Emergency services in southern Wairarapa are busy today dealing with three car crashes, the most serious of which saw a woman flown to hospital by helicopter.

One person has died and three others were left clinging to a car roof after the vehicle ended up in a river.

Were the quakes that struck Wairarapa today and Christchurch last night caused by the weather or planets ... or neither?

Police and family searchers have found two young runaways near a lake several kilometres from their Masterton home after the pair went missing two nights ago.

Volunteers discovered the largely intact skeleton while cataloguing items at the old hospital in the museum grounds last week.

School says ban will stay until there is certainty around new Health and Safety at Work Act comes into force.

A Featherston teenager has pleaded guilty to attempting to set fire to the town's petrol station.

The skies above Carterton were a riot of colour as participants from New Zealand and around the world took to the air for the 2016 Wairarapa Balloon Festival, which wrapped up on Monday.

A Fire Service spokeswoman said the blaze broke out just before 11pm at the Murdoch James Estate Winery in a building that housed tractors.

Drivers travelling along a rural Wairarapa road could be forgiven for imagining the worst when they came across a cottage perched on the side of a bridge.

Wairarapa farmer Bill Hallett is taking a World War I commemorative march so seriously he's shaved off his distinctive, 35-year-old beard.

A whitebaiter who died when he was swept out to sea at a river mouth in Wairarapa yesterday was wearing a lifejacket.

A yacht which came into trouble in seas outside Wellington this morning is being towed into Wellington Harbour.

Shandelle Battersby checks in to a charming hotel in the Wairarapa's wine district.

Two cars have collided at a Wairarapa intersection today, closing the road.

This Wairarapa town isn't just for wine lovers and weekending Wellingtonians.

A Wairarapa man found guilty of repeatedly raping a teenager and abducting her to the countryside has had his appeal against his conviction dismissed.

Wellington and Northland will not be reorganised into "super cities" but Hawkes Bay will follow in Auckland's footsteps.

While there was an appetite for a lower North Island super city, the Wairarapa should not be included within it, Wellington's Mayor Celia Wade-Brown told the Local Government Commission today.