1The Minister of Finance, Bill English has released details of a massive blowout in the Government's finances and cast further doubt on promised tax cuts. Speaking to a business audience in Auckland he said those cuts need to be seen against the backdrop of rapid deterioration of the Government's books.

2The Crown says former MP Taito Phillip Field deliberately lied to the Ingram inquiry and got others to do the same to derail any future police investigation. It has opened its case against Mr. Field who faces 12 charges of bribery and corruption and 23 of wilfully perverting the course of justice.

3Inland Revenue has announced plans to slash up to 250 jobs and at this stage says it will be asking for voluntary redundancies. The Department says it is tightening its belt because of the economic downturn, and that it is reviewing its resources on projects such as KiwiSaver.

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5The High Court jury hearing David Bain's retrial has heard about the strange relationship between Laniet and David, and that she was considered to be obsessive of him. Bain is being retried for the murders of his parents and three siblings in Dunedin in 1994.

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7Sri Lankan forces are reportedly within hours of ending the long running civil war with the Tamil Tigers. The rebels are making their last stand in a small area in the north of the country.

8The polls in South Africa have just opened in what may be the most competitive election since the end of apartheid in 1994.

9The Government wants to settle all historical treaty negotiations by 2014 and has put forward a new plan to make this happen. The Prime Minister John Key and Minister of Treaty Negotiations Chris Findlayson, presented 7 proposals to a hui of around 120 at Te Wananga O Aotearoa in Mangere today.

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11Fiji's magistrates courts are back in business, but at the same time people in Suva still feel restricted in what they can say.

12Ports of Auckland plans to lay off thirty staff as part of major restructuring. The company currently has its stevedoring staff split between two terminals and says it intends on moving them all to one.

13European astronomers searching for Earth-like planets have zeroed in on two potential targets.

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15Hundreds of Aucklanders have been demonstrating in Waitakere against the government's plan for an Auckland 'super' city.

16Former Wellington taxi driver Abdirazak Yussuf Mussa, found guilty of raping a teenaged passenger is tonight beginning a 9-year jail term.

17Pokie machine profits are suffering a downward slide with new figures showing revenue has dropped by almost 10% for this quarter.

18A book collection owned by British born librarian Edward Simpson who died in 1979 was auctioned today.

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20The British Government is pledging to carry out new research into the health of veterans of British nuclear tests and their descendats.

21For the first time in at least half a century a Queensland woman's been charged with organising a pregnancy termination on herself.

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23The Red Cross in Sri Lanka is pleading for the lives of tens of thousands civilians trapped in the Sri Lankan jungle.

24The United States Treasury Secretary has been grilled by a panel formed to try and track how the bail out fund is being spent. Timothy Geithner says there is a good chunk of the fund left and Congress will not ask for more money.

25Ports of Auckland plans to lay off thirty staff as part of major restructuring. The company currently has its stevedoring staff split between two terminals and says it intends on moving them all to one.

26Waatea News

27The government says a gap year in the military for school leavers could be an answer to recruitment woes facing the defence forces and other related departments. The idea will be explored in a study on voluntary military service as part of a review of the military services announced by the government yesterday.

28United States President Barak Obama has announced a new round of diplomacy aimed at reviving the Middle East peace process, he's invited the Egyptian, Israeli and Palestinian leaders to Washington.