One hotelier's bookings for 1 July have gone from being fully booked a week ago, to being under 30 percent booked today.

People living along the south coast of Wellington are encouraged to have a bag packed in case they need to evacuate their homes tomorrow.

The government plans to consider advice on mandatory mask wearing at alert level two and higher, and mandatory QR code scanning in high-risk areas.

Two windsurfers had a lucky escape after they were swept 2km out to sea, Taranaki police say.

A one-year-old kākā had to be euthanised after being shot in the latest of a series of shootings against other protected wildlife in Auckland.

The Solicitor-General has acknowledged the courage and persistence of survivors of abuse at the Lake Alice Psychiatric adolescent unit in the 1970s.

The spy agency watchdog says closed circuit TV or CCTV is being used in a "lawful" and "responsible" way, but questions its legal basis.

A survey of Christchurch Girls' High School students has uncovered widespread sexual harassment outside the school and 20 cases of rape by individuals or groups.

The Ministry of Health says two contacts of the Northern Territory miner with Covid-19 have since travelled to New Zealand.

The jury in the trial of Arthur Allan Thomas over the rape and indecent assault of two women has been discharged after failing to reach a verdict.

Anti-plastic campaigners and plastic producers are both critical of the four-year plan to phase out the harmful packaging, saying it falls short on plastic bottles and PVC.

In a case of art imitating real life - or perhaps vice versa - an engineer, an electrician and a pipeline designer are part of a troupe about to tread the boards in an amateur performance of The Full Monty stage play in New Zealand.

Te Papa is reopening tomorrow - but attendances at its major drawcard, the Surrealist Art exhibition, will be capped at just 78 people at a time.

Confirmation that a Sydney man's partner is positive means test results from locations the couple visited in Wellington towards the end of their stay are critical, a Covid-19 modeller says.

Suspected spies have been spotted in Chinese politics and history lectures taking pictures of content and 'correcting' lecturers by giving CCP versions of historical events.

New Zealanders in Darwin describe the city as panicked after being thrown into a lockdown with just hours' notice - having previously barely been disrupted by Covid-19.

The Dunedin City Council is expected to give Dunedin Railways permission to operate at a million dollar loss for the coming year.

The number of app alerts sent out compared to the number of people believed to have been at locations of interest suggests only a third had signed in, the prime minister says. Read back through today's live updates.