Prison authorities have caught out a 14-year-old boy who tried to take cannabis hidden in his shoe into Hawke's Bay Regional Prison.

An Air Nelson pilot sacked for sleeping with a young flight attendant and drinking before a flight has won his job back.

A pilot has won his job back after being sacked for a late-night drinking spree during which he had sex with a 19-year-old flight attendant.

Senior police have visited the final resting place of a teenager shot dead in an armed stand-off with their officers earlier this week.

Police are still appealing for sightings of a van seen in the area early on the morning when Lachan Kelly-Tumarae was fatally shot by police.

A post-mortem examination has found the 19-year-old shot by police in rural Hawkes Bay yesterday died from a gunshot wound.

A clearer picture of how Lachan Kelly-Tumarae came to be shot dead by police could take some time, with police saying the investigation will be a "slow and meticulous process".

A man shot dead in an armed stand-off with police was training with the army and had moved to Napier to escape the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake.

Tropical Cyclone Bune is making its way down to New Zealand and is expected to pass to the east of the country from Wednesday.

Police have named the man shot dead by a police officer in rural Hawkes Bay early this morning and say it appears the 19-year-old fired a shotgun first before being shot by an officer with a Glock pistol in Fernhill, about 15km from Napier.

Today's fatal police shooting near Napier is the seventh in just over a decade, since Waitara man Steven Wallace's death in 2000.

Police say it is unclear whether an armed man shot dead by an officer in rural Hawke's Bay early this morning had fired his weapon. The man was shot by an officer with a standard issue Glock pistol and died around 3am in hospital this

Witnesses have described desperate attempts to save the motorists involved in a fiery crash in Napier yesterday morning.

A car has burst into flames after crashing in Napier, leaving one person fighting for their life.

A Wellington diver who made headlines when he mysteriously disappeared from Titahi Bay near Porirua gave an elaborate account of being abducted when he turned up some 300km away two days later.

A tropical cyclone formed near Fiji today is on track to bring strong winds and heavy rain to New Zealand next week, forecasters predict.

A man who faked his disappearance on a diving trip then turned up at a Hawkes Bay police station had claimed he'd been sexually assaulted, it emerged today as he pleaded guilty to wasting police time.

People in northern and eastern areas of the North Island are being advised to take precautions as heavy rains threaten to sweep across those regions tonight and tomorrow, with a possibility of flooding in coastal and low-lying areas.

The father of the last New Zealander who was missing in Japan until yesterday thought the chances of son Peter Setter being alive were "tipping in the wrong direction", until the wonderful news of his survival, in one of Japan's worst hit