A New Plymouth man is dead and another had to be cut out from a car after losing control while drag racing on a rural Taranaki road last night.

Nearly half of all senior drivers referred by doctors for on-road competency tests this year have failed, Transport Ministry figures reveal.

The 38-year-old Italian man who died in a skydiving accident while filming a tandem jump in Wanaka yesterday has been named.

An Italian man is dead after his parachute failed to open on a skydiving flight and he crashed to his death in front of a horrified Wanaka man.

A two-year-old boy died after being hit by a vehicle in a driveway in Papakura, an incident believed to have happened at the home of the toddler's grandparents.

A forestry worker has been airlifted from a remote spot in Marlborough after being hit by a log.

Covered in blood and glass, George Jones kept telling himself "I'm going to be okay" as firemen worked to free him from his mangled vehicle.

A woman had to be cut from a Rainbow's End theme park ride by firefighters yesterday after her leg became trapped between the carriage and a wooden fence.

A New Zealand man who had worked as a top United Nations environmental lawyer has died after a fall from a balcony in Germany.

A woman has been taken to hospital after being injured in a ride at theme park Rainbow's End.

A young boy is nursing bruises and grazes after he was clipped by a car while playing a deadly game of chicken as he waited for a school bus.

More than half of home building sites inspected in a safety clampdown have been closed or ordered to stop dangerous practices.

A surge in the number of older people being killed or seriously injured on the roads is being blamed on their fragility and New Zealand's ageing population.

A man who chipped his spine and broke his pelvis after falling into a blowhole on Auckland's west coast hopes to contact the mystery hero who saved his life.

The mother of a 5-year-old shot dead in Samoa is struggling to believe her son has died, shot at the hands of his 8-year-old cousin.