A Seventh Day Adventist Church pastor has denied encouraging members of his congregation to lend money to a church member now on trial for an alleged $850,000 scam.

Ireland as an opponent hold a special significance for Sam Cane.

A pastor and members of his congregation lost $850k to a fellow church member who falsely claimed he had $30m owed to him from a Nigerian oil contract, a court hears.

Offensive graffiti appearing on the site of a proposed secondary boarding school for Muslim boys, and negativity circulating about the Muslim education system, has dismayed the Al-Noor Charitable Trust.

A warrant of fitness rating system for Dunedin rental properties is believed to be the first of its kind in the country.

A man who tried to a rape a woman in a Dunedin park and later told police it was because he could not "get a missus" has failed to get his sentence overturned.

Sarah Lang finds Dunedin is much more than a city of Scots and scarfies — and a special spot for a weekend getaway.

A swift crackdown is expected on what the New Zealand Taxi Federation calls illegal and unacceptable moonlighting by unqualified Dunedin drivers charging fees, having passengers buy them petrol, or accepting donations for their services.

A van used in an attempted abduction at the weekend had been spotted in south Dunedin and the city's business district, police say.

New Zealanders' attitudes to Asian people are becoming more positive, with more than half of non-Asians believing Asian immigration to be a good thing, a study shows.

Two men have been charged with abduction after they allegedly tried to drag a 22-year-old woman into a van at 9.30pm in Dunedin on Saturday night.

The fixed speed camera on Caversham Valley Rd, near Lookout Point, in Dunedin, was removed as part of a multimillion highway safety upgrade.

A gas main was ruptured by workers at a construction site in the Albion Lane area, Dunedin, about 8.45am. The Fire Service has finished dissipating remaining gas residues.

A convicted sex offender who sexually assaulted a young woman at knifepoint while on parole has appealed against what he calls a "manifestly excessive'' open-ended preventive sentence.

The $20,000 offered for information on the whereabouts of Simon Garrick is the 12th reward offered by police for a murder inquiry in the past decade.

A Dunedin man has been sentenced to seven and a-half years' jail for sexually molesting a young boy for more than three years.

At least one person has been taken to hospital after a crash between a car and a truck in Dunedin this morning.

Three Dunedin police officers and a prison officer must wait several months for blood test results after being spat at by two offenders, one of whom said he had hepatitis.

Student behaviour in Dunedin appears to be improving, with a significant drop in students being dealt with by the University of Otago for serious incidents.

The sole occupant of a newly-renovated Dunedin home extensively damaged in a fire fled the inferno after she was woken by a smoke alarm.

One house has been destroyed and another damaged after two fires in the South Island overnight.

Dunedin police say anyone finding a black bag containing a tear-gas canister and cartridges, lost by officers in the city last Thursday, shouldn't tamper with the contents.