Wellington  - A war dance made famous by New Zealand's national rugby team the All Blacks was officially designated the intellectual property of a Maori tribe in a compensation agreement signed in Wellington on Wednesday.

The All Blacks always perform the haka called Ka Mate, with ferocious threatening actions and protruding tongues, as a challenge in front of their opponents before the start of games.

Wellington - New Zealand doctor Stephanie Meyer delivered her own son in a car as her husband drove her to hospital, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Going into labour during the five-minute drive to the hospital in Palmerston North on New Zealand's North Island, she told husband Nathan, "You have to pull over. I think I'm crowning and I'm happy to have this baby by the side of the road," the Manawatu Standard reported.

"Next thing I just scooped him up on my tummy in the front seat," she told the paper.

Wellington  - New Zealand state-owned power generator Meridian Energy on Tuesday announced a joint venture with Mitsubishi Motors to conduct trials of a new generation of electric cars.

The first venture of its kind, they are combining to test two prototypes of the Mitsubishi iMiEV, a four-door hatchback with a maximum speed of 130 kilometres an hour and a driving range of up to 160 kilometres, with fuel costs claimed to be one-third the price of petrol.

Wellington  - The search for a Dutch tourist and the pilot of a microlight aircraft that crashed on a sightseeing flight over New Zealand's Abel Tasman National Park resumed on Tuesday.

A wing of the plane was spotted from the air on Monday afternoon after it failed to return to Motueka on schedule, but a search of dense bush in the 22,530 hectare park found no trace of the couple.

The area where the plane is believed to have crashed is extremely rugged with deep gorges, a spokesman for the search operation told Radio New Zealand.

Wellington  - The New Zealand government launched a nationwide aid appeal for victims of Australia's bushfires on Monday with a donation of 500,000 New Zealand dollars (265,000 US dollars).

"Australians are our closest friends and neighbours, and we want to help them as much as we can in their time of need," Foreign Minister Murray McCully said, inviting fellow New Zealanders to donate to the Victorian Bushfire Appeal Fund.

Wellington  - New Zealand Prime Minister John Key bowed Monday to calls to examine procedures of the country's top security agency after it was revealed that it had spied on opposition Green Party legislator Keith Locke.

Locke, a well-known left-winger whose parents were openly members of the Communist Party, said his Security Intelligence Service (SIS) personal file showed that spies had watched him from the age of 11 and continued to do so after he was elected as a member of parliament in 1999.