Work to bring ultrafast broadband (UFB) to Dunedin is about to begin, at the same time as the city's new "digital office" gets ready to open for business.

The Mohua Charitable Trust has donated $11,000 to a Wanaka-based programme to save the mohua, a rare native bird, in the Mt Aspiring National Park.

Dunedin foundry Newlcast, owned by Oregon-based United States company Esco, has bought its Thomas Burns St site in Dunedin for $1 million.

A pedestrian was killed when he was hit by a car in Nelson early this morning.

National's "mixed ownership model" - the innocuous-sounding vehicle tasked with making the party's unpopular privatisation agenda more appetising - paradoxically may yet end up making the partial sell-offs of state corporations even less palatable to voters.

The latest in rural technology, equipment and ideas will be on display at the three-day Southern Field Days at Waimumu this month.

The Obama administration is increasingly anxious about Israeli leaders' provocative public comments on Iran's nuclear programme but does not have hard proof that it will strike Iran in the next few months, US and European officials said.

Facebook made a much-anticipated status update today: The Internet social network is going public eight years after its computer-hacking CEO Mark Zuckerberg started the service at Harvard University.

More than 2200 people have spent the night in evacuation centres across northwest NSW as flooding that has affected the region for 10 days shows no sign of easing.