John Lewis

The MetService is warning of gale-force winds and snow to low levels in parts of Otago and Southland tomorrow as a narrow ridge covers the country.

Eighteen months ago, Tavita Nielsen-Mamea (14) felt like he was going to die from just walking up a normal flight of stairs.

"Every age and society, it seems, creates its own folk devils - monsters so grotesque or whose behaviour is so repugnant that they are seen to deserve our condemnation."

Using a modified kayak to develop a world-leading, innovative method of measuring high river flows during major floods was nothing more than a means to an end for Otago Regional Council (ORC) hydrologist Paul Hannah.

The Otago Primary Principals' Association has called on school communities to voice their concerns about changes to the pupil-teacher ratios announced in Budget 2012, and is urging the Government to focus on sense before dollars.

A Dunedin man is in custody and a gun has been seized following an Armed Offenders Squad callout near Evansdale which caused major holiday traffic delays last night.

Dunedin schools have lost 1437 pupils in the past nine years - the equivalent of 53 classrooms full of children - and Statistics New Zealand demographers are predicting the decline will continue.

The Ministry of Education has ramped up its bid to dispose of 83 non-core school houses in Otago and Southland to stem the drain on Government finances.

The Government might have abandoned its plans to change teacher-pupil class ratios, but Southern teachers, while applauding the move, remain wary.

A Dunedin man who had a conviction for assaulting a police officer cancelled in the Dunedin District Court - and received an admission from police that his arrest was unlawful - is "very pleased".

Concerns about the number of parents failing to attend school dental appointments with their children has prompted the Southern District Health Board to trial a new appointment system.

Winning a European short story-writing competition was never part of Ellen Gipp's "agenda".

Putting themselves in the shoes of New Zealand Treasury policy analysts and providing advice on long-term sustainability of government finances, has left four Otago Boys' High School pupils runners-up in a national competition.

It is never too late to create a tradition.

Unlike the chilly weather, George Procter got the warm reception he hoped for in Dunedin yesterday when he made a "sort of" surprise marriage proposal.

With no lights, no heating and, not least of all, no computers at Kaikorai Valley College yesterday, school was like that in the early 1900s.