Mark Price

Some call it "vendor conditioning" and label it controversial. Others consider it merely a legitimate and necessary part of the real estate agent's job.

Earlier this month Metro magazine named a young woman from Milton as Auckland's sexiest woman. Sam Hayes (24) left Milton eight years ago to pursue a media career that has so far taken her to the presenting chair of TV3's Nightline programme. Mark Price finds out if sex appeal and serious journalism go together.

Waitaki MP Jacqui Dean is not saying yet where she will deploy the extra staff member she is entitled to.

Simon Knight half expects his father's house will fall down once he removes all the books stacked from floor to ceiling in every room.

The death in August of eccentric adventurer, photographer, and historian Hardwicke Knight severs a fascinating connection between Dunedin and the search for Noah's ark.

One of Dunedin's grandest old homes is in line for restoration work designed to return it to its former glory.

Dunedin's Steamer Basin will have another empty berth today when the Pacific Spirit leaves the port for good.

Dunedin Mayoress Helen Black became a "symbol of arrogance" during the Depression, according to Emeritus Prof Erik Olssen, although he had heard people say she was a lovely woman, "kindness personified".

It is 70 years since the Great Depression was finally laid to rest but still it casts a shadow across the psyche of the world's economists, politicians and commentators. Last month, New Zealand Herald political columnist Fran O'Sullivan wrote that the current crisis was "remarkably like the conditions which gave rise to mass human misery during the 1930s" and Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said that the current crisis "in many ways represents a worse situation".

Two Dunedin residents will be celebrating more loudly than most if Barack Obama wins the race to be the next president of the United States.

Less sleep in childhood equals more obesity in adulthood.

Potential home buyers in Otago are not yet leaping back into the real estate market, despite declines in both house prices and interest rates and suggestions homes are becoming more affordable.

Dunedin's longest-running regular quiz night, at the Shiel Hill Tavern, is back to normal after an electrical fire in August forced the tavern to close its bar for six weeks.

A Dunedin stamp collector has won gold at a world exhibition in Prague.

An Auckland-based writer is promoting Cargills Castle, in Dunedin, in tourist magazines around the world, despite the fact that it is not on the city's tourist map or even accessible to the public.

New Zealand's clean, green international image could be damaged unless more is done to protect endangered Hector's dolphins, University of Otago zoologist Associate Prof Liz Slooten says.

Two of New Zealand's most famous living artists yesterday recreated a work on which they collaborated 29 years ago.