1Six young Samoan men have appeared in court today charged with the machete murder of a Tongan man in Otara on Saturday. Tongan and Samoan community groups in South Auckland will met tonight to try to calm ethnic tensions and ensure there is no repeat of such violence.

2A South Auckland police officer required hospital treatment tonight after he was allegedly attacked by a man wielding a knife.

3New Caledonia's three representatives in the French Parliament today offered to exchange places with the 23 gendarmes being held hostage by Kanak separatists on the island of Ouvea.

4French National Front leader Jean-Mari Le Pen has withdrawn from the Presidential but has refused to endorse Prime Minister Jacques Chirac in the Presidential election.

5British servicemen in Europe have been warned to take extra security precautions following the Irish Republican Army's (IRA) attacks in Holland.

6Prime Minister David Lange has received an Anti Nuclear Award in California.

7Auckland's Psychiatric Hospitals, for years plagued by crisis and controversy, are tonight the subject of the wrath of the Government-appointed watchdog on mental health in Auckland, Paul Treadwell, who is especially concerned about Carrington Hospital, where a sexual assault on a teenage woman is alleged to have occurred.

8The Opposition is demanding that the Government cease its attempts to gag Auckland's outspoken coroner, Stephen Osbourne in its amended Coroners' Bill.

9New Zealand and 36 other signatories to the Antarctic Treaty have ended the first day of discussions aimed at finalising rules for mining on the continent.

10The value of New Zealand's exports have reached an all-time high.

11Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Ministers have ended four-das of meetings in Vienna with no agreement to cut production, leading to speculation that a glut could force world oil prices down.

12Flood waters are dropping in Sydney, after days of torrential rain that caused the deaths of four people.

13Police and May Day demonstrators clashed in seven cities across Poland today, climaxing a week of strikes in the country's worst labour unrest since the military crackdown in 1981. There was also May Day violence in Seoul, South Korea when 3000 students and workers marched in support of free trade unions and were dispersed by riot police. However, the traditional May Day parade in Moscow lacked the usual anti-Western invective and focused on the restructure plan for the Soviet economy instead.

14Benjamin Lexcen, the yacht designer who built America's Cup winning yacht Australia II, has died in Sydney aged 52.