The Christchurch earthquake has generated new cooperation between Australian and New Zealand tourism authorities, with New Zealand offered a free platform to pitch for business at Australia’s major annual tourism trade show.

Overseas NZers who repay their student loans will be "acting heroically" to help pay for Christchurch's rebuild, Sir Paul Callaghan says.

A man shot dead in an armed stand-off with police was training with the army and had moved to Napier to escape the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake.

Police have named the man shot dead by a police officer in rural Hawkes Bay early this morning and say it appears the 19-year-old fired a shotgun first before being shot by an officer with a Glock pistol in Fernhill, about 15km from Napier.

Today's fatal police shooting near Napier is the seventh in just over a decade, since Waitara man Steven Wallace's death in 2000.

Police say it is unclear whether an armed man shot dead by an officer in rural Hawke's Bay early this morning had fired his weapon. The man was shot by an officer with a standard issue Glock pistol and died around 3am in hospital this

Prince Charles has comforted grieving family members of Christchurch earthquake victims in London.

Police are half way through recovering thousands of cars from the Christchurch central business district devastated by the February 22 earthquake.

Concern for animal well-being is the reason Maureen and Dick Boyd set up a cattery at Te Horo, about 60km north of Wellington.

So pervasive have been the YouTube images that few people can be unaware of Casey Heynes, the Sydney bullying victim who struck back at his tormenter.

A Wellington diver who made headlines when he mysteriously disappeared from Titahi Bay near Porirua gave an elaborate account of being abducted when he turned up some 300km away two days later.

A man who faked his disappearance on a diving trip then turned up at a Hawkes Bay police station had claimed he'd been sexually assaulted, it emerged today as he pleaded guilty to wasting police time.

Police have named a Sydney woman who died after falling over 400 metres down a slippery ice face in the Fiordland National Park. She had planned to celebrate her 39th birthday. It was left to rescuers to tell the woman's husband of her fate