A widespread power outage is affecting homes and businesses in and around Hawkes Bay this morning.

Hawkes Bay real estate agent Simon Tremain says he will fight a verdict of unsatisfactory conduct from the Real Estate Agents Authority.

The Department of Conservation is taking the unusual step of declaring a total fire ban across its Hawke's Bay regional parks for the first time in 12 years.

A woman who formed a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl, then fled with her across the North Island, has been sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison.

The second brother in a Hawkes Bay family to have killed someone with a knife has been sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his father.

A badly injured man was being flown to hospital last night after the vehicle he was in plunged about 200 metres from Te Mata Peak, Havelock North.

A man left paralysed after he was shot by police in Central Hawke's Bay last year has been sentenced to home detention.

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.

A 64-year-old Hawkes Bay man died about noon yesterday when his quad bike rolled at his Porangahau farm.

"Million-dollar rain" was how Hawke's Bay Federated Farmers president Bruce Wills described yesterday's downpours which swept the region.

The first quarter of the financial year has been described as one of the worst for the Hawke's Bay District Health Board.

A "miracle" is needed for a 20-year-old Hawke's Bay man, critically injured in a weekend crash, to recover and help piece together the cause of the puzzling accident.

A dangerous prisoner who bit his partner badly on the cheek and was granted bail to attend his son's funeral has disappeared.

A man left paralysed after being shot by police near Otane has been convicted of threatening to kill the police officers who shot him.

Broadcaster Paul Holmes says he is missing work but hopes to be discharged from Hawke's Bay Hospital soon.