Hollywood film tycoon James Cameron has made two further Wairarapa farm purchases but how much he paid has been kept secret.

A group that savagely bashed a disabled man who had been the subject of a false rape rumour will each spend at least 17 years in jail.

A quad bike rider has fled after leading police on a pursuit through the city this morning.

Paul Rush visits a site where Maori legend and ancient architecture collide to remind us of our shared heritage.

"Horrendous" is how a judge has described Jim Wilson's 21 years of sexual offending against a female victim, starting when she was four years old.

Five people were injured in a two-car crash in Wairarapa this morning.

It's "one day at a time" for toddler Caleb Skinner as doctors slowly bring him out of an induced coma, after he was allegedly seriously injured by a friend of his mother on Monday.

The mother of a Wairarapa supermarket worker bashed to death in his flat says her son had planned for a quiet night in front of the television when he was attacked.

An Owaka man was airlifted to Dunedin Hospital after a quad bike rolled in the Catlins yesterday.

A "severe'' 6.2 quake that hit the lower North Island today has toppled walls and chimneys and sent rockfalls across roads, with a building in Masterton red-stickered due to damage.

Grieving family members have identified the body pulled from a Wairarapa river as that of a missing 19-year-old swimmer.

Tegan Gadsby, 7, was gutted to find her early Christmas present from her nana destroyed.

Rural fire crews are satisfied a scrub fire on the South Wairarapa coast has been put out, but are checking regularly for flare-ups.