Debbie Porteous

Dunedin police are appealing for public help after two fires at the weekend.

Dunedin schools have pulled out of organising public fireworks displays this year, leaving only one public display in the city.

Victoria Cross winner and Special Air Services soldier Corporal Willie Apiata may be the guest of honour at Dunedin's Armistice Day commemorations this year.

Lynne Hutchings will visit the Balclutha graves of two of her sons this week.

Jim Edwards is a sedimental sort of guy.

A large slip has destroyed hundreds of metres of the Dusky Track linking Lakes Hauroko and Manapouri in Fiordland.

A political debate in Queenstown later this month will be the biggest gathering of major party leaders in the 2008 election race and the largest gathering of its type in Queenstown for many years, organisers say.

It is not very often a community group approaches Central Otago and Queenstown Lakes district councils' community road adviser Jo Henderson and says it wants to raise money for road safety.

A business that expanded into Australia two and a-half years ago is keeping the link with Queenstown strong.

Dunedin smokers will instantly be fined up to $150 if caught dropping cigarette butts on the city's streets if the Dunedin City Council heeds a petition to be presented to it early next year.

Applause broke out at a forum on the topic of ACC in Dunedin on Saturday when the National Party's candidate for Dunedin North, Michael Woodhouse, agreed that an independent authority should be set up to deal with complaints against the corporation.

After a hitch or two, the demolition of a 50m industrial chimney at Burnside, Dunedin, went off with a bang on Saturday.

A Dunedin couple has warned people to think of their own safety before giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to someone they do not know, after helping out at this accident on South Rd last month.

A registrar's decision to renew the licence of two Dunedin private investigators has highlighted the lead objector's obstructive and defiantly aggressive manner during a hearing at the Dunedin District Court last week.

The Otago Regional Rescue Helicopter service had a successful year, with the transition from one major sponsor to another well managed, Otago Rescue Helicopter Trust chairman Ross Black says.

'Put up or shut up' is what Peter Gibbons and Graeme Scott have to say to their critics. For nearly two years, the Dunedin private investigators have been at the centre of allegations from some ACC recipients of inappropriate behaviour while they were contracted to ACC's fraud unit. Now legal proceedings against them are over, Mr Gibbons and Mr Scott speak out. Debbie Porteous reports.

Two high-level independent peer reviews of the case files of Dunedin private investigators Peter Gibbons and Graeme Scott found investigations they carried out for ACC's fraud unit were conducted professionally and ethically and provided enough evidence for prosecutions to be laid.