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<p>New Zealand Prime Minister John Key abruptly resigned on Monday.</p>

John Key has announced that he will resign as prime minister of New Zealand, after eight years in the job. Mr Key called it "the hardest decision I've ever made," adding "I don't know what I'll do next."

President-elect Donald Trump has called New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key to pass on his sympathies for the powerful earthquake that killed two people. Key's office described the conversation on Wednesday as "very warm and cordial." The magnitude-7.8 quake that struck on Monday has left hundreds of tourists stranded in the coastal town of Kaikoura after landslides blocked off roads. The military is evacuating people in helicopters. Trump had tried to get in touch earlier in the week but Key had missed the call in the confusion after the quake. Key's office said in a statement that he had congratulated...

New Zealand’s ruling National party stormed to a third term in government in the country’s general election on Saturday with the center-right party securing an outright election night majority on a platform to continue tight economic policies. Prime Minister John Key’s party won 48.1 percent of the vote, translating into 61 of 121 parliamentary seats and improving its performance from the 2011 vote. “I think people saw the country was on the right direction and they rewarded us,” Key told reporters as he headed to a victory rally. “What you saw was people saying they were going to vote for...

Politicians don’t typically deign to respond to wild claims and accusations. But New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key has publicly responded to an Open Information Act request for “any evidence to disprove the theory that Mr John Key is in fact a David Icke style shapeshifting reptilian alien ushering humanity towards enslavement.” “Having been asked that question directly, I’ve taken the unusual step of not only seeing a doctor, but a vet, and both have confirmed that, no, I’m not a reptile,” Key told reporters with a smile. The prime minister continued: “I’m certainly not an alien. I’ve never been...

John Key: 'I'm not a reptile' He's been to a doctor and a vet just to make sure, but Prime Minister John Key is adamant he's not a shapeshifting reptilian alien. Mr Key was unusually forced to deny any previously non-declared extraterrestrial connections to reporters after an Auckland man put in an Official Information Act (OIA) request asking for proof he might be one. "To the best of my knowledge, no. Having been asked that question directly, I've taken the unusual step of not only seeing a doctor but a vet, and both have confirmed I'm not a reptile," a...

SCOTTBASE, Antarctica (AP) — Talk about whisky on ice: Three bottles of rare, 19th century Scotch found beneath the floor boards of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackelton's abandoned expedition base were returned to the polar continent Saturday after a distiller flew them to Scotland to recreate the long-lost recipe. But not even New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, who personally returned the stash, got a taste of the contents of the bottles of Mackinlay's whisky, which were rediscovered 102 years after the explorer was forced to leave them behind. "I think we're all tempted to crack it open and have a...

Is it possible for a Right-wing government to freeze spending and cut the deficit while remaining popular? As they say in New Zealand, ‘yih’. I’ve remarked before that, while no country is physically further from Britain, none is temperamentally closer. Yet there is a difference when it comes to public expenditure. A slowing of the rate of increase in the UK – there have, as yet, been no net cuts – is howled down as an assault on the poor directed by a clique of ancien régime aristocrats. In New Zealand, by contrast, ‘zero budgets’ are seen as prudent and...

THE Auckland electorate office of New Zealand Prime Minister John Key was firebombed early this morning, police said. The office in Key's Helensville electorate in the semi-rural outskirts of the city was attacked with a Molotov cocktail, which caused a small fire in the early hours of the morning, police said.

America has no monopoly on fast-rising political leaders. Six years ago, John Key quit a career in foreign exchange trading that had made him a millionaire to enter the New Zealand parliament. Today, the 47-year-old is his country's prime minister-elect, following the victory of his center-right National Party over Prime Minister Helen Clark's Labour Party in New Zealand's general election on Nov. 8. Key assumed leadership of the party following its narrow loss in the 2005 general election. He sufficiently moved it toward the center and broadened its appeal to blue-collar workers so that critics dubbed it Labour-lite. A pragmatic...

Yesterday New Zealand woke up to the dawning of a new Era. It was Sunday and, as usual, conservative Kiwis of a religious persuasion awoke, scrubbed up, got the kids ready for Sunday School, and went to church to worship. And sometime during the Service we thanked our Creator for the deliverance He granted us the night before. And those of us conservative Kiwis of lesser religious persuasion slept in, grateful for the hangover arising from Saturday evening's libations. For them the sleep of the Righteous would be lengthened by knowing that their sore heads were well-earned in good service...

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand entered a new era of conservative rule Sunday, with incoming Prime Minister John Key promising to be a moderate amid fears some of the country's policies on global warming and indigenous people could be rolled back. Voters on Saturday elected the wealthy former currency market trader to lead them through a recession worsening because of the global financial meltdown, handing long-serving Prime Minister Helen Clark and her central-left Labour Party a crushing defeat. Key said Sunday he hoped his National Party and coalition partners would be sworn into government within about a week...