This week's snow storm could have killed up to 200 lambs on each Hawkes Bay hill country farm affected, Federated Farmers says.

Police say the Napier-Taupo highway will stay closed until all of the abandoned cars have been removed.

Two major highways may re-open this afternoon after unseasonal heavy snow in the last two days stranded motorists for two nights.

Aucklanders young and old yesterday searched for toddler Aisling Symes, who disappeared on a bitterly cold Monday.

Motorists who spent a freezing night in their snow-trapped cars on the Napier-Taupo Highway are rescued.

Members of Parliament are working alongside members of the public as a huge international relief effort gets under way in Samoa and Tonga.

Authorities have made contact with three Australians who had been unaccounted for in the earthquake-ravaged Indonesian city of Padang, but concerns remain for four others who still have not been in touch with officials.

When I heard John Glennie's "Gidday Blossom" on the phone this week, I knew nothing had changed.

Rescue workers had to pull a badly injured woman from the wreckage of a Great Barrier Airlines plane that crashed yesterday.

The 18-year-old killed when he fell through an ice shelf loved the outdoors and planned to be an environmental engineer.

An Auckland student missing after falling through an ice shelf on a South Island mountain is named.

The search for teh missing 19-year-old skier in the Southern Alps has been called off.

When 5-year-old Max Christie slipped out of sight 90 metres down a rocky Whakapapa cliff his parents feared they wouldn't find him alive.

Just a day after a man's nasty 60m tumble, an Australian man is lucky to be alive after a big fall in the same area.

An Auckland climber fell "like a rag doll" after slipping while decending from Mt Ruapehu's Dome Summit.

Alex Macdonald says he was kept in Tongan police custody for five days, accused of killing his skipper.