The high profile coverage of Countdown's withdrawal from the Red Cross breakfast programme is a public relations nightmare.

When you have children, your whole life changes and you must try to defend your child from harm no matter what.

Every grandparent will know the electric charge that four of us experienced for the first time last Saturday.

Countdown has stopped funding breakfasts for children at 61 low-income schools.

When Confederate forces fired the first shots at Fort Sumter on April 12, 150 years ago, triggering the American Civil War, almost four million African Americans were slaves.

A foreign security presence may need to remain in East Timor and the Solomons for longer than expected.

Commitment and some sacrifices only way to fix growing social and economic problems.

Welfare agencies alarmed at extreme lengths some people go to just to eat. One desperate case of a Bay of Plenty child and his three siblings has been offered as a stark example of the degree of poverty in our communities.

The Government won't consider reductions to main benefit levels including the sickness, invalid's, unemployment and domestic purposes benefits as part of any welfare overhaul recommended by the Welfare Working Group tomorrow.

About 300,000 welfare beneficiaries who are judged capable of work will face a day of reckoning tomorrow with the release of a report.

John Key has been accused of being disconnected after saying that beneficiaries who resort to food banks do so out of their own "poor choices".

John Key says beneficiaries who resort to food banks do so out of their own "poor choices" rather than because they cannot afford food.

Maverick Maori Party MP Hone Harawira says he is "hugely disappointed" by the decision to suspend him from caucus, saying it showed "complete disregard" for the complaint process two days out from a disciplinary committee meeting.

Rogue MP Hone Harawira has been suspended from the Maori Party for what its leadership describes as a five year legacy of ill discipline.

A pub tenant is being sought for Auckland's historic Birdcage Tavern near Victoria Park.

The UN has expressed concern over shortfalls in the rights of NZ children, including "staggering" infant and child mortality rates, and a lack representation for children in legislation. It questions why NZ does not have a department of