By RNZ An Australian woman who’s being kept in managed isolation for refusing to get a Covid-19 test says she just wants more information before agreeing.Lucinda Baulch has been at the Grand Mercure in Wellington for 25 days…

The revelation that Air New Zealand had been silently contracting services to the Saudi Arabian navy was apparently not the only instance of New Zealand’s connection to the murderous war in Yemen.A week after Air New Zealand apologised…

A video circulating on social media shows the moment two motorcyclists are knocked off their motorbikes as a car with people leaning out its windows goes past. Initially it was unclear when the footage was filmed.But police this…

An Antarctica NZ 4WD vehicle that has spent nearly two decades working on the white continent has sold for more than $40,000. Antarctica New Zealand brought the 2004 Toyota Land Cruiser Troop Carrier back to New Zealand recently…

Test your brains with the Herald’s afternoon quiz. Be sure to check back on nzherald.co.nz for the morning quiz tomorrow. To challenge yourself with more quizzes, CLICK HERE.

New Zealand’s first group of border workers have officially been vaccinated.Director-general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield says today’s vaccinations of our dedicated border staff marks a significant step forward in the fight against…

A Facebook executive has apologised for accidentally banning pages not initially meant to be included in the platform's sudden ban on Australian news content.

Facebook's vice-president of public policy for the Asia-Pacific region, Simon Milner has said he is "sorry for the mistakes we made in the some of the implementation" of the controversial ban.

READ MORE: Australian Government and Facebook at loggerheads as talks continue into the weekend

"This is a really hard thing to do. We've never done it before. We are sorry for the mistakes we made in some of the implementation," Mr Milner said.

The apology comes three days after the social media giant announced it would block more than 17 million users from accessing Australian news in response to the government's push for Facebook to pay for news content.

In the process, pages of charities, businesses and government departments were also wiped.

"There's still some pages that we're looking at but some of it's really difficult in that the law isn't clear and therefore there may be some pages that were clearly not news but actually under the law they might be," he said.

"That's one of the challenges for us. We're sorry for the mistakes that we made on that front."

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg are set for another weekend of talks as the tech giant's shutdown of Australian pages rolls on.

Mr Frydenberg is so far refusing to bow down to pressure from Facebook with the government's media code expected to move into the senate next week.

"I can hear you".

Those are the first words firefighter Stephen Hirst heard as Stuart Diver called for help among the rubble of the Thredbo landslide.

Eighteen people lost their lives after a landslip carrying about 1000 tonnes of liquefied earth and debris swept away two ski lodges in NSW's Kosciuszko National Park on July 30, 1997.

Mr Diver, a 27-year-old ski instructor, was the lone survivor.

READ MORE: Remembering the Thredbo landslide 20 years on

More than 20 years later the disaster still haunts Mr Hirst, who is now Acting Assistant Commissioner for Regional Operations for Fire and Rescue NSW.

He's worked recovery on multiple natural disasters since, including the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

"It was the first time I had ever seen anything like that," Mr Hirst told 9news.com.au of the alpine landslip, adding that he was "elated" to hear signs of life three days after the disaster.

"The cold, the remoteness of the place.

"I still to this day don't know what it was that got my attention. I yelled into a crevasse, 'rescue party working overhead – can anyone hear me?'.

"Then I got back, 'I can hear you'".

Threat of landslides have increased

As Australia continues to recover from one of the worst bushfires seasons on record, a new threat is emerging.

Australia is currently in La Niña, a weather system that brings increased rainfall.

High rainfall increases the threat of landslides, Phil Flentje, an engineering geologist, told 9news.com.au.

"If you get intense rainfall in areas there have been bushfires, yes, you will have more debris flows," he said.

"Extreme rainfalls, day or week-long, one-in-150 (year) type rainfall events. They're the sort of things that can trigger landslide events.

"Fire can lead to removal of near-surface vegetation and that binds the soil to prevent against erosion on steeper slops. If that's all burnt, the soil is more exposed to run-off."

