Carla Green

Longtime whitebaiter Ivan Jones (75) says the whitebait season has been slow to pick up this year.

The Deadheaders' Picnic on Saturday at the Dunedin Botanic Garden was nothing to do with the Grateful Dead, despite that band's devoted fan base being referred to as Deadheads.

Blake Clearwater (10) and Thomas McLean (10) collectively swam 4.5km at Moana Pool on Saturday to raise money for the Anderson's Bay School fair.

A pop-up charity op shop that took over a George St shopfront on Friday and Saturday raised more than its target amount in just one day, Geraldine Henderson (21) said.

A teenager who fell from the roof of a house on the corner of Castle and Howe Sts during a mid-afternoon party on Saturday was taken to hospital, police say.

Seven full-time staff are expected to lose their jobs at Otago Polytechnic's architecture, building and engineering school by the end of the year.

About 35 silent demonstrators including a Dunedin City Councillor took over part of the University of Otago's Link yesterday, protesting last week's banning of New Zealand book Into the River.

Legal scholar Jane Kelsey has described the ''morbid symptoms'' of neoliberalism's impending downfall.

Four dogs' bloody attack on a sea lion on St Kilda Beach yesterday was the region's fourth such incident since last summer, the Department of Conservation says.

The Government's decision to accept 600 Syrian refugees above the yearly quota was met with measured optimism at a campus panel discussion on the refugee crisis yesterday.

Syd O'Leary's favourite dinosaur is the megalosaurus.

Dunedin is offering to open its doors to Syrian refugees, but Mayor Dave Cull says the city would need an influx of government funding first.

Student Rachael Laurie says she never gave much thought to societal attitudes towards sexual assault - until it happened to her. On the path to recovery, she set herself a goal of running in the Dunedin Half-marathon next weekend, and tells her story to ODT reporter Carla Green.

Carla Green explains why online readers of the Otago Daily Times are so obsessed with news stories about the weather.

A 17 person forum has begun the lengthy process of deciding what parts of the South Island's eastern coastline should be protected, and how.

Otago Polytechnic fashion student Kayla Araya (right), of southern Thailand, hopes opportunities for more Thai students to come to Dunedin will open up.

As New Zealand takes sides on the future of its flag, the man who designed Otago's flag has dismissed all four proposed options as ''underwhelming''.

As Wanaka and Queenstown put on the Winter Games, the Green Party is warning climate change could wreak havoc on the snow sports industry if nothing is done to stop it.