Tears and laughter shared centre stage as Rachel Clark's grieving family remembered a special girl taken too soon.

Mike Rankin counts himself lucky, despite his new truck plummeting over a bank at his Caversham home.

The Cromwell community is reeling in shock at the sudden death of a 17-year-old who was recognised as a young leader with huge potential.

A taxi firm boss whose driver was racially insulted by an off-duty Queenstown policewoman says the company is relieved she has resigned.

A police officer who racially abused a taxi driver in Queenstown last year has resigned.

Silver Fern Farms faces a bill of up to $3 million after it was ruled it made more than 100 Dunedin seasonal meat workers redundant.

A surge in the supply of methamphetamine is being pushed by gangs on a "willing market" in the south, police say.

The family of an Otago man beaten to death in a prolonged and brutal attack cried out with pain and relief as his ''gutless'' killers were found guilty of murder.

Dunedin motorists were stunned to see a man sitting on a couch and holding on to the rear of a moving car as it left a trail of sparks behind him.

A former Dunedin student and aspiring model has been jailed for four years on drugs charges.

A Hong Kong couple escaped injury yesterday afternoon when their rental vehicle left the road and plunged about 50m down a bank on the Queenstown-Glenorchy Rd.

A male and female constable were attacked in Dunedin's CBD and police say it shows why the city's bars need to close earlier.

A Kiwi researcher is studying how children exercise restraint from tempting lollies - and what it says about their likely self-control later in life.

Two men wanted in relation to an alleged kidnapping in Queenstown last week have been remanded in custody.

Queenstown police have located the third person wanted in connection with an alleged kidnapping.

The father of a Queenstown woman caught up in an investigation into an alleged kidnapping has called for her safe return.

A researcher's tireless efforts to ensure every Kiwi can have a safe, warm and dry home has been rewarded with the country's largest prize for science.

Police have named the 24-year-old man killed when he was thrown from the cab of a tractor that rolled north of Dunedin.

The father of the 22-year-old Queenstown man at the centre of an alleged kidnapping has asked for privacy to allow his son to recover from the ordeal.

A 69-year-old Wanaka woman died yesterday after slipping and falling about 40m from a Department of Conservation walking track near Glendhu Bay, Wanaka.

Danielle Wright and family share the water with albatrosses, bottlenose dolphins and sea lions on a wilderness cruise through Doubtful Sound.

In the splendid town of Middlemarch, Peter Feeney and his family stay on a sheep station and enjoy Southern hospitality that comes complete with locally brewed beer.

A motorist caught driving at 177 km/h in Otago was one of more than 200 infringements police issued over a four-day blitz in the lead-up to Christmas.

Dunedin Botanic Garden staff are on high alert following a break-in by someone they believe was looking for hallucinogenic drug-producing cacti.

A fish tank at cash-strapped Dunedin Hospital cost $73,000 to install and more than $1000 a week to run in its first year.