A woman is appalled it took three emergency calls to get help for an Auckland student writhing in pain at her inner-city campus.

A Thames mother gave birth in the back of a car this morning as she was driven across farmland to avoid a fallen tree and powerlines blocking the road to hospital.

It's taken 16 years rescuing patients and saving lives, but Darryl (Dazza) Sherwin has become the first Westpac rescue helicopter pilot to clock 2000 rescue missions.

Greg Brownson gets up at 5.30am every day for a 7 o'clock start. His helicopters save four people a day on average and he loves his job.

A New Zealand resident has been rescued from the Pacific Ocean after the boat he was in began sinking during a 3800km rowing race.

A man charged over a violent kidnapping and a daring escape from Auckland’s central police station will face trial.

When Marlborough Boys' College head boy Angus Pauley saw a young girl being swept away by a flooded Blenheim river this morning, he knew what he had to do.

A kayaker who capsized in wild Northland weather last night was embarking on his usual 10-minute commute home from work.

Two Hokitika men escaped serious injury after a microlight crashed on the Taramakau River yesterday afternoon.

Emergency workers have described how they watched signs of life ebb away from an Auckland man trapped inside a wreckage surrounded by live power-lines.

A contractor died after a trench he was working in collapsed, burying him, in Matamata.

Five seconds are all that stood between David Greer and death, as the farmer struggled for air while trapped underwater in his truck in the Kyeburn River.

A pensioner who lay dead in a car next to his trapped and injured wife for 15 hours has been named as Alan Henry Skittrup, 94, of Taradale.

An elderly woman lay trapped and badly injured overnight next to her dead husband after their car left a driveway and rolled up to 30 metres down a steep bank.