Plans to hold a topless tobogganing competition next month in the east German ski resort of Oberwiesenthal have caused a furore.

Today's unemployment figure has surprised many, with most - including the Reserve Bank, expecting a figure well under 7 per cent.

Irwin Industrial Tools had been Wellsford's icon and biggest employer, but with the factory abandoned, the town is moving on.

An official survey has found that families with children are far more likely to be in hardship than any other New Zealanders.

A British mum will be questioned after police found the bodies of her two children in her car.

One of the men accused of Dean Browne's murder had a "loose connection" to the woman who lived at the address where his body was found.

Signs of family breakdown emerge in the wake of Iceland's financial crash.

Both are loving mothers, who after years of devoted care to their disabled children felt they had no choice but to take the law into their own hands but while one was allowed to walk free from court yesterday the other will go to jail.

In the United Kingdom, calls are growing by opposition politicians and the public that the full report of the review of the case of two brothers who savagely attacked a pair of boys in Edlington, South Yorkshire, should be made public.

Most of the jobs were offering low pay and many had unsociable hours, but the applicants turned up in their thousands.