Firefighters from all over New Zealand attended a memorial service and took part in a stair challenge in the old BNZ Tower in downtown Auckland yesterday.

The driver of a van which collided with a group of cyclists in Waikato this afternoon has told of his shock at the scene of the crash.

A woman killed in a collision with a school bus in Taranaki yesterday was a young German national.

Terrified school children screamed and cried as their bus collided with a car, its windscreen shattered and it began to fill with smoke.

A crash between a schoolbus and car has left a woman dead and an 8-year-old girl with critical injuries.

A woman who wanted to flee Christchurch after becoming embroiled with a gang and set fire in her own flat has been jailed for more than four years.

A truck laden with newspapers ignited in a dramatic fire in Canterbury early this morning.

Fire investigators are trying to establish the cause of a large blaze at an Auckland factory last night.

A 19-year-old man plunged 161 metres to his death after taking a photograph at Bowen Falls, in Milford Sound.

A 21-year-old man and an 18-year-old woman are dead after a crash in south Canterbury.

Nearly a quarter of people invoiced for St John ambulance treatment aren't paying - leaving the emergency service millions of dollars out of pocket.

Three suspects are being searched for after a Buddhist monk was attacked in a vicious robbery in south of Auckland last night.

Emergency services are attending a report of a person being hit by a car in central Tauranga.

There is nothing mellow about the new colour scheme of St John ambulances - the bright yellow makeover is a move to improve safety for staff, patients and the public.

A drunk man who's alleged to have shot his friend in the knee with an air rifle in Alexandra early this morning will face an array of firearms charges.

Police were called to the administration block at Invercargill Prison this morning after a letter was discovered to contain white powder.

A readymixed concrete truck overturned in the Auckland suburb of Avondale this afternoon, spilling wet concrete onto the road.

Government Minister Gerry Brownlee isn't impressed by parliamentary security staff doing a sniff test on white powder that arrived in his office at Parliament last week.

A man who admitted causing the death of a motorist can't remember what happened in the few seconds his car veered across State Highway 1 last year.

Envelopes containing white powder have been sent to the Wellington offices of MPs Gerry Brownlee and Peter Dunne.

More details have emerged over a bizarre incident in which a man's body was left behind at a crash scene, only to be discovered later by a passing school bus.