The number of people admitted to hospitals with infectious diseases has more than doubled over the last 20 years, with children, elderly and lower socio-economic groups bearing the brunt of the diseases.
The sentencing of a man who took sexual pictures of a young Russian girl has been put off to next week after he became ill in court today.
Remote Powerco customers could face another three days before their power is restored in the wake of the weekend storms.
The on-off boyfriend of Keisha Castle-Hughes has been charged with assaulting the Academy Award-nominated actress following an Oscars function in Auckland.
The killer of Timaru woman Lisa Blakie will remain behind bars for another year.
All 73 hot air balloons operating in New Zealand will be urgently checked for safety issues, after a preliminary report into the Carterton balloon crash found the balloon may not have met maintenance requirements.
A Canadian tourist whose wife died when their campervan collided with a truck in Waikato today had driven on to a state highway thinking it was a roundabout, says a witness.
A serious Hawkes Bay crash that claimed the life of one and left two injured has shocked locals.
Police have handed out $150 fines for three cases of women breastfeeding while travelling in cars on the motorway, and to drivers of a number of vehicles in which children were travelling in the footwells or boots.
One person is dead and two others are injured after a serious crash on a key Coromandel holiday highway this afternoon.
A 13-year-old girl has been caught driving a stolen car with five others along for the ride, say Hamilton police.
Forty leaderless and confused pilot whales restranded themselves today about 400 metres from where they first beached on Farewell Spit, the Department of Conservation says.
A doctor and nurse ran onto the road to try to save an elderly woman who was lying face down, surrounded by blood, after being hit by a passing car in Northland today.
Up to 300 containers from the stricken ship Rena have been washed overboard and most are likely to sink, authorities say.
Police have named the two men who died after the capsizing and sinking of a fishing boat south of Bluff last night.
The holiday road toll stands at three after two crashes in the North Island and one in the South Island.
Brilliant holiday weather will be "interrupted'' with a wet New Year expected across the country, predicts a forecaster.
A logging truck has crashed on State Highway One just outside Warkworth causing 9km traffic jams.
A Wellington character known to many people simply as ''Blanket Man'' has died in hospital this afternoon.
To those who knew him, Shaun FitzPatrick was affectionately known as "Mop' , willing to do anything for friends and family.
