1Watties is to lay off nearly 400 workers in Hastings and Gisborne as part of a restructuring that it hopes will make the company more competitive internationally. It has also told Gisborne tomato growers that its crops are no longer needed.

2Searchers looking for New Zealand yachtsman Colin Akhurst, lost in the Coral Sea, have found the emergency locator beacon from the wrecked yacht Castaway Fiji, but there was no sign of Akhurst.

3Public Services Association (PSA) President Colin Hicks today hed out an olive branch to the Government. However, Auckland PSA members are threatening a 24-hour strike if they do not receive a satisfactory response from State employers.

4Justice Department officials today promised prison officers at Auckland's Mount Eden Prison that 100 inmates will be moved out as soon as possible.

5A prison officer in Northern Ireland has been taken hostage by Loyalist inmates, as sectarian violence spills over in HMP Magilligan Prison, a maximum sectarian jail in Londonderry.

6A ceasefire signed today, means that for the first time in months, there is hope for regular food supplies to two Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, which have been blockaded by Shi'ite militia.

7Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev today postponed a trip scheduled for tomorrow to Czechoslovakia.

8United States President Ronald Reagan is making a fleeting visit to Canada, for wide-ranging talks with Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

9A $3 million campaign has been launched in Australia to make people more aware of the disease acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), and the makers are unapologetic about the shock tactics they are using in the ads.

10Three men appeared in court in Gisborne today, charged with a number of arsons in Ruatoria.

11A private business school will open in Auckland in August, offering a full Master's course is Business Administration (MBA).

12The Christchurch City Council (CCC) is taking hits from Washington very seriously, that the Operation Deep Freeze base may be moved from Christchurch to Tasmania.

13Pope John Paul II was told today that both the Chilean military Government under General Augusto Pinochet and its opposers are both bringing a culture of death to the county.

14The Soviet Union experienced a near miss in space, when a much-heralded new research module nearly collided with the manned orbiting station Mir as it tried to dock.

15At least three cars and a truck plunged into a flooded creek today when a bridge on the main highway collapsed. It remains unknown how many people died in the accident.

16It was revealed today that a member of the British Royal family, thought to have died in 1961, is still alive, having spent the last forty years in a mental hospital in Surrey.