New Zealand's Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) team in Japan are settled in the northern part of the country and about to start work helping to find survivors of Friday's magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami.

Most of the firefighters who have worked day and night since the quake have no homes to return to.

Thousands are expected to return to Christchurch as schools reopen.

Police have this afternoon named 14 more people who died in last month's Canterbury earthquake, bringing the total number of victims police have named to 97. The official death toll remains at 166.

Daniel Vettori will continue to play at the Cricket World Cup after scans revealed he has suffered a ligament strain to the inside of his right knee.

Police tonight named 12 more people who died in last month's Christchurch earthquake. Meanwhile, The people of Christchurch remain nervous about the future of rugby World Cup games in their earthquake-ravaged city.

In the last two weeks, a highly trained group of once-abandoned dogs have proved invaluable in quake-torn Christchurch.

Search teams who were bracing for grim news had a "surreal" moment when they discovered no bodies buried in the ChristChurch Cathedral spire that had collapsed during last week's devastating earthquake.

An Australian searcher who helped remove victims from the earthquake-ravaged Canterbury TV building says bringing closure to families was his way of coping with the devastation.

The Dean of Christchurch Cathedral, Peter Beck, has told of his elation upon hearing no bodies had been found in the wreckage of the cathedral and its collapsed spire.

Rescuers were on the verge of recovering bodies from the Christchurch Cathedral's collapsed spire last night, after 10 painstaking days spent securing the fragile structure.

Searchers are close to entering the collapsed spire of Christchurch Cathedral, where up to 22 people are believed to have been killed during last week's 6.3-magnitude earthquake in Christchurch.

A time frame's been put on the expected length of rescue operations at some of Christchurch's worst-affected buildings.

Teams from across globe touched by city's loss toil side by side amidst rubble.