Police have once again cordoned off parts of downtown Auckland, after confirming two people have climbed to the top of the ferry building at the bottom of Queen Street.

Photos shared to Stuff show a person standing next to the flag pole atop the building.

“At this stage there is no immediate threat to the public, however police have cordoned off the area as a precaution,” said a police spokesperson. “One person remains atop the building, while the other is inside the clocktower.”

It follows yesterday’s shooting in downtown Auckland, which caused much of the CBD came to a halt.

According to Stuff, the pair broke into the building yesterday during the shooting and stayed there overnight.

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It’s here, it’s finally here. The Barbieheimer face-off might be in theatres but you need to set as much time aside as you can to devour the second season of The Bear (Disney+), a show being touted as the year’s best. While season one was full noise, the follow-up is quieter and more introspective, with characters being fleshed out as they build a new Chicago restaurant. Will that peace last? Critics say you’ll need to hold on to your seats for episode six, a flashback Christmas dinner disaster full of fork throwing and big-name guest stars, including Jamie Lee Curtis and Bob Odenkirk.

Elsewhere, Neon has a bevy of big-name shows debuting, including season five of the excellent vampire mockumentary series What We Do in the Shadows, Steven Soderbergh and Claire Danes’ acclaimed crime series Full Circle, and the Justified: City Primeval reboot. Apple TV+ has the Stephen Curry documentary Underrated, TVNZ+ has Thomasin McKenzie’s Aussie black comedy Totally Completely Fine and the grisly UK murder drama The Chemistry of Death. For those who’ve been waiting all this time, Disney+ has the first new episodes of Futurama in 10 years.

This weekend, though, is all about the box office’s big comeback. Barbie is bringing a splash of neon pink to the big screen, while Christopher Nolan is delivering nuclear thrills in Oppenheimer, aka the movie replacing Mission: Impossible 7 in Imax theatres (calm down, Tom). If they’re not for you, the New Zealand International Film Festival is underway in Auckland, and for the next two months will be heading around the country. My picks? Reality, Sisu, King Loser, House of Dankness and Past Lives. If you can’t find a movie to see out of that lot, something is very wrong.

For more try our weekly New to Streaming guide.

Support is available to those affected by yesterday’s shooting in downtown Auckland. Three people, including the offender, were killed during the attack on a construction site, while a number of people, including two police officers, were injured.

But beyond the direct impacts, many Auckland commuters were forced into sudden lockdown by the shooting, and some workers were required to hide as the offender made his way through the downtown building site.

Worksafe’s deputy chief executive of operations, Kane Patena, told The Spinoff they encouraged businesses and organisations to provide mental health and wellbeing support to anyone exposed to the incident.

“Current information suggests the incident has not arisen out of the conduct of a business or organisation and does not fall under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015,” said Patena. “However businesses and organisations are required to assess and manage any risk which may arise from the work being done – in this situation this could mean making sure people are well looked after when returning to work, including witnesses to the events.”

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the deputy prime minister Carmel Sepuloni, who is also the minister for social development, told The Spinoff that MSD may be able to provide financial assistance for counselling services if needed. ACC could also assist with mental injuries or any workplace injuries, while hardship grants may be available for contractors unable to take paid leave from work.

Additional reporting by Charlotte Muru-Lanning.

Private polling by the Act Party reportedly shows its deputy leader close behind the incumbent MP for the Auckland seat of Tāmaki.

Brooke van Velden is attempting to unseat long-serving National MP Simon O’Connor in the affluent electorate come October’s election.

While the seat is often perceived as “true blue”, van Velden told The Spinoff earlier this year that’s a misconception given no other centre-right party has strongly fought to win it. And now, according to Herald columnist Matthew Hooton, the first firm indication that van Velden’s in with a shot.

It’s been reported that the Act’s poll of 700 people showed 34% support for van Velden, just two points below O’Connor and well within the margin of error.

Interestingly, van Velden’s personal support is almost double the support for her party in the seat. Act is on 18%, with National on 49% (well above the support for O’Connor).

Read more: The growing momentum behind Brooke van Velden’s bid for Tāmaki

In a huge win for New Zealand on the world stage, The Beths’ song ‘Watching the Credits’ and Eleanor Catton’s latest novel Birnam Wood have both made Barack Obama’s extremely coveted summer lists for 2023. The annual tradition dates back to 2009 when the then-US president began releasing his summer book recommendations, and in 2017 adding similar round-ups of music, television and movies. 

