Wellington  - An escape bid by two New Zealand prisoners handcuffed together came to grief when each ran either side of a lamp-post, news reports said on Friday.

The pair made a break for freedom as police escorted them from the Hastings District Court. They had not gotten far when they swung around the pole and collided with each other before collapsing in a tangle.

Each blamed the other for their actions, the Dominion Post reported.

Wellington  - New Zealand's central bank slashed its benchmark interest rate Thursday by 1.5 per cent to 3.5 per cent, the lowest figure since the so-called official cash rate (OCR) was introduced in 1999.

It was the fifth time Reserve Bank governor Alan Bollard has cut the rate since July after keeping it at 8.25 per cent - one of the highest rates in the developed world - for 12 months in a bid to contain inflation.

Wellington  - The New Zealand economy, which is in the grip of a recession, suffered a further blow Wednesday with a forecast that will wipe up to 1 billion New Zealand dollars (about 530 million US dollars) off the critical dairy industry's earnings this season.

The Fonterra Co-operative Group, which has huge influence on the economy as the country's biggest single exporter, told its 10,700 farmer-shareholders that the global recession had cut international demand for dairy products and slashed commodity prices.

Wellington - Henry, a tuatara reptile said to be 111 years old and a relic of the dinosaur age, has become a father for the first time, a newspaper reported Monday.

Tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) usually become sexually mature at the age of about 20, but Henry, who lives at the Southland Museum in Invercargill, was a slow developer and did not discover sex until March, when he had a romp with Mildred, who is in her 70s.

Wellington - A man alleged to have sparked a high-speed chase that ended in police shooting dead an innocent bystander had no recollection of the events, his lawyer told a court Monday.

Stephen Hohepa McDonald, 50, faced 29 charges, including 10 counts of using a firearm against police law on Friday and unlawfully possessing a gun when he appeared in the Auckland District Court.

Halatau Naitoko, 17, a courier driver, was fatally wounded by police Friday in a shoot-out with a gunman who tried to hijack his van after crashing a stolen car following a

Wellington  - New Zealand police said Friday they did not know whether one of their men shot dead an innocent driver, or if he was the victim of a gunman who had led them on a 40-minute chase through Auckland suburbs at up to 160 kilometres an hour.

Another motorist was shot and injured in the drama that ended on a city motorway when the gunman crashed and tried to hijack another vehicle to escape pursuing police.