The families of the 29 lost Pike River miners say they are "gravely concerned" that the Government and police are abandoning recovery efforts at the mine and are calling for the decision to be reassessed.

The Pike River mine will be sealed and there is little or no chance of the bodies of 29 men killed being recovered in the near future, says Prime Minister John Key. He said it was "not an issue of money or time or commitment."

A Wellington coroner has recommended a local church overhaul its carpark layout after a second child was killed in the L-shaped lot.

Closing the Pike River coal mine and handing the land back to the government is the worst-case scenario, according to the company's receiver.

Northland campers ran to the aid of a man whose foot was severely injured by an outboard motor propeller.

The Pike River Mine will be handed back to the company's receivers, Police Commissioner Howard Broad announced yesterday.

No bodies have been found in a mass of cars washed under a Queensland town's rail bridge where authorities feared they would find several people dead.

Police Commissioner Howard Broad has announced police are all but giving up hope of recovering the remains of the 29 Pike River miners.

The truck driver killed in a head-on collision in the Bay of Plenty this week has been described as "the rock everybody looked to".

The heads of police and the Department of Conservation will deliver news in person today to the families of the 29 dead workers in the Pike River mine.

An 8-year-old girl lost her mother and was seriously injured when a freight train hit the family's ute, flinging it 20 metres.

Police say they are confident a body found on a lake near Rotorua this morning is that of a missing teenage jetskier.

Police and Navy divers are continuing searching into the evening for the body of a teenage boy presumed dead after a jetski accident on a lake near Rotorua, while family and friends continue to hold vigil on the shoreline.

Rising gas levels have again stopped workers trying to recover the bodies of 29 men trapped inside the Pike River Coal mine today.

Two men are dead following a crash between a motorcycle and a truck just south of Tauranga this morning.

A distressed woman screamed into her cellphone for help as the six-metre boat she and her father were on capsized and sank.