Blues rugby player Rene Ranger has lost an appeal to maintain name suppression while facing two charges of injuring with intent.

Two years after escaping her underground prison, she lives in a brightly painted house in a tiny hamlet referred to as "Village X".

A one-armed man went on a violent rampage yesterday, committing a string of random assaults on Auckland's busy city streets just before noon.

A shop assistant was held at gunpoint last night - prompting the widow of a slain liquor store owner to call for imitation firearms to be banned from sale.

The two sisters who rescued Tuakau policeman John Connolly from a savage beating say they are being bullied out of town.

One of NZ's most dangerous sex criminals attacked two women while on parole and under Corrections Department supervision.

A man appeared in court this morning charged with the murder of Harold Skudder after police received new information yesterday.

A young father was stabbed with a steak knife and bitten after he confronted two burglars - both young women - in an incident police say could easily have ended in tragedy.

A woman's trial for murdering a three-year-old boy in her care was abandoned today after four weeks because a key medical witness was too ill to give evidence.

An eyewitness to an attack on school principal and councillor Hawea Vercoe, told a court his head was kicked like a rugby ball.

A man allegedly used his car to ram an ambulance and police cars before threatening police with a baseball bat on Saturday night, police say.

A 5-year-old and two 6-year-old boys were apprehended by police for sexual assault last year.

One of two teens severely injured in a brutal assault in an Auckland park has spoken for the first time of the night he almost died.

A professional rugby player facing assault charges after a bar incident in October cannot be named, despite a judge lifting a suppression order.