NZ@Noon: Fighting Ebola on the front line

Clair Mills, who has spent eight years working with humanitarian organisations, shows a photo of when she worked in Ivory Coast in 2006. Photo / John Stone

Stories making headlines today includes a pod of beached whales, Hairy Maclary immortalized and a Kiwi doctor heads to Africa to battle Ebola.

Northland's Clair Mills will be the first Kiwi doctor to travel to Africa to aid the fight against the Ebola outbreak.

Volunteers and Department of Conservation staff have been busy working to get a pod of pilot whales re-floated after they stranded on Ohope beach last night.

A $10,000 donation by a Sydney couple to the Hairy Maclary sculpture project has been joyously received by Creative Tauranga.

Central Hawke's Bay farmers wanting to find out how they could "make the numbers work" with irrigation water from the Ruataniwha Dam were delivered the hard sell last night.

Giving up on her dream to sail around the world was never an option for Laura Dekker. The Dutch teenager was in Wairarapa yesterday to share her experience of being the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe.

And finally, cheers rang out throughout Wanganui as Who Shot Thebarman ran into a podium place in yesterday's Melbourne Cup.