Wellington - About 100 demonstrators staged a noisy protest against United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, dubbing her a war criminal, when she held talks with New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark in Auckland on Saturday.

Some wore orange boiler suits like those worn by prisoners at the US base Guantanomo Bay in Cuba and carried banners reading "USA a terrorist state" and saying Rice was wanted for war crimes, Radio New Zealand reported.

Wellington - What weather forecasters warned would be "no ordinary storm" hit New Zealand on Saturday, bringing down power lines, toppling trees and ripping roofs from houses as torrential rains flooded the Northland region.

Winds gusting to 165 kilometres an hour were recorded at Cape Brett in the Bay of Islands and officials warned people to leave the centre of Whangarei, the region's biggest city with a population of about 50,000, as floodwaters swollen by high tides threatened.

Wellington - New Zealand's biggest city, Auckland, was warned Friday to prepare for what meteorologists said could be one of the worst subtropical storms to hit the country in a decade.

"This is no ordinary storm," a Meteorological Service spokesman said. "It's one of the largest and deepest lows we've seen for some years.

"By the time this system reaches northern New Zealand on Saturday, it is likely to have significant destructive potential. It is going to deepen rapidly and has the potential of bringing damaging winds, flooding rains, big seas and strong rip tides."

Wellington - New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters hit back Friday at a series of charges of secret cash donations made to his party, dubbing them "unsubstantiated rubbish."

Peters called a press conference to condemn "a campaign of innuendo, misrepresentation and character assassination promoted by some particular interests for their own purposes."

He said that every donation his nationalist New Zealand First party had received was legal and nobody, including himself, had personally retained any of them.

Wellington - New Zealand police issued a stern warning on Friday to Auckland University students who offered 5,000 New Zealand dollars (about 3,700 US dollars) for a citizen's arrest of United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a war criminal during her two-day visit this weekend.

Rice was due to arrive Friday night for talks with Prime Minister Helen Clark and Foreign Minister Winston Peters before travelling to Samoa Sunday for a meeting with regional ministers.

Wellington - The rich are getting richer in New Zealand, despite the global financial crisis and an economy in recession, according to a report published Friday.

The richest New Zealander, businessman Graeme Hart, more than doubled his wealth to 6 billion New Zealand dollars (about 4.4 billion US dollars) in the last year, the weekly National Business Review reported in its annual Rich List supplement.

Hart, who has topped the list for six of the last seven years, heads investment company Rank Group, which paid 2.7 billion US dollars for the packaging and consumer business of the multinational Alcoa Inc earlier this year.