A community housing provider has told the Government that it won't buy state houses when they're put up for sale this year unless the price is zero.

New Zealand cricketing great Martin Crowe has lashed out at his former employer Sky TV after he wasn't invited to last night's Halberg Awards ceremony.

Auckland public transport passengers have lost about $35,000 in credit on electronic Hop cards disabled for repeated failures to tag off at the end of trips.

As the music industry's best and brightest gathered for yesterday's Grammy Awards, one superstar was notably absent, choosing instead to watch the spectacle from her Auckland home.

Onlookers who rushed to a crash scene on a rural road northwest of Auckland tried to comfort the driver before he died in his upturned car.

An exercise supplement containing a substance not considered safe for human use will be pulled from New Zealand shelves following a Herald investigation.

Steven Nadollek does not remember the moment his heart stopped.

But the one thing the 40-year-old fitness fanatic does know is that he wouldn't be here today if it weren't for two doctors - one a resuscitation specialist - who were trailing him in the Auckland 70.3 half-ironman event last month.

A "blinding" flash, intense explosion and sonic booms experienced over much of the country last night were probably caused by a meteor, experts agree.

Auckland's housing shortage worsened by a record near-4000 houses last year, as a pickup in home-building was "swamped" by a tide of new immigrants.

A new "state of the nation" report by the Salvation Army says the city needed 11,200 new homes last year to house a population increase of 33,700 people at the region's average of three people per dwelling.

House-hunters have lost thousands of dollars after paying deposits for Auckland rental properties advertised by overseas scammers.

One of the survivors of December's Lindt Cafe siege in Sydney has angrily criticised the way the police handled the 17-hour ordeal with gunman Man Horan Monis.

Three trail-blazing iwi now have assets valued at $2.7 billion but in the next few years, 30 to 40 will emerge with that financial firepower, one expert says.

Selwyn Hayes runs EY Tahi, a Maori-focused advisory service and he has big expectations for the Maori economy, now estimated to be worth about $40 billion. That could grow to more than $100 billion in the next few years, he estimates.