Police trying to piece together the last known movements of a Tauranga man have received another confirmed sighting.

A 16-month-old toddler has been hit and killed by a car in Rotorua this evening.

Frustrated commuters are calling for a change in retail working hours after a motorway crash caused gridlock across Auckland.

A large glass pane has fallen out of the SAP building on the corner of Queen and Wyndham streets.

An Eketahuna farmer's wife was seriously injured in a two-car crash yesterday.

Inner-city Auckland traffic was brought to a virtual standstill after a motorway crash - gridlock that the Automobile Association described as the worst it had seen.

Tauranga's longest serving paramedic has decided to call it a day after a 48-year association with St John.

A helicopter searched at sea for a man seriously bleeding after he fell through a boat window - only for the man to be found on his boat back in the bay.

What caused a Hororata pilot to fly his glider into the side of a mountain near Omarama in a fatal crash in January last year may never be definitively known.

Homeowners could have to pay more in Fire Service levies under a proposed shake-up of the way the service is funded.

A 2011 plane crash landing could have been avoided if the pilots were taught how hard to pull a landing gear lever, a report has found.

A large scrub fire that endangered buildings in Taupo yesterday has been extinguished.

A scrub fire in Taupo which endangered buildings in the area this afternoon appears to have been deliberately lit.

Police have released the name of the man killed in a crash near Kaiapoi on Friday.

A teenager has died after being shot with an airgun he and four friends were playing with while they were drinking at a Manurewa home last night.

Three divers needed rescuing after drifting out to sea on an inflatable boat without lifejackets, a radio, cellphones or an anchor.

Almost $10,000 worth of specialist tools and 10kg of copper cabling has been stolen from the hangar used by the organisation behind the Northland Electricity rescue helicopter.

A fisherman who died after being swept down the Motu River has been identified as 41-year-old Benjamin Robert Tekira from Waimana, near Whakatane.

Two 15-year-old girls are being hailed as heroes after going to the rescue of men caught in a rip and near drowning at a Northland beach.

An unconscious 61-year-old diabetic man was believed to have been lying on a Dunedin park bench for a day and a night before he died.

The body of a 41-year-old man was found last night after he was swept away while trying to cross an East Coast river earlier in the day.

The body of a man has been found, hours after he was swept away at the Motu rivermouth near Whakatane today.

An Eastern Bay father and his 8-year-old son had to be winched to safety when large waves trapped the pair on rocks near the Whakatane Heads.