National News

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) has Japanese lawyers lined up to defend incarcerated anti-whaling protester Peter Bethune, but hopes Japanese authorities will consider him a "hot potato" and send him home.

A woman was held up by an armed man at an automatic teller machine on Auckland's North Shore just after midday today, police say.

A former Gisborne man who was one of the last people to see missing yachtsman Paul van Rensburg, is struggling to comprehend "what the hell has gone wrong".

Poachers have been caught red handed through calls from the public to a fisheries hotline, Acting Fisheries Minister David Carter says.