Five members of an outlaw motorcycle gang have been arrested and charged after explosives were found at a property on Auckland's North Shore. The men - aged 22, 23, 27, 31 and 33 years old - were arrested in relation to a search... […]

The toll of decades of intensive dairying and urban sprawl across some of New Zealand's best land has been laid bare in a just-released stocktake. The Ministry for the Environment and Stats NZ's latest joint report, Our Land 2021... […]

A photographic exhibition showcasing a diverse female population in Rotorua covers the walls of the Rotorua Lakes Council Galleria. It is the work of artist and photographer Katie Hoy. "This is 100 Women Rotorua. It is a photographic... […]

Wellington's house prices have jumped nearly 25 per cent since March 2020. Figures from the latest monthly REINZ report, released today, showed Wellington's median house price to be $882,700 for the month of March. This is an... […]

Armed police have descended on Auckland's Viaduct this morning after a dramatic firearms incident near a luxury hotel and reports on gunfire.Up to 20 police officer carrying guns were seen storming the Sofitel Auckland Viaduct Harbour... […]

Border workers will be told if they might be getting sick several days before symptoms with a new app being trialed by the Ministry of Health.The app, ëlarm, connects to wearable smart devices such as Fitbit, Apple Watch and other... […]

The man who raped and murdered a South Otago teenager three decades ago will spend at least another two years behind bars.Paul Bailey was declined parole when he appeared before the Parole Board yesterday for his first hearing since... […]

By RNZ The Government is suggesting limiting the amount of nicotine allowed in cigarettes.It is one of a number of proposals being put forward to meet its goal of making New Zealand smoke-free by 2025.Others include restricting... […]

The Christchurch mosque shooter who killed 51 people wanted to complain about his designation as a "terrorist entity" and his access to news and mail.Brenton Harrison Tarrant's requested judicial review did not go ahead in the... […]

The Paekākāriki Art Show is back for the sixth time this Anzac weekend after a Covid-related hiatus last year.Featuring artists mostly from Kāpiti and Wellington, St Peters Hall will be host to work from 65 professional... […]

Emergency services are responding to a two-vehicle crash on State Highway 1 near Karāpiro.The crash was reported at around 9.23am between Hydro Rd and Karāpiro Rd.A St John spokesperson said an ambulance responded and... […]

Both Takitimu Seafood shops in Hawke's Bay are closed due to an "administration oversight".Ngāti Kahungunu Iwi Incorporated chairman Ngahiwi Tomoana said the shops will remain closed until necessary paperwork has been completed.In... […]

The former doctor who brutally murdered a Dunedin teenager in her bed has died in prison.Venod Skantha died in custody yesterday - the same day his appeal against his conviction was dismissed.Police were alerted to a sudden death... […]

Three people have been charged with the murder of South Auckland woman Meliame Fisi'ihoi.Police confirmed the charges in a statement this morning.Three men aged 19, 22 and 28 have been jointly charged with murder and are expected... […]

A Wellington bouncer accused of assaulting a nightclub patron and kicking him as he lay on the ground has denied all charges.Pavali Logovae, 42, has been charged in relation to an assault that was filmed outside Wellington nightclub... […]

The Christchurch mosque shooter's requested judicial review will not go ahead today.Brenton Tarrant had sought a judicial review, which Justice Geoffrey Venning was prepared to hear in the High Court at Auckland this morning.But... […]

The Hamilton-to-Auckland Te Huia train governance group will meet next week to decide how to keep the service moving forward following a slow take up in its first week and criticism over the speed of the service.The $98 million... […]

The Canterbury District Health Board has been forced to admit there is a drug problem at their Christchurch psychiatric facility after claims a man was introduced to synthetic drugs while being treated there as a patient.This week,... […]

By RNZ Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins says he won't be putting the 4500 workers in managed isolation facilities under suspicion due to the actions of a border security guard who according to the Prime Minister "was lying"... […]

A fire that broke out in a truck in Bryndwr this morning is being treated as suspicious.Emergency services were called to the fire on Clyde Rd at 6.24am.A Fire and Emergency NZ spokesman said when they arrived the fire had been... […]

Alibaba’s run-in with Chinese regulators has made things tense for its other technology giants. […]

China sees Taiwan as a breakaway province, but many Taiwanese people want a separate nation. […]

The scheme was devised to grant a dying man's wish to avoid a ban on traditional burials. […]

