A South Auckland woman has admitted abducting a 5-day-old baby from Middlemore Hospital.

A man who allegedly tried to entice a nine-year-old girl into his ute as she walked home from school in Hamilton on Thursday is being sought by police.

A teenager who was tied up and told her throat was going to be slit had to climb across balconies nine floors high to escape her attacker, a court has heard.

Islamic militants Boko Haram had abducted more 200 teenagers from a Nigerian school in April.

The woman accused of abducting a 5-day-old baby from Middlemore Hospital can now be named after she appeared in court today - her birthday.

A woman accused of abducting her infant daughter in the US in 1994 and living a secret life in New Zealand and Australia under an alias, has appeared in a South Carolina court.

A former North Shore woman charged with kidnapping her daughter has been extradited to America.

The mother of a newborn baby that was abducted from Middlemore hospital in 2012 says she is shocked it has happened again.

Middlemore Hospital says improved security systems from the last baby kidnapping helped a speedy resolution to last night's abduction of a five-day-old.

Police are hunting for a five-day-old baby who was kidnapped from Middlemore Hospital earlier this evening.

A schoolgirl escaped an attempted kidnapping in Mt Maunganui yesterday, police say.

A father has today admitted abducting his young son from Dunedin and driving away at speeds of up to 170km/h north of Christchurch.

A secret, failed mission by the United States military to rescue American hostages, including the murdered journalist James Foley, has been described in full to the Daily Telegraph.

Police are investigating the kidnapping of a 33-year-old woman who was forced to drive around Whangarei with a man who threatened her with a knife in the car.

An open-ended sentence is being considered for a teenager who raped a 17-year old woman and a young girl who jumped out of a speeding car to escape him.

A man whose body was found buried in a shallow grave months after he disappeared was bashed with a taiaha, a court has been told.

A girl who spent several months last year as a hostage of Boko Haram has told how she was ordered to fight alongside the Islamists in ambushes on the Nigerian military.

The father of one of the Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram has spoken of the "other worldly" moment when he saw his daughter's face on the hostage video released by the group.

A wealthy Briton has been arrested in Spain on suspicion of holding a group of women against their will and fathering at least seven children with them.

One of the teenagers who escaped from the Islamic extremist group that abducted more than 300 schoolgirls has said the kidnapping was "too terrifying for words".

'She's a brave wee girl', say police of an eight-year-old who was grabbed from her driveway and put in a car before she managed to escape.

Pressure is growing for Western military drones to be used in the hunt for more than 200 schoolgirls abducted in Nigeria, as the terrorist thought to be holding them threatens to "marry off" girls aged as young as 9.

Western countries are in talks with Nigerian security forces to help rescue hundreds of kidnapped schoolgirls still missing three weeks after they were seized.

Nigerian troops were reported to be massing for an assault to try to free hundreds of schoolgirls kidnapped by a militant Islamist group.

The moment that Mary Quin thought she would die was in a gunfight with an AK-47 jammed into her spine.

A 10-year-old British girl was sexually assaulted in Praia da Luz in 2005 - possibly by a man who is now a key suspect in Madeleine McCann's disappearance, the Metropolitan Police have revealed.

A radical Islamic cleric standing trial in New York on global terrorism charges will come face-to-face with a NZ woman caught in a terrifying kidnapping decades ago.