A judge has told a mother caught driving with seven unrestrained children that she did something "a large number of families would do" thirty years ago.

Police are investigating why two men separately drove themselves to a Napier clinic with serious injuries overnight, one with stab wounds to the head.

"It wasn't me." Napier's Labour candidate Stuart Nash has denied the PM's accusation he's the party source who criticised David Cunliffe's ski holiday break.

At least one Fire Service crew was remaining overnight at the scene of an acid spill on a manufacturing site in the Whakatu Industrial Park between Napier and Hastings.

A 55-year-old man, described as a "serial fraudster" has been sentenced for impersonating a lawyer and now holds 184 convictions, including impersonating a pilot.

A man died after what police describe as a "highly modified trike" crashed in Napier yesterday.

A Napier City councillor's son has been jailed for three years and three months for "disfiguring" a woman during an attack at a New Year's Eve party.

A Hastings engineering firm will pay fines and compensation of $130,000 for failing to take all reasonable steps to protect the safety of worker.

A 12-year-old boy was subjected to a "savage and prolonged attack" by a grown man who took exception to a comment from the boy.