1The reasons behind the early release of New Zealand heroin dealer Peter Fulcher from a Sydney jail should be known later tonight.

2Two American Navy air traffic controllers working in Antarctica at the time of the Erebus crash may be court martialed over the incident.

3Fire fighters were called out to attend to a shipboard chemical spill in Wellington today.

4Traffic accidents have claimed the lives of eleven people since the official holiday road toll began on Christmas Eve.

5Tens of thousands of dollars were stolen from a travel agency in Te Anau overnight.

6Thousands of dollars were stolen in an armed hold-up of a Mount Wellington lunch bar this morning.

7A New Caledonian group calling itself the National Committee Against Independence has claimed responsibility for one of the three explosions that rocked Noumea yesterday.

8Questions are being asked in the United States after a convicted mass murderer managed to overpower his guards while being transported between the Virgin Islands and New York, and divert a plane full of passengers to Cuba yesterday.

9Pope John Paul II has aimed his New Year's Day message directly at the superpowers, calling for a radical change in relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.

10Nobel peace prizewinner Bishop Desmond Tutu has arrived back in South Africa to a rousing welcome by both Black and White South Africans.

11British Government papers made public after thirty years, have explained some of the mystery surrounding the treatment of British soldiers captured during the Korean War.

12A huge aquarium that has been constructed in a disused sewer system along Auckland's waterfront will be ready to open to the public in a few weeks.