A 37-year-old mother has been jailed ahead of sentencing after she confessed in court to scalding her children with hot water three times in as many days at a Hong Kong public housing estate last year. On one occasion, the woman spilled a cup of almost boiling hot water on the face of her seven-year-old son to punish him for eating slowly during dinner, the District Court heard on Wednesday (April 14). In an escalated incident two days later, the mother, during a row with her husband on the phone, poured a whole cup of hot water on the head of her 10-year-old daughter and live-streamed the assault to her husband. After terminating the call, the mother went on to burn her son’s back using the same method. The cruelty only stopped after police rushed to the woman’s flat in Sha Tin in response to an emergency call by one of her neighbours. […]

A Chinese city on the border with North Korea is looking to upgrade its cross-border trade facilities amid speculation that the two countries are moving to strengthen their relationship in the face of increased pressure from the United States. Government documents show the local authorities in Dandong in Liaoning province recently started soliciting bids for a series of projects that suggest the long-delayed New Yalu River Bridge may soon be open for use. The eight-lane road bridge was designed to replace the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge built by the Japanese occupiers in 1943, which is only wide enough for a single rail track and a one-way road. The bridge could help bring investment to an economic zone planned in Dandong, a city of 2.5 million people that stands opposite the North Korean city of Sinujiu, and boost trade with its impoverished and isolated neighbour. Work on the project started 10 years ago and it was originally due to open in 2014. Neither side has explained why it is still not ready but it is widely believed that the North Korean side was responsible. […]

The Governor of the Chinese island of Hainan said the authorities will conduct a “deeper investigation” after a scandal erupted this week over a tourist claiming that a US$35 (S$47) dish of steamed sea urchin mixed with egg did not contain any urchin meat. The incident made headlines after the tourist posted a short video on social media showing a dish that was supposed to contain six urchins steamed with egg at a restaurant in Sanya last week. In the video the tourist claims the dish contains no urchin meat at all and was just egg. Sanya, nicknamed China’s Hawaii, is among the country’s top domestic tourist destinations, making the island’s government wary of any potential threats to tourism dollars. The incident happened on the evening of Friday (April 9) last week when the tourist, identified by his surname Zhang, and four other tourists ate supper at Yunqi Guancanghai Restaurant. They ordered six dishes, including the urchin one, and were charged 2,655 yuan (S$543.50) […]

A government official in northeastern China has been fired after a video emerged of a woman attacking him with a mop while accusing him of sexual harassment.  The 14-minute video that went viral shows the official’s subordinate, surnamed Zhou, throwing items on his desk before retrieving a mop to attack the man, surnamed Wang, the deputy director of the poverty alleviation department of Beilin district, in Heilongjiang Province. While Zhou, who authorities later said has a mental illness, is beating and swearing at Wang, the man says, “It was just a joke”, while the woman raged. He then sat in his chair, occasionally wiping water from his face.  She is also seen in the video making phone calls, claiming the man had sent harassing texts to multiple women in the office.&nbs […]

A Hong Kong couple have been found guilty of murdering their five-year-old daughter three years ago in one of the city’s most horrifying cases of child abuse. The girl’s 56-year-old step-grandmother was also convicted of two out of four counts of child cruelty. A High Court jury of three men and four women on Tuesday (April 13) returned the verdicts after 10 hours of deliberations, following a month of heartbreaking testimony from family members, teachers and doctors. Murder and manslaughter are both punishable by life imprisonment, while the cruelty charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. All three defendants had no prior convictions. The father was found guilty of murder by a unanimous vote, and the stepmother was convicted by a six to one majority. The grandmother was unanimously cleared of ill-treatment of the children, but was found guilty of two counts of neglect by a vote of six to one. None of the defendants showed a visible reaction to the verdicts.&nbs […]

India ’s move, with a little help from Japan , to develop a strategically located island chain near the mouth of Southeast Asia’s main shipping lane is part of a broader plan by New Delhi to keep a closer watch on China ’s naval assets, say analysts and former Indian officials – especially its submarines. The Andaman and Nicobar archipelago of 524 islands, only 38 of which are inhabited, stretches across some 1,000km (620 miles) of Indian Ocean by the western entrance to the Malacca Strait, through which an estimated 80 per cent or more of China’s seaborne trade passes. “It is like a [permanent] aircraft carrier,” Kanwal Sibal, a former foreign secretary of India, told This Week In Asia , “that gives India very extensive control over maritime space and sea lanes of communication to monitor shipping and naval vessels.&rdquo […]