“Like I do every year, here are some songs I’ve been listening to this summer — a mix of old and new,” he tweeted today. Alongside The Beths are the likes of Ice Spice & Nicki Minaj, The Bangles and boygenius. Listed with Catton’s Birnam Wood, an eco-thriller which The Spinoff Books editor Claire Mabey called “exhilarating and entirely consuming”, are NYT bestsellers Small Mercies by Dennis Lahane and The Wager by David Grann. 

This might also mean Barack Obama has finally tweeted something positive about New Zealand since he flew out of the country on March 23, 2018, a mere 5,963 days ago. Unfortunately, Chief Obama Tweet Monitor for New Zealand Toby Manhire told The Spinoff in a statement that “regrettably it does not constitute a ‘tweet about New Zealand’ unless it includes a reference to golf, melancholy kiwifruit or Max Key.” 

As for what The Beths themselves think of this honour, band member Jonathan Pearce told us: “We’re tying ourselves in self-obsessed knots trying to work out how to feel about the nod from this influential but controversial international DJ. It was so simple when we made John Campbell’s nine hour cult classic playlist ‘JC Tryna Be Alive’. Now that we make music for presidents, the stakes are raised. We think he is relating to ‘I spend all day putting out fires…’ etc etc”.

The police investigation into yesterday’s tragic shooting in Auckland will continue today, with a “priority” for officers being the formal identification of the two people killed.

Acting superintendent Sunny Patel said that it can now be confirmed the two victims were both men aged in their 40s who worked at the construction site along with the deceased offender. “Post mortems are expected to be completed in the coming days,” said Patel.

A scene examination will continue today at the site of the shooting, with a cordon in place around the immediate vicinity of the site. “[This] is expected to remain in place in the coming days, as our staff work carefully through the various building areas,” Patel said. “CBD residents and workers can expect to see a continued police presence in the area as this work is undertaken.”

One police officer injured in yesterday’s attack remains in hospital in a stable condition, while another is recovering at home. Three other people remain in hospital with non-life threatening injuries and two people have been discharged. Police are not aware at this stage of any further people presenting at hospital with injuries, Patel added.

The Māori economy is one of the fastest growing in the country, yet many tangata whenua still face major barriers when borrowing from banks to kickstart businesses. Kiwibank’s head of Māori advisory Teaho Pihama sits down with Bernard Hickey in the latest episode of When the Facts Change to discuss the issues many Māori face when it comes to accessing capital and what practical solutions his team at Kiwibank are doing to give Māori greater access to lending.

As Stuff’s Olivia Wannan reports, New Zealand’s climate pollution has dropped 9% in three years, according to new Statistics NZ data. Statistic NZ’s Stephen Oakley​ says the tail-end of the pandemic could have kept 2022’s emissions down but last year saw big drops in pollution produced by steel and aluminium manufacturing and large gains in renewable energy generation. If sustained, the drops go some way to meeting the pledge from the government to halve the country’s emission footprint by 2020.

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It’s believed the motive for yesterday’s shooting in downtown Auckland simply came down to issues within the gunman’s workplace.

Police commissioner Andrew Coster told RNZ today that while an investigation was still under way, and it would help piece together the full picture of what happened, it was the “understanding” of police that this related to “some workplace tension”.

As such, Coster said it was “likely” that the victims were known to the offender in the workplace. “We haven’t formally notified their identification [the victims] but we believe we know who they are and are working with the family towards a positive identification,” he said. “We had a huge number of staff working on this yesterday and they’ve covered a lot of ground.”

Other questions remain as to how the gunman was able to access the weapon he used in the attack, given he did not have gun licence. Coster said that New Zealand’s firearms environment “is not where we need it to be”, despite the changes implemented after the March 15 terror attack in Christchurch. “Overseas experience suggests it takes up to a decade or longer to see the benefit of [changes]. In the meantime, we have too many firearms circulating in the wrong hands,” he said.

On Newstalk ZB, Coster reiterated that the offender had permission to go to work, despite his home detention conditions. “We know that people who are employed are much less likely to offend, and keeping those situations steady particularly for a young person is a sensible thing to do,” he said. On the victims, the latest information was that they were all stable, however the police officer injured in the line of fire had a “long road to recovery”.

Police minister Ginny Andersen added that the full investigation should be completed before any further speculation about the attack and how it was carried out. But, she said, Aucklanders were safe to go about their day as normal – including attending Fifa events. “I was reassured that not only are police integrated into the whole Fifa world cup, but there is extra presence around the CBD. I want to reassure Aucklanders that the central business district is safe.”