A 21-year-old Dunedin cleaner accused of murdering his boss allegedly told a workmate he wanted to burn the victim's family in front of her.

The race to elect a new mayor for Auckland and other cities and towns round the country is drawing to a close.

Emergency services faced a gruesome scene as they went to the aid of a lifeless Dunedin woman covered in blood, a High Court jury has been told.

A ''Blueskin blanket'' of thick fog has brought gloom to the coast north of Dunedin after clinging to the landscape for more than 10 days.

The clothes an alleged murderer wore and the hammer he is accused of using to kill his boss looked unfamiliar to the defendant's parents.

At first she thought the body was a rubbish bag, mother of accused told the court today, before realising it was her colleague.

Diamond earrings worn by Gemma Flynn on the red carpet for fiance Richie McCaw's film sell for $2,510.

An 18-storey five-star hotel in the heart of Dunedin is a step closer to reality following the signing of an exclusive deal.

Two days after a Dunedin woman was found dead outside her workplace last December, the blood-soaked hammer allegedly used to bludgeon her was found in a bin outside a colleague's home.

An 11-year-old boy has been rushed to Dunedin hospital after falling almost four metres from a rope swing.

This will be a good weekend to check out the museum or cuddle up with a book as heavy showers and thunderstorms are forecast for parts of the country.

A bus driver and the blind woman he knocked over have shared an unlikely embrace outside court.

We will find you and we will kill you - that is the message the Otago Regional Council is set to issue today to Bennett's wallabies that enter Otago.

A ChinesePhD student attacked his wife and threatened to send her back to China all because she did not refuel his car, a court has heard.

A knife-wielding man who paraded around in public with his shirt off, challenging people to fight him, has been jailed for nearly two years.

The Dunedin City Council faces a potentially protracted legal battle as New Zealand's supermarket giants join forces to fight the city's local alcohol policy.

A bus has crashed into three parked cars in Dunedin after the bus driver apparently left the handbrake off. A Fire Service shift

The man police are hunting in relation to an aggravated robbery in St Kilda last week is the son of one of the women arrested in the matter, it has been revealed.

Burglars abseiled into a Dunedin building at the weekend, leaving a trail of destruction before stealing art supplies.

Four Queenstown men are lucky to be alive after their kayaks overturned and they were swept out to sea off the Otago coast.

A Dunedin youth advocate has hit out at Child, Youth and Family after young offenders have had to spend time in police cells.

Police were called to reports of disorder following a large student party in the Dunedin Botanic Garden yesterday.

In an "unprecedented" move, nurses from Timaru were drafted in to work at Dunedin Hospital for two days this week because of pressure on the hospital.

Two women have been arrested after the armed offenders squad blocked off part of Maitland St in Dunedin this afternoon.

An Auckland teen faces a raft of violence charges after he allegedly assaulted a university warden on Dunedin's infamous Castle St.

A quick-thinking fast-food worker extinguished a bus fire in Dunedin.

Hundreds of people in Auckland and Otago are being given preventive antibiotics

Law Society says any 19-year-old with no previous convictions would not have been jailed on the same charges.

On an insider tour of Dunedin's hidden treasures, Eleanor Ainge Roy discovers the other Edinburgh deserves a second glance.

COMMENT: I think we have a winner for Lawyer of the Year. The award goes to the wizard who side-stepped jail time for Nikolas Delegat.