New Zealand authorities are urging climbers and hikers to stay away from the summit of Mt Ruapehu after warnings the volcano could erupt.

Anti-royal protester Sam Bracanov says he was planning to throw a bucket of horse manure over Prince Charles and his wife Camilla before he was arrested on Monday.

A team of New Zealand scientists have confirmed that a female whale and its baby which stranded on an east coast beach were spade-toothed beaked whales – the world’s rarest of the species.

The pilots of an Air New Zealand aircraft landed with a broken landing gear despite warnings going off that something was not right, investigators say.

Elderly patients in two wards at Auckland City Hospital in New Zealand remain in isolation after an outbreak of the highly contagious norovirus.

Former Pike River Coal chief executive Peter Whittall has denied 12 charges of health and safety failings ahead of the deadly explosions at the New Zealand coal mine nearly two years ago.

Christchurch’s determination to rise from the rubble has been richly rewarded with a spot in Lonely Planet’s top 10 cities worldwide to visit in 2013.

New Zealand is “the only country” implementing a balanced mix of stimulus and austerity policies, one of US President Barack Obama’s former top economic advisers says.

Smokers in New Zealand will be hit with a 10 per cent increase in the price of cigarettes each year for the next four years.

A Magnitude 5.2 earthquake has been recorded centred 15 kilometres southeast of Tokoroa in the central North Island.

Frustrated families say New Zealand Prime Minister John Key is unwilling to pay to retrieve the bodies of the 29 men trapped in the Pike River coal mine.

New Zealanders are being asked to donate their old bedsheets and pillowcases ahead of the summer’s whale stranding season.

Pig cells will be transplanted into the brains of New Zealanders with Parkinson’s disease as part of an experimental treatment of the neurological disorder.

Maori and Moriori ancestral remains held by two Australian museums will be returned to New Zealand in a repatriation ceremony next week.

Controversial former heavyweight boxing champion and convicted rapist Mike Tyson will not be allowed to visit New Zealand after a children’s charity said it wanted nothing to do with the visit.

The international terminal at Auckland Airport has been evacuated after a smoke flare was set off.

All 43 crew members of a burning fishing vessel off the west coast of New Zealand have abandoned ship and been transferred to two other fishing vessels.

Two defendants charged over the Qatar mall childcare facility fire which killed three New Zealand triplets and 16 others have failed to turn up to their first court hearing.

The government is proposing a Marine Protected Area (MPA) in Antarctica nine times the size of New Zealand.