is famous in the country, and which refers to a spat between brothers. It swiftly became a trending topic on Weibo.

A 2-year-old remains critical but stable in Waikato Hospital after a near-drowning at Raglan.The Herald understands the boy got into difficulty in a pool at a property on Maungatawhiri Rd on Boxing Day.He was swiftly transported…

Egyptian scientists have digitally unwrapped the mummified remains of the pharaoh Amenhotep I, revealing tantalising details about the life and death of the Egyptian king for the first time since the mummy was discovered in 1881.

Decorated with flower garlands and a beguiling wooden face mask, the mummy was so fragile that archaeologists had never dared expose the remains, making it the only royal Egyptian mummy found in the 19th and 20th centuries not yet opened for study.

Using non-invasive, digital techniques, Egyptian scientists have used three-dimensional computerised tomography (CT) scanning to unwrap the 3,500-year-old mummy and study its contents.

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"By digitally unwrapping … the mummy and 'peeling off' its virtual layers – the face mask, the bandages, and the mummy itself – we could study this well-preserved pharaoh in unprecedented detail," said Dr Sahar Saleem, professor of radiology at the Faculty of Medicine at Cairo University and the radiologist of the Egyptian Mummy Project, in a news release.

Ms Saleem and her colleagues found that Amenhotep I was about 35 years old and 169 centimetres (5.5 feet) tall when he died.

He was also circumcised and had healthy teeth.

Some 30 amulets and a unique gold girdle were found within the wrappings.

The pharaoh also had a narrow chin, a small narrow nose, curly hair, and mildly protruding upper teeth, Ms Saleem said.

Their study didn't uncover any wounds or disfigurement that would explain the cause of his death.

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Amenhotep I ruled Egypt for about 21 years, between 1525 and 1504 BC.

He was the second king of the 18th Dynasty and had a largely peaceful reign during which he built many temples.

The researchers also found that the mummy had suffered from multiple post-mortem injuries likely inflicted by ancient tomb robbers, which, according to hieroglyphic texts, priests and embalmers subsequently tried to repair in the 21st Dynasty — more than four centuries after he was first mummified and entombed.

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Before studying the mummy, Ms Saleem had thought these priests and embalmers mentioned in the texts might have unwrapped the mummy to reuse some items like amulets for later pharaohs, which was a common practice at the time.

But that was not the case, she said.

"We show that, at least for Amenhotep I, the priests of the 21st dynasty lovingly repaired the injuries inflicted by the tomb robbers, restored his mummy to its former glory, and preserved the magnificent jewellery and amulets in place," Ms Saleem said in the statement.

The research was published in the journal Frontiers in Medicine on Tuesday.