New Zealand

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has defended New Zealand’s slow roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccine, insisting it’s not a level playing field between countries.

Conditions for quarantine-free travel between Australia and New Zealand have been met, and a bubble will start in less than two weeks, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says.

The New Zealand government will today announce when the country will begin a long anticipated trans-Tasman bubble with Australia.

New Zealand Cabinet ministers will discuss a transtasman travel bubble with Australia on Monday with mid to late April as a potential start date.

New Zealand on Saturday marked the second anniversary of one of its most traumatic days, when 51 worshipers were killed at two Christchurch mosques by a white supremacist gunman.

Quarantine-free travel from Niue to New Zealand will begin on March 24.

Auckland will move to alert level 1 from midday today, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has confirmed.

Seismologists have recorded more than 140 earthquakes of magnitude 4 or higher since a 7.2 earthquake caused householders to flee low-lying East Coast areas on Friday morning.

A special “prison within a prison” is guarding the Christchurch mosque shooter and two other notoriously violent criminals at a huge cost to the taxpayer.

A 5.4 magnitude quake struck 125km east of Te Araroa off East Cape at a depth of 12km just after 10.30am.

New Zealanders have been told to move away from coastal areas of the North Island after three powerful earthquakes shook the region.

Swarm of earthquakes in Pacific – including magnitude 8.1 quake in Kermadec Islands at 8.28am (NZT) – spark Civil Defence warnings.