A new wave of legal party pills has hit Whangarei secondary schools, with two parents asked to take their teens home after they arrived for class high.

A man who admitted more than 20 drug charges, and was found guilty of a toddler's manslaughter, has been jailed for nine-and-a-half years.

A businessman has told of his desperate attempts to save his badly injured wife after she drove off the road in bad weather.

A heroic mother has had a tearful reunion with a woman whom she helped to escape from a hammer-wielding man who pursued them in a car chase.

A mother-of-two is being hailed a hero after saving a woman from an attack by a hammer-wielding man who then pursued the pair and rammed her car during a violent car chase.

A man has been arrested over the theft of more than 20 geckos taken from two separate locations in Northland over the past 10 days.

A 28-year-old man died yesterday after the Holden he was driving collided with another car near Whangarei.