Auckland, New Zealand  - There are strict rules in force on this island: No pets are allowed and visitors are told to remove any dirt from their shoes or clothes before they disembark.

"Please ensure that your lunch is kept in a container made of plastic or metal and take all your refuse with you," passengers are told before the catamaran sets off from Auckland harbour

From here, the voyage takes them to Tiritiri Mantangi, an island in the Gulf of Hauraki, just four kilometres from the end of the Whangaparaoa Peninsula and 30 kilometres north-east of Auckland, New Zealand's largest city.

Wellington  - Australia's Qantas Airways will hand over domestic services in New Zealand to its budget subsidiary Jetstar in June, the company announced Tuesday.

Jetstar will operate 84 weekly return services between Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and the South Island lake and ski resort town Queenstown on Airbus A320 jets

A statement said that passengers already booked on Qantas flights within New Zealand after that date would be switched to Jetstar services.

Wellington  - A German woman who flew to New Zealand to meet a man who wooed her on the internet with eloquent emails and poetry told a newspaper Tuesday of her time in a "horror house" with a stranger who was nothing like her online friend.

"He was quite intellectual and he knew the way to my heart," the 36-year-old musician and drama teacher from Leipzig, who identified herself only as Maja, told the Otago Daily Times.

Amsterdam -  will have to look around for a new sponsor for next season after Dutch insurance conglomerate ING announced on Monday that they would not be renewing their three-year sponsorship with Renault.

Earlier Credit Suisse had announced that they would not be sponsoring BMW-Sauber this year.

ING said they would cut back their sponsorship investment by 40 per cent this year already, without saying whether they would cut back the money given to Renault during the season.

Wellington  - An Iranian man who went on a hunger strike for 53 days in a New Zealand prison to highlight his request for asylum was given permission Monday to stay in the country after his third appeal, news reports said.

Ali Reza Panah, who claimed he would be executed for converting from Islam to Christianity if sent back to Iran, was held in jail for 20 months for refusing to sign the travel papers he needed before he could be deported.

Wellington  - A 36-year-old German woman talked Monday about how she was fooled into visiting New Zealand to meet a man she befriended on the internet who turned out to be quite different from how he portrayed himself online.

The woman, who was identified only as Maja, told the TV3 channel that the man had told her he was 33 and a university student but she realized immediately when he met her at Dunedin International Airport that he had misrepresented himself.