1A High Court jury found a man guilty of the murder of Sergeant Don Wilkinson in South Auckland in 2008. John Skinner, a suspected methamphetamine manufacturer, shot Sergeant Wilkinson and another policeman multiple times with an air rifle after discovering them trying to attach a tracking device to his car. Skinner's co-accused, Ian Clegg, was found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.

2The Maori Party is making a last ditch effort to avoid a collision course with the government over the foreshore and seabed. It has announced today that National's current policy may be 'a bridge too far' for Maori, and wants meetings with Prime Minister John Key and iwi leaders over the weekend. Key has made it clear that unless there is agreement, the existing legislation will stay.

3Ministerial Services look likely to gain greater powers to rein in misuse of credit cards. It is now clear that many ministers from both sides of parliament have broken the rules over the last decade by charging personal spending to their cards and reimbursing it later. While most current and former ministers are defending their actions, Prime Minister John Key says there has been a power imbalance between officials policing the rules and ministers' offices, and that has to change.

4Food prices have fallen by half a per cent in the past year, the first annual decrease in nearly six years. Statistics New Zealand says the prices are back to levels last seen in 2008, and in the last month there has been a big drop in the price of meat, poultry and fish.

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6New Zealand athletes are expected to bring home more Olympic medals in 2016 as a result of the government's biggest ever funding boost to elite sport. 45 million dollars over the next three years will go towards transforming the North Island Academy of Sport in Auckland into a high performance national training centre, among other initiatives.

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8The former Labour Party minister Mita Ririnui is insisting he was told he could use his credit card for personal spending despite Ministerial Services saying no minister would have been told any such thing. The rules explicitly forbid personal spending, regardless of any intention to reimburse, but Mr Ririnui says that's not what he was told at a briefing about credit card use.

9A social service agency in Dunedin is worried about the effect Contact Energy's price rises will have on the city's most vulnerable residents. Contact is raising its charges for Dunedin consumers by almost 10 per cent next month.

10The Government is looking at abolishing gift duty tax, which it says costs $435,000 a year to administer, but collects only $1.5 million. The tax is currently applied when assets worth more than $27,000 a year are gifted to other people. Revenue Minister Peter Dunne says people get around it by selling assets to trusts in exchange for debt that is then forgiven gradually over many years.

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12The government has chosen the arrival of its newest Navy ship, HMNZS Wellington, to release a summary of submissions sent to its Defence Review that was started last year. One of the most recurring arguments is for the reinstatement of fighter jets, but Associate Defence Minister Heather Roy says that would be difficult.

13The top United States and NATO military commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, has warned it could take longer than planned to drive the Taliban from its Southern heartland Kandahar.

14This week's political expenses scandal has become a lunchtime chat special: a favoured topic of conversation for just about anyone. The latest escapade here is far from unique, though.

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16The Maori Party is making a last ditch effort to avoid a collision course with the government over who owns the foreshore and seabed.

17Newly released figures on the BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico show that as many as 40 thousand barrels a day have been gushing out -- that's more than double previous estimates. The figures were released as the White House says the chairman of BP, Tony Hayward, has been summoned to a meeting with United States President Barack Obama.

18Two former Bosnian Serb army officers have been given life sentences for their role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in which about 8 thousand Muslim boys and men were killed. It is the harshest on the Balkan War ever delivered by the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal.

19Richard Joel, a former teacher who admitted sexually abusing young boys he taught at a Porirua school, is tonight beginning a jail sentence of four years and nine months.

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21New Zealand athletes are expected to bring home more Olympic medals in 2016 as a result of the government's $45 million funding boost for elite sport.

22Some South Africans are using the global media spotlight from the football World Cup as a chance to draw attention to their grievances.

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24Focus on Politics, including: Shane Jones faces an uncertain political future after revelations this week he used his ministerial credit card to pay to watch pornographic movies at hotels when he was a Labour minister. Spending by some other ministers has also come under scrutiny after details of credit card spending going back to April 2003 were released on Thursday. Are politicians living the good life at the expense of taxpayers?

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26Worldwide opinion polls suggest public scepticism about climate change is growing in particular about the concept of human made global warming. Some sceptics have been in Germany, taking their arguments to United Nations negotiators meeting in Bonn.