1Parliament's Speaker has declared that the Sky City Convention Centre deal legislation will be a conscience vote. However, Prime Minister John Key has instructed all of his MPs they must vote in favour of the deal.

2Figures have revealed how slow Child, Youth and Family (CYFs) has been in taking action in some cases of extreme child abuse. The agency is failing to meet its own deadlines.

3Commodore Kevin Keat, a senior Defence Force officer, is being prosecuted for failing to declare an affair with a subordinate.

4An independent investigation is being launched into the actions of controversial Christchurch City Council Chief Executive Tony Maryatt.

5Animal Control officers have seized a dog after it attacked a boy in Panmure.

6Air New Zealand is defending a decision to allow two celebrities to take their french bulldogs on a long-haul flight from Los Angeles to London because the dogs provided a 'psychiatric service'. The dogs belonged to Phylicia Jackson, the girlfriend of former X Factor host Steven Jones.

7Mel Grieg, one of the Australian radio hosts at the centre of the ill-fated Royal prank is suing her employer Southern-Cross-Austereo for failing to create a safe working environment.

8Police are warning of the ugly and publicly embarrassing side of photo and video sharing app Snapchat.

9Jordan Mason, who breached suppression orders by putting footage on You Tube of the men accused of assaulting cricketer Jesse Ryder, has been sentenced to community detention.

10Hamilton Police have charged a 22 year old man over a crash that killed a cyclist on the outskirts of the city last week.

11The father of Olivia Hope has expressed a wish to meet with convicted murderer Scott Watson so he can determine whether or not Watson is guilty. Watson was convicted of murdering Blenheim friends Olivia Hop and Ben Smart on new Year's Day 1998, but has always maintained his innocence.

12More details have emerged about the Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 which crash landed in San Francisco.

13More details have emerged about the three women kidnapped and captive in Cleveland for a decade.

14Masao Yoshida, the Fukushima nuclear chief who led efforts to stabilise the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, has died of cancer at the age of 58.

15Claude Stratford, the founder of natural health and beauty products company Comvita, passed away today aged 102.

16An original Apple computer has sold for around NZ$495,000.

17The Government is looking at whether it can introduce GST for on-line shopping purchases under the current threshold of $400.

18A new study has revealed that air pollution in China is so bad it could reduce life expectancy by five and a half years. South Korea and Japan say China's smog is even spreading to their countries.