HONG KONG - Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam announced amendments to voting laws on Tuesday (April 13) that critics say favour pro-Beijing candidates by redrawing constituency boundaries, creating more electoral districts, and criminalising calls for voters to leave ballots blank. Having become Hong Kong’s least popular chief executive in the near quarter century since the handover from British colonial rule, it remains unclear whether Lam will seek re-election. She faced the largest and most violent anti-government protests in 2019 after proposing a bill to allow extraditions to mainland China. Lam announced the poll date for the electoral committee to select the chief executive and 40 of the 90 seats in the city’s mini-parliament, the Legislative Council, known as LegCo, is set for Sept. 19. LegCo elections are set for Dec. 19, while the chief executive elections are set for March 27, 2022. […]

BEIJING - China told the United States on Tuesday (April 13) to stop playing with fire over Taiwan and lodged a complaint after Washington issued guidelines that will enable US officials to meet more freely with officials from the island that China claims as its own. The US State Department’s Friday (April 9) decision to deepen relations with self-ruled Taiwan came amid stepped-up Chinese military activity around the island, including almost daily air force incursions into Taiwan’s air defence zone. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters they had lodged “stern representations” with the United States. China urges the United States “not to play with fire on the Taiwan issue, immediately stop any form of US-Taiwan official contacts, cautiously and appropriately handle the matter, and not send wrong signals to Taiwan independence forces so as not to subversively influence and damage Sino-US relations and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait”, he said. […]

US envoy John Kerry will hold talks in Shanghai ahead of a climate summit hosted by President Biden. […]

Some rare footage of two wild pandas having a fierce fight has been captured by researchers in China. […]

Each afternoon without fail, a handful of men mostly in their 60s gather at an old bicycle shed in southwest Beijing, clad in sweatshirts and track pants and ready to pump iron. […]

CHINA yesterday expressed grave concern about Japan’s decision to discharge nuclear wastewater from Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said in a statement that […]

JOSHUA Wong Chi-fung, an instigator of the Hong Kong riots, was handed another prison sentence of four months yesterday for joining an unauthorized rally and violating an anti-mask law. Wong, 24, had […]

Dong Hong, a former senior disciplinary inspector, has been expelled from the Communist Party of China for grave violations of Party discipline and duty-related laws. […]

CHINESE foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said yesterday that China firmly opposes the so-called new rules for US government contacts with Taiwan and has lodged solemn representations with them. […]

CHINA yesterday urged the United States to treat Japan’s decision to dump contaminated radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea according to the facts, rather than according […]

Chinese researchers have recently revealed the characteristics and source of the long-range movement of microplastics, or MPs, on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, known as the Roof of the World. […]

President Biden's proposal for a summit with Russia's leader means the risk of an escalation has faded. […]

A BBC team meets the Taliban, a group that clearly sees itself as Afghanistan's government-in-waiting. […]

As the pandemic rages in Brazil, hundreds of babies and young children are dying of Covid. […]

Alibaba’s run-in with Chinese regulators has made things tense for its other technology giants. […]

The cooperative firms who say their business model made them more resilient to the pandemic. […]

India's cases plummeted earlier this year, but are now on the rise again. What happened? […]

When a DNA test revealed a decades-old family secret, Maia’s life was turned upside down. […]

A minor renewal or a major overhaul? Jurgen Klopp has some serious questions to consider as Liverpool look beyond this injury-disrupted season. […]

An expert called by the defence says drugs and heart problems contributed to George Floyd's death. […]

Real Madrid's three first-leg goals are enough to knock Liverpool out of the Champions League after a goalless draw at Anfield. […]

Manchester City through to the semi-finals of the Champions League after sealing last-eight victory over Borussia Dortmund courtesy of a comeback win in […]

England all-rounder Ben Stokes is named Wisden's leading cricketer in the world for the second year in a row. […]

Coinbase, which runs a leading trading platform for Bitcoin, hit nearly $100bn in its stock market listing, before slipping. […]

A window on Real Madrid's team bus is smashed by an object thrown from a crowd of Liverpool fans gathered outside Anfield. […]

The officer who shot Daunte Wright in Minneapolis faces a charge of second-degree manslaughter. […]

"It is time for American troops to come home," says Joe Biden, the fourth president to oversee the war. […]

The 100-year-old temple clock has started ticking again after an aftershock hit the region. […]

Members of the Royal Family release previously unpublished photographs of the Duke of Edinburgh. […]

Prince Philip will be remembered in a service at St George's Chapel, at Windsor Castle, on Saturday. […]

China sees Taiwan as a breakaway province, but many Taiwanese people want a separate nation. […]