1Twenty-three people are dead and more than six thousand homeless after Cyclones Eric and Nigel stuck Fiji. Insurance companies are estimating the cost of the damage at around $100 million.

2The Labour Government's ban on nuclear warships is being challenged by the United States.

3The Kea 1 oil exploration well off the Taranaki coast has been plugged and abandoned as has New Zealand Oil and Gas's Arnold River Number 1 exploration well on the West Coast.

4Fire fighters in Auckland today tested new protective clothing which they hope will be useful for chemical fires, such as last month's Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) factory fire in Mount Wellington.

5residents of coastal villages in Hawkes Bay have sent acting Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer some of the fruits of their beachcombing - fat that has drifted onto their beaches from industrial effluent pipes in the bay.

6The International Foster Care Meeting, a conference likely to shape child care policy in New Zealand for the next decade, began in Christchurch today with 300 delegates from twelve countries.

7French President Francois Mitterrand's whirlwind visit to New Caledonia has ended with a promise that a referendum on independence will go ahead. He has also ordered the French military based on the island to be strengthened.

8Tamil separatists have blown up a train in Northern Sri Lanka, killing at least 44 people, 23 of them soldiers.

9More than a month after the Union Carbide gas leak disaster in Bhopal, people are continuing to die of delayed after-effects.

10An airliner crash in China has killed 38 people, including two Americans and one British national.

11The countdown is about to begin for the United States' first official military manned space mission, but the exact lift-off time on Wednesday is being kept secret.

12Part of the inauguration celebrations for President Ronald Reagan had to be scrapped because of bad weather in Washington DC last night.

13Chatham Islanders have marked the centenary of the opening of their first school.