Staff at a Hastings motel say the mother of a six-month-old boy ran screaming from her room after her son's unexplained death yesterday.

A masked and armed robber left a Hastings service station empty-handed after his demands were refused by the attendant.

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.

Two men have died after a car crashed on a rural road and rolled 600m down a bank near Te Hauke, south of Hastings.

Hawkes Bay and East Coast Aero Club president Bruce Govenlock says the deaths of his friend and a UK pilot in today's plane crash were a "terrible tragedy''.

Hastings' Mayor has criticized the sentence of a local man who broke his baby daughter's legs and was released from prison after little more than 12 months.