NZ at Noon: School Pranks, Cruel Mother, Cruel Sister

Stories making headlines across New Zealand at noon include out of control school pranksters in Dunedin, a mother who gave her young daughter a gun and a woman who set a pitbull on her sister.

End of year school pranks in Dunedin include putting burning excrement-filled paper bags on school boarding hostel doorsteps.

Phillipa Bayley is off to jail after setting her young pitbull dog on to her sister.

A Kaitaia man allegedly locked his partner up in a shipping container and started shooting at the door.

A Wairarapa woman who gave her 9-year old daughter a gun and told her to shoot the woman's partner and also told the girl that she would be given away to another family.

After allowing two young women inside his house, a Rotorua man was allegedly hit on the head with a frying pan, tied up and gagged and then robbed.

A Woodville couple have topped the SPCA New Zealand's 2012 List of Shame.

If you Melbourne Cup sweepstake exceeds $500 then you are breaking the law.

The Ministry of Education wants to close Woolston School but apparently it also wants to build new classrooms there.

A hedge fire in Whakatane was the only blot on what was otherwise a successful Guy Fawkes weekend in Rotorua. Rain put a dampener on fireworks' plans in Hawke's Bay. But it was havoc in Western bay of Plenty.

7-year old Jorgie McDiarmid-Jones of Oamaru does not understand why people did not clean up after lighting fireworks.

The female whale and her calf which stranded and later died on Opape Beach in 2010 was actually apparently the world's rarest whale, the spade-toothed beaked whale.

It was standing room only at the inaugural Maori performing arts symposium.

Suddenly a truck full of icecreams and iceblocks pulled up on the Westbrook school field.

Meanwhile there are reports of half a dozen giant carrots, three child-size pineapples, bunches of grapes, innumerable berries and even a giant parsnip roaming the streets of Opua.

Mahanga Kaka, 42, has been convicted for his seventh and eighth drink driving charges.

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If you are at Papamoa beach and there's a tsunami, soon you'll have a choice of three footbridges to escape on.

More than 26,000 speeding tickets were issued in the Bay of Plenty during the past year.

While a number of councils are still shooting dogs, the Bay of Plenty region is being more humane.

Soils are drying out rapidly all over the Wairoa-Gisborne-East Coast district.

Chanelle Sandilands went to extreme lengths to steal another person's identity.

Sulphuric acid was added to the wrong processor at at a Wanganui tannery and the combination with the chemicals in that processor caused a hydrogen sulphide cloud.

Harakeke Mountain Bike Park is looking for its zebra and tiger.

Neil Stevens had to pull six teeth out of a 17-month-old child recently.

In Christchurch, Northcote was apparently a lovely suburb until the murderers, crims, taggers and burglars from "A-town" moved in with their P-Labs after the earthquake.

The closure of the Hei Hei Community Centre has shocked locals.

Cromwell man Glen Christiansen was having dinner with his wife Sarah and their three young children when the tornado hit.

It will apparently cost University of Otago $7 million to provide staff and students with free wireless.

The larger-than-life bronze statue of rally driver Possum Bourne