1There were emotional scenes in Auckland tonight as 76 year old Leo Stack, Secretary of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, was acquitted on charges of inciting a woman to commit suicide. The charges were regarded by many as a keen test of New Zealand's suicide laws.

2Managing Director of Watties industries, Cliff Lyons has rejected claims this company will move overseas when it merges with Australian food giant Goodman Fielder. Critics of the $3 billion Trans Tasman merger were today accused of distorting the truth for political purposes.

3Police guarding Pope John Paul II in Brisbane say they have foiled an attempt to assassinate him. The would be assassin was a mentally ill man, recently released from a psychiatric hospital.

4Injunctions against the Northern Store Workers' Union have been filed by two major supermarket chains, Foodstuffs Limited and Nathan Distribution Centres, to force striking union members back to their jobs. Meanwhile, a similar move by dairy employers in Hamilton ended with both parties agreeing to settle their dispute in the Arbitration Court.

5Government plans to turn some of its departments into profit-making corporations has triggered fierce resistance from within the public service. At stake is union coverage of thousands of Government employees, who will get management jobs in the new corporations. The State unions want to continue representing them, but those who run the corporations want to rewrite the rules.

6The British Government has agreed to an urgent inquiry into the abandonment of the bulk freighter Kowloon Bridge off the coast of Ireland. The ship is now aground and awash and is threatening to become an environmental hazard as fuel oil leaks out.

7A decision by Barclays Bank to pull out of South Africa is being seen as a major psychological blow to South Africa.

8Critics of the $3 billion Trans Tasman merger between Goodman Fielder and Watties were today accused of distorting the truth for political purposes. Interview with the spokesman for consumer watchdog group Public Eyes.

9Australian forestry giant AMCOR came to New Zealand today, prepared to argue with Fletcher Challenge over its right to merge with NZ Forest Products.

10The creation of new mega-corporations has resulted in a huge jump in the salaries being paid to top executives in New Zealand. A look at the new executive elite - who are they and what are they earning?

11In Spanish 'Los Quemados' means 'the burned ones', and in Chile today, those words denote a particularly terrifying episode in July 1986, involving two teenagers who were burned by military officers in Chile. The episode emphasises the increasing violence of the Pinochet regime.

12Today's relatively cold weather has apparently affected an industrial dispute by power station operators at Waitaki. The need for more power has prompted a speeding up of negotiations.