Two weeks ago heavy rain caused a stretch of highway in California to fall into the ocean.

A gaping hole was left in Highway 1 after it collapsed following a fierce winter storm, which brought rain and snow.

The areas is about a kilometre south of the burn scar left behind by the Dolan Fire.

Closer to home, hundreds of NSW residents were left stranded after a landslip occurred on Armidale Road in early January.

In Queensland, a huge landslide left a trail of destruction in the Gold Coast hinterland in December last year as wild weather raged.

And in July 2020, months after the Gospers Mountain mega-fire, a guide from the Blue Mountains Explorer group stumbled upon a landslide that had occurred near popular hiking trail the Golden Stairs.

READ MORE: 'Mega-fire' filmed climbing up cliff over 200 metres high

Dr Flentje warned the Kosciuszko National Park, the Illawarra region south of Sydney, and the South Coast are all high-risk areas within NSW.

"Landslides are a problem where there's infrastructure; urban, rail, road," he said.

"All of our mountain passes going down the South Coast of NSW have landslide problems because they traverse the steep slopes."

But there is one upside to the rain, Dr Flentje said — it can promote vegetation growth to help bind the soil.

"The risk (of landslides) is probably diminishing the more we go forward," he said.

"We've got a pretty good system of monitoring these areas, but we could always do better."

However, Australia will be back to square one in the event of another catastrophic fire season.

Mr Hirst warned one is on the horizon.

"There's still an awful lot of unburnt land out there," Mr Hirst said.

"There's masses of potential out there."

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he is "very upset" by new allegations from a second woman claiming she was assaulted by the same former Morrison adviser accused of raping Brittany Higgins in 2019.

"That's a very distressing event," he said.

The new allegations follow reports earlier this week that Ms Higgins, a former Liberal staffer, was raped by a Morrison adviser in Defence Minister Linda Reynold's office in the early hours of March 23, 2019.

READ MORE: Former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins says review 'long overdue'

Hours after security guards found Ms Higgins in a state of undress, the office was steam-cleaned.

Mr Morrison said he was made aware of the new allegations when they appeared in the media this morning.

"These events sicken me, they truly sicken me," he said.

"I think we've got a problem in the parliament and the workplace culture that we have to work on."

Mr Morrison said he "welcomed" a police investigation into Ms Higgins' complaints and maintained he and his office sought to have the matter dealt with as soon as they were made aware of the allegations.

READ MORE: Brittany Higgins: 'I didn't know they debated calling an ambulance at the time of the incident'

Australia's Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese today described the new reports as "shocking" and "distressing".

"This has been a deeply distressing week and for Brittany Higgins she has just shown extraordinary bravery in coming forward with what happened to her two years ago," he said.

Mr Morrison has denied being aware of Ms Higgins' complaint until it made headlines on major news networks earlier this week.

Mr Albanese said it is "beyond belief" that Mr Morrison could not have been aware of the reported sexual assault.

"What we need here is honesty and transparency," he said.

READ MORE: Brittany Higgins says PM's response 'deeply distressing'

In a statement released earlier this week, Ms Higgins accused Mr Morrison and other senior parliamentary staffers of failing to provide her with the necessary support following the incident.

"The continued victim-blaming rhetoric by the Prime Minister is personally very distressing to me and countless other survivors," she wrote.

"A current senior staffer to the Prime Minister and my former Chief-of-Staff refused to provide me with access to the CCTV footage from that evening and continually made me feel as if my ongoing employment would be jeopardised if I proceeded any further with the matter."

The Government has questions to answer for their own conduct."

Mr Albanese called on the Prime Minister to make public the internal review into his office's handling of the allegations at the time.

"If he doesn't, it's a complete farce," he said.

By Robin Martin for RNZ A second manslaughter charge against three police officers charged over the death of a man at a Taranaki police station last year has been dismissed.Allen Ball died at the Hāwera police station in…