The condition of the 9-year-old schoolboy injured as a result of jumping out of a window has improved from critical to serious.

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 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 jury in the trial of a woman accused of fatally stabbing her boyfriend has failed to reach a verdict after 10 hours' deliberating.

She's accused of fatally stabbing her boyfriend, but says he pulled the knife into himself. A jury is continuing deliberations on whether Juliette Gerbes is guilty of manslaughter.

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.