More than 2300 Canterbury homes feared uninhabitable; earthquake triggers record rise in heart attacks; fiery super city meeting.
NZ Herald
The paper says the race for Auckland's top job has turned nasty, with John Banks and Andrew Williams reportedly close to blows in a fiery super city candidates meeting. Fellow contender Simon Prast says he saw Mr Williams leap from his seat and come within millimetres of Mr Banks during the spat.
Also on the front page ... there's ongoing earthquake coverage, with a photo of huge craters in the ground near Kaiapoi and news of a 5.3 magnitude shake in the Hawke's Bay.
Dominion Post
Canterbury's devastating earthquake has triggered a record rise in heart attacks. The clinical director of cardiology at Christchurch Hospital says there have been a record number of patients admitted this week.
An Auckland judge will decide the fate of a 16-month-old boy in a an international adoption clash. The boy was born in Karachi last year. Two days later his birth parents gave him to their friends, both Pakistan-born New Zealand citizens, but Immigration New Zealand will not issue the child a visa.
The Press
The paper says more than 2300 Canterbury homes are now feared uninhabitable. The Earthquake Commission has 36 assessors inspecting homes, with a further 25 expected to arrive by tomorrow.
And there's the sad story of how Paris Hilton - the bovine version - lost her mother in the earthquake. The little brown calf, now named Paris because she's high maintenance, was orphaned when her mother was killed by falling boulders on a farm in the Port Hills.
Otago Daily Times
Quake damage to the Port of Lyttelton has been estimated at $50 million, with months, if not years, of restoration work needed.
Arrowtown helicopter pilot Mark Cotton had only a split second to think when his $750,000 Hughes 500 hit the water in a remote area near Milford Sound this week. Mr Cotton survived the crash.
