Rosie Manins

A renewed interest among New Zealanders for handmade crafts is at the heart of a new television series featuring Dunedin designer Tamsin Cooper.

Dunedin's faces, places, flora and fauna are captured in a stained-glass work installed this month inside St Paul's Cathedral. Artist Peter Mackenzie explained the relevance and technical process behind each intricate detail to Rosie Manins.

Attempts are being made to locate and identify the remains of Otago coastwatchers executed by Japanese soldiers on Tarawa Atoll 70 years ago.

Installing a life ring at Cape Saunders has seen Coastguard Dunedin win a national water safety award.

Drivers of heavy and towing vehicles will need to closely monitor their speed on the open road from this week, when police begin using better speed camera technology.

Dunedin's best-kept secret is out. The unveiling yesterday of a stained glass window inside St Paul's Cathedral revealed Dame Kiri Te Kanawa as St Cecilia, the patron saint of music.

Mosgiel coastwatcher Sydney McGrath is unable to attend today's inaugural commemoration for his and others' World War 2 service, but he remembers well the time he spent searching for enemy craft in the Pacific.

Sydney chess player and eventual winner Gary Lane (front left) out-plays Tony Dowden, of Dunedin (front right) yesterday, while at the adjacent table eventual second place-getter Darryl Johanson, of Melbourne (left), beats Aucklander Helen Milligan during the South Island championship hosted by the Otago Chess Club, in Dunedin.

"OMG!" was all the hundreds of teary, red-faced young fans could utter, so excited were they by the prospect of meeting New Zealand boy band Titanium in Dunedin yesterday.

Dunedin marine scientists are analysing the head of a dead adult whale, which washed ashore at St Kilda Beach yesterday.

Dunedin baritone Ben Kidd lives for opera and is being given the opportunity of a lifetime to audition for the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Biting the hand that feeds him is a daily struggle for Dunedin unemployment beneficiary Gordon Holmes, who is embroiled in a legal dispute with Work and Income New Zealand (Winz) and the Ministry of Social Development.

It is business as usual at KiwiRail's Hillside Engineering Workshops in South Dunedin, as the facility remains on the market.

Friendships fostered at one of Dunedin's historic boarding halls are lasting the test of time, as those involved in a weekend reunion can affirm.

Proving you can never be too old or too young to enjoy train rides, Dunedin rail enthusiast Lawrence Clarke celebrates his 77th birthday by taking his grandchildren Sophie (8) and Sam (11) Clarke, of Christchurch, on the new Dunedin Silver Fern railcar on Saturday.