1The Wellington Westpac Rescue Helicopter crashed north of Wellington this afternoon, killing top pilot Peter Button and his two passengers.

2Noisy anti-nuclear demonstrators made their presence felt during Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke's visit to Parliament today.

3A fundraising appeal to send two year old Hamilton boy Regan Chibnall to Brisbane for a liver transplant has raised enough money to send him and his father Ian to Brisbane next week.

4West Auckland police are questioning two men after a farmer was beaten and left for dead in a suburban street following a minor collision. He later died in hospital.

5Auckland police are today investigating the deaths of a 32 year old woman and her de facto partner. The woman's teenage daughter found the couple dead from gunshot wounds in their Birkdale home. The police are not treating the deaths as suspicious.

6The British Government has ordered a high level inquiry into yesterday's deadly fire at London's King's Cross underground station, which killed thirty people. Opposition MP's claim safety standards have recently been reduced by British Rail due to Government funding cuts.

7George Seawright, a hard-line Protestant who was once a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, is critically ill after being shot in the head. The a radical new group, the Irish People's Liberation Organisation, has claimed responsibility.

8France has exploded another nuclear device at Mururoa Atoll.

9A meting of the Antarctic Treaty nations ended in Auckland today after apparently ignoring this week's United Nations (UN) resolution calling for a halt to negotiations which might lead to mining Antarctica.

10The Drivers' Union has won a wage rise of 13% to 14% for about a third of its members.

11A group of trainee teachers from the deep South are being given a crash course in the multi-cultural ways of the North by working in Auckland schools for a month and living as Polynesians.

12The retired train the Silver Star is to be converted into a luxury $1000 rail tour experience, reminiscent of the Orient Express.

13A group of top American astronomers is using the world's only flying telescope to scan the New Zealand skies for debris from a supernova.