A woman charged with murdering her godson has formally entered a not guilty plea at an appearance in the High Court at Auckland.

A dispute over who was supposed to wash the dishes has led to a three-year jail term for stabbing a man in the buttocks.

Authorities who found the bodies of three women in garbage bags in a low-income Ohio neighbourhood ended a daylong search without finding other victims.

Javed Mills' incomplete skeleton was found at a Mt Wellington property in September 2011. James Cooper was charged with his murder in 2012.

A man has been charged with murder after a woman was found dead at a block of council flats in Christchurch last night.

Friends, family members and supporters of murdered New Zealand teacher Prudence Hockley sighed with relief at her killer's sentencing in the United States yesterday.

Was it a hate crime? Or did the jury members make the right call when they acquitted George Zimmerman of murdering Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager?

Gun-supporting Republicans in America have missed an opportunity to make their argument that more weapons make us safer.

Jurors have begun their deliberations in the racially charged trial of a US neighbourhood watch volunteer accused of murderingunarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin.

Albert DeSalvo Investigators in Boston have made a major breakthrough in one of America's most infamous unsolved killing sprees with the help of advances in DNA technology and a water bottle discarded by an unwitting relative of the main suspect.

Police have received a number of calls about a light-coloured van which may hold the key to finding the killer of Auckland teenager Jane Furlong.

David Bain does not know whether to laugh or cry about so-called "new" evidence said to clear him of murdering his family but which went unnoticed 19 years.

An Auckland man accused of killing his flatmate was legally insane at the time, according to two psychiatric reports.

The grieving family of murder victim Derek Round have expressed relief at his killer's guilty plea.

The man accused of killing veteran journalist Derek Round in Wanganui last year has pleaded guilty to murder.

Two teenagers have been charged with manslaughter following the death of an Auckland schoolboy.

Police have dismissed the Bain case "slam dunk" as an "interesting theory" which has been taken out of context.

Police have responded to new evidence that suggests Robin Bain murdered his family, saying marks on a photograph "can always be open to interpretation".

Two small marks on Robin Bain's thumb suggest that he, and not his son David, was the person who loaded the gun that killed his Dunedin family.

By the time she was 5 months old, baby Jhia Rolleston had been punched, thrown and shaken by her mother's partner.

A man arrested over a spate of home invasions targeting elderly women has appeared in the Auckland District Court today.

Parking wardens who are being verbally and physically abused are being armed with cameras to curb and capture aggressive behaviour.