1State servants are to receive an 8% pay rise, which will take effect on November 10th. A stop work meeting of several thousand State servants, planned for next week, has now been called off.

2Share prices fell considerably today.

3Federation of Labour (FOL) President Jim Knox has wound up the Labour Party conference with an attack on the Government's economic record. Deputy Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer says he will not be negotiating the Government's anti nuclear policy when he invites the United States to send a warship to New Zealand.

4Opposition leader Jim McLay has denied a claim that the National Party asked the United States to help it fund its 1984 election campaign.

5Two people were hospitalised last night after falling from a gondola in Queenstown.

6Prime Minister David Lange has accused France of harbouring fugitives and has increased pressure on France to hand over the three Secret Service Agents, charged by New Zealand Police with the Rainbow Warrior bombing.

7The Navy (RNZAF) has denied suggestions that the frigate Canterbury will join the peace flotilla when it reaches Mururoa Atoll.

8South Canterbury's Hakataramea Valley may be declared a disaster zone.

9South Africa has frozen foreign debt repayments for four months because of a "cash-flow crisis".

10Black mourners returning from a funeral service for riot victims in the South African city of East London, are said to have attacked a car, killing two White people and injuring the others.

11Los Angeles Police are confident they have caught the serial killer known as the Night Stalker, who has terrorised the city for five months. He is wanted for 16 murders, 20 assaults and numerous rapes, as well as other crimes.

12Around 250,000 beachfront residents have been forced to flee from their Florida homes for a second time in three days, to escape Hurricane Eleanor.

13Two American astronauts have made a spacewalk to complete electrical repairs on a faulty military communications satellite.

14Tens of thousands of Auckland commuters appear to have had little trouble coping with the ongoing Auckland Regional Council (ARA) bus drivers' strike.

15Traffic officers say the increased open road speed limit has increased the average driving speed by only one kilometre an hour since its introduction a month ago.

16Writs alleging libel have been filed against Hauraki MP, Graeme Lee by the publisher of the gay magazine Out!

17Free Hepatitis B vaccinations are now available to newborn babies whose mothers are carriers of the disease.

18Minister of Health Dr Michael Bassett has written to 400 Auckland junior doctors, urging them to reconsider their strike threat.

19New Zealand's first Health Board sat today in Whangarei and elected Dr Donald Beazley as its Chairman. The new Health Board results from a merger of the Northland Hospital Board and the Health Department in Northland and is a pilot for a larger restructure of the health system.

20An Auckland safari park, which stored its overnight takings in the tigers' den, has had to come up with a new security system.

21The wreck of the Titanic may have been found after 73 years on the ocean bed.

22Alice Graham, aged 104, returned home from a holiday to the United Kingdom today, saying she would like to go again next year.

23Two residents of the Soviet Union celebrated their 100th wedding anniversary yesterday with 200 of their descendants.

24Regional News Regional news headlines, replacing the scheduled screening of Top Half, canceled today due to industrial action by broadcast journalists.