Heidi Warren has patrolled Hawkes Bay's Waimarama Beach for four years but only saved her first life outside a Napier pub at 3 o'clock yesterday morning.

The man who raped and murdered the 6-year-old has been denied parole because his risk of further sexual offending is too high.

Forest owners could have been liable for fines of up to $3 million if worker Blair Palmer had been killed by a falling tree today rather than last week.

Family and friends are rallying around a Napier mum who is recovering from a double mastectomy.

Firefighters are working to remove a person trapped in a car after it crashed into a house in Napier this evening.

Concern is growing over the future of the total Hawke's Bay railway, with trade union claims a cash-strapped KiwiRail has put the Woodville-to-Napier line into a state of "managed decline".

Children taken away after police raid house suspected of being a gang lab.

A Napier woman is on trial for manslaughter after being accused of trying to commit suicide by deliberately causing a fatal crash.

A woman died during what police described as a "serious armed incident" in Napier last tonight.

A woman who was ordered to stay out of Hawke's Bay during a 10-month home-detention sentence has been bunking-down at the home of a prolific criminal near Napier.

A computer gamer who bashed and critically injured his baby boy has been sentenced to jail for the act described as "a complete horror story".

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.