'Atrocious conditions' were partially to blame for a horror crash in Marlborough this afternoon, which killed two tourists.

A hoax caller who rang 111 and said someone had drowned at Rotorua's Tikitapu (Blue Lake) put emergency services at risk as they rushed to the scene.

A 38-year-old man was killed when he was thrown into Ahuriri Lagoon in a head-on collision between two trucks on the Hawkes Bay expressway.

Northland's grim road toll continues after a woman was killed when a logging truck, trying to avoid another vehicle, rolled and crushed the car she was a passenger in.

A Fire Service has disagreed strongly with some earlier witnesses at the CTV inquest that there was confusion over leadership on February 22 last year.

A man in his twenties is dead after falling six stories onto the crowded floor of the Owen Glenn Building at Auckland University.

Police are trying to establish whether the death of a man whose body was found in Dunedin's Botanic Gardens today is the latest in a spate of "huffing" deaths.

21 people have been taken to hospital following a chemical spill at a tanning factory in Wanganui, two in critical condition.

Search and rescue units were told to stop scouring the collapsed CTV Building's rubble for survivors within 24 hours of it coming down.

The family of bashed Martinborough man Peter Fisher have made a plea to locals not to take matters into their own hands.

A coroner's inquest today heard from a senior search and rescue expert who described the "chaos" at the disaster site when he arrived two hours after the building's collapse.

The inquest into the CTV deaths has heard of frustrations caused by delays and chaos in the hours after the catastrophe.