Debbie Porteous

Dunedin police are concerned a thief, or ring of thieves, is at work in Dunedin after 10 separate reports of car break-ins and thefts of goods from cars in the city last week.

Demolition work is due to restart soon on on two adjoining buildings in Rattray St, Dunedin, more than a year after the roof of one of them, the 136-year-old Barrons building, collapsed.

Brian Davey worked in the New Zealand Fire Service for 47 years before he retired.

A senior Otago Settlers Museum conservator who was sacked last year for serious misconduct has successfully taken a personal grievance against the Dunedin City Council, which has been ordered to pay him $34,446.

The power to do something about protesters occupying Dunedin's Octagon lies with the city council, not police, and the council now has the ammunition it needs to act, an Otago University law professor believes.

Police are investigating a complaint from the Dunedin City Council relating to the wilful damage of grass under repair in the Octagon.

The Dunedin City Council is having an easier time controlling daisies than it is tents that randomly pop up on an area of lawn it is trying to repair.

Dunedin auctioneer Kevin Hayward, of Hayward's Auction House, holds up a saddle, just one of nearly 200 lots punters will be able to bid on at Wednesday's police auction.

One of the largest private superyachts to visit Dunedin cruised into the city yesterday, turning heads as it made its way up Otago Harbour to its berth.

If she had kept everything she has bought from second-hand stores over her life, Dunedin woman Emily Cannan could easily have filled her home (and her father's carport) several times over with her finds.

Police are at a loss to explain a cluster of serious and potentially fatal vehicle accidents around Otago yesterday.

This year police have for the first time asked residents from the Waitaki River south to keep their eyes peeled for plots of marijuana in the bush, on the roadside, or down the back of the farm.

An off-duty ambulance officer, an off-duty prison officer and a "phenomenal" team of medical professionals have the utmost thanks and gratitude of a former Dunedin man after they saved his life when he collapsed in a Queenstown car park.

The tower on the historic Dunedin courthouse was strengthened in 1993 - except for the ground floor level supporting it.

The mauling of a month-old pet lamb in Brighton yesterday has prompted its owner to warn others in the area that a lamb had been killed by a dog on the loose.

The reoccupation of the Octagon in Dunedin looks set to continue indefinitely, although tents will come out only when there is a big point to make.

Parts of the Dunedin courthouse and St John buildings were not closed because they posed an immediate danger to people around them, but so required strengthening work could get under way, the relevant authorities say.

A 27-year-old Dunedin man who was forbidden to drive after he was processed for drink-driving early yesterday will appear in the Dunedin District Court later this month after he allegedly drove his car on the way home from the police station.