Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer's Labour has suffered an embarrassing election defeat to the left-wing Green Party in an area of Manchester it had dominated for almost a century.

Education Ministry figures showed schools this year faced a bigger shortfall of secondary teachers than previously expected.

A local diver says he will eat shellfish from the south coast after the mayor has tried some kina from the sewage spill hot spot.

A fire inside a rubbish truck this week has prompted renewed warnings about the dangers of discarding batteries in household waste, after firefighters traced the incident to a box of improperly disposed lithium batteries.

Winston Peters says the "last thing we should do is go and panic" and make a classic mistake "based on blind ideology" in response to Air New Zealand's financial loss.