THREE teenage boys who spent 61 days adrift in a tiny boat in the South Pacific walked ashore on shaky legs yesterday after their chance rescue — celebrated on their home island hundreds of kilometres away as a miracle that brought them back from the dead.

New Zealand may lose the filming of 'The Hobbit' movies, with financial backers Warner Brothers making arrangements to shift the production offshore, director Peter Jackson warned today.

The skipper of a Sea Shepherd protest boat damaged in a collision with a Japanese whaling ship said today that the head of the conservation group ordered him to let the vessel sink because it would help win public support.

A powerful new 5.1-magnitude aftershock rattled terrified residents of New Zealand's earthquake-stricken city of Christchurch today, as officials doubled their estimate for repairing the damage from nearly 300 aftershocks in five days.

New Zealand’s powerful earthquake that smashed buildings, cracked roads and twisted railway lines around Christchurch ripped a new 11ft wide fault line in the earth’s surface, a geologist said today.

New Zealand’s South Island was under a state of emergency today and rocked by aftershocks after a 7.1-magnitude earthquake caused widespread damage.

A powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck much of New Zealand’s South Island early on Saturday.

A powerful earthquake has shaken much of New Zealand’s South Island, officials said.

New Zealand's Roman Catholic Church said it is investigating five new complaints of sexual abuse of children from at least 20 years ago.

A teenage girl bitten by a shark told today how she fought off the creature, smashing it over the head with her body board until it let her go.

At least three people were killed and thousands of villagers fled to shelters as a tropical cyclone battered the Fijian islands.

Stunned Samoans combed through the sodden wreckage of their lives today and told of the terror of the tsunami that ravaged towns and killed at least 149 people in the South Pacific.

At least 82 people were killed when a powerful earthquake in the Pacific Ocean triggered a tsunami which swept ashore on Samoa and American Samoa.

A fresh tsunami alert rang out in the capital of Samoa in the South Pacific today, hours after tsunami waves crashed ashore, killing at least 39 people and leaving scores unaccounted for.

Fiji's military regime will appoint new top judges early next week to replace justices sacked two weeks ago when the president abolished the nation's constitution, an official said.

Fiji’s military ruler said today the country’s president had overthrown the constitution because appeal court judges tried to “force” the nation into elections under the old race-based voting system.

Morning rush-hour traffic slowed to a crawl in most New Zealand cities today as hauliers snarled highways and streets with thousands of vehicles to protest higher road taxes.

Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd called today for international sanctions against Zimbabwe’s brutal regime.

Fiji’s military ruler withdrew today from a dialogue with a regional bloc that is pressing him to return the country to democracy, casting further doubt on his promise to hold elections next year.

New Zealand marine scientists are thawing the corpse of the largest squid to be caught, in an attempt to unlock some of the secrets of one of the ocean’s most mysterious beasts.

A New Zealand teenager accused of leading an international cyber crime network has been convicted of illegal computer hacking after pleading guilty to six charges.

A government minister said today Japan’s whaling fleet was heading towards New Zealand-controlled waters in Antarctica, in breach of an agreement to remain in Australian waters during this year’s whale hunt.

Mountaineering legend and Mount Everest conqueror Edmund Hillary was discharged from a New Zealand hospital today, nearly a week after he was admitted following a reported fall.

Global drugs and health drinks company GlaxoSmithKline has been fined in New Zealand for misleading advertising after two science students found its iconic blackcurrant drink Ribena contained no detectable vitamin C.

Officials warned of a potential environmental disaster in Antarctica after a fire erupted on a Japanese whaling ship, leaving it drifting near penguin breeding grounds on the frozen continent’s coast.

Searchers in freezing Antarctic waters found two anti-whaling activists today after their inflatable dinghy became lost in heavy fog, the international conservation group Sea Shepherd said.

Tonga’s prime minister made a bedside visit to the elderly and ailing king of the tiny Pacific island nation today, as the country made preparations for the end of one of the world’s longest reigns by any monarch.

Tribal chiefs wearing wreaths of green leaves opened a traditional mourning period today for the revered queen of New Zealand’s indigenous Maori, Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, who died after a long illness aged 75.

A New Zealand climber trying to become the first double amputee to reach the top of Mount Everest has snapped one of his two artificial legs on the ascent, his wife said today.

A New Zealand author wants to sue the makers of the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie movie Mr and Mrs Smith for allegedly stealing the story idea from his book.

Two people were pulled to safety from the burning wreckage of a light aircraft that crash-landed on a main road and burst into flames in northern New Zealand today.

Police rushed to an island near New Zealand’s biggest city today after the prime minister received a letter claiming foot-and-mouth disease had been spread among thousands of livestock there, though officials said it probably was a hoax.

The door to a plane carrying New Zealand’s prime minister blew open mid-flight earlier today, forcing the pilot into a sharp descent and emergency landing that left the leader badly bruised, but otherwise unharmed.

New Zealand broadcaster Paul Holmes, who gained notoriety for calling United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan a “cheeky darkie”, has quit his top-rating television current affairs show.

Two jets carrying a total of 268 people narrowly avoided a collision over Indonesia after an apparent blunder by air traffic controllers, Air New Zealand’s chief pilot said today.

American gunships and tanks pounded militia positions near two shrines in the centre of the Iraqi holy city of Karbala today,

A TOP New Zealand radio presenter who made racist remarks about United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan was forced off the air yesterday by a bomb threat.

Spanish paramilitary police arrested five suspected members of the armed Basque group Eta today, seizing 220 lbs of explosives.

The New Zealand government today accused some independent observers of the Zimbabwe elections of bias towards President Robert Mugabe’s government and of ignoring evidence that the ballot was rigged.

Two teenage Afghan asylum seekers who arrived in New Zealand today from the Pacific island of Nauru have been taken to prison ‘‘for security reasons’’, officials said.

The first complete broadcast of an execution in the United States will be aired on New Zealand public radio.

Servicemen ordered to walk and crawl through a nuclear test site shortly after British authorities set off an atomic bomb were not endangering their health, a top radiation scientist said in New Zealand today.