The Crown says a Dunedin cleaner beat his boss to death after dragging her out of a vehicle in which she tried to escape.

High temperatures indicate Kiwis could be in for record-breaking highs this summer.

A 34-year-old who groomed and performed sexual acts on a young boy three times within a nine-month span has been jailed for four years and three months.

A man dressed as a clown and reportedly brandishing a machete has been arrested.

Passengers faced lengthy delays at Dunedin Airport yesterday, after a crack was discovered in the windscreen of a Virgin Australia flight bound for Brisbane.

'Why don't they shoot the bloody thing?' asks angry Oamaru resident.

While being interviewed by police, a 21-year-old cleaner accused of murder stood by previous comments that he did not care the victim was dead.

Cell-tower data presented to a Dunedin court has raised questions over the location of a 21-year-old cleaner accused at the time of an alleged murder.

A new Queenstown house has become a local curiosity.

Sales on the first charter flight from Dunedin to see the aurora australis are taking off and the trip's organiser is considering making the flight an annual event.

A man charged with arson after a house fire in the Dunedin suburb of Concord will apply for bail tomorrow.

Police say they have arrested a 55-year-old man and charged him with arson after a house fire last night.

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.

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.

A group of golfers playing through the mist at the St Clair Golf Club on Saturday morning came up against an unusual hazard.

A Dunedin cleaner beat his boss to death with a hammer because she had complained about his conduct at work, the Crown says.

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.