Debbie Porteous

Police are urging people in the South to make sure they have made plans to get home safely after they have been out drinking at Christmas parties or shouts.

A decision by Justice Minister Simon Power to consider a request for a commission of inquiry into the case of convicted Christchurch child-care worker Peter Ellis is a hopeful sign, say the Dunedin authors of a letter requesting the inquiry.

Nine out of 10 commercial buildings in Otago do not have sprinkler systems installed, raising concerns among firefighters.

Bob Burns is back, but this time he is wearing a new hat. He started his career as a police constable in Dunedin, now he is the Southern District commander. Debbie Porteous interviews the superintendent.

More than 200 servicemen and women, members of the public, relatives and friends braved the cold on Dunedin's waterfront last night for a service to dedicate a memorial to the 30 Dunedin area sailors who died in the 1941 sinking of the HMS Neptune.

Fire safety officers are investigating the cause of a fire that engulfed a house in Aramoana, near Dunedin, early yesterday.

The South Island's first helicopter underwater survival simulator, designed and developed and built in Dunedin, has passed a safety assessment and should be in operation early next year.

It was not surprising the Privy Council threw out Bain's latest petition as it was a long shot, but his lawyers were fully entitled to give it a try, a New Zealand specialist in the law says.

Ross Kennedy considers himself lucky after managing to leave Thailand at the weekend on a spur of the moment decision.

More than 100 people from Otago and Southland were charged with cultivating cannabis in the past year as part of a national cannabis crime operation.

A motorist who backed out of a driveway on to Dunedin's Kaikorai Valley Rd and swiftly accelerated back in when he noticed a checkpoint 20m down the road was among 23 drivers processed for drink-driving in the first weekend of a major pre-Christmas drink-driving operation in Dunedin.

More than a third of people sentenced to community work in New Zealand last year failed to complete it - a figure which has at least one critic concerned there is something wrong with the system.

A Dunedin teenager injured in a 5m fall down a cliff at Smaills beach, Dunedin, last night had to be carried on a stretcher about 50m across jagged rocks and 200m along the beach to a waiting ambulance.

On June 28, 2008, a man Dunedin Constables Hamish Buchanan and Brent Christie had gone to arrest cut his own throat with a carving knife in front of them.

Residents are concerned speeding and dangerous drivers are returning to the streets of South Dunedin after a quiet period following the death of an 11-year-old boy in January this year.