Debbie Porteous

Gayle Hall, the mother of paralympic gold medallist Adam Hall, has died in a car crash south of Dunedin.

Southern residents should be shocked about the increase in violent crime recorded in the Southern Police district over the past five years, the police district commander says.

A Milton police car was rammed five times during a pursuit through South Otago early yesterday.

She donned her first pair of boots in 1978 and dedicated herself to punk for the next 20 years, documenting New Zealand's underground music and performance poetry scene along the way.

Tui Norman rides a maroon mobility scooter to match her magenta jacket.

The family of Taieri woman Gayle Hall, who died in a car crash 400m from her home on Wednesday, is coping with her death "one hour at a time", a family friend says.

People whose homes were flattened in Wednesday's earthquake in China were last night sheltering in tents, waiting for help, the uncle of a man caught up in the disaster says.

The first rain during the day for a week made Dunedin roads greasy yesterday, prompting police to issue a reminder to drivers.

A man was arrested after a police pursuit of a speeding vehicle ended in a crash about 20km south of Dunedin yesterday.

She lives with Italian nuns who hardly speak a word of English and enforce an 8pm curfew, gets up at 5.30am and dances seven and a-half hours a day - twice a week in the evening, too - and loves it.

A decomposing human body was not what he had come to Fiordland looking for, the hunter who made the discovery near a remote Fiordland creek says.

Upset at the possible demise of Castle St student bar the Gardens Tavern, three Dunedin students have come up with a scheme to save it.

A prized, and possibly historic, finial from on top of the Winter Garden in the Dunedin Botanic Garden has been stolen, with scaffolding on the glasshouse damaged in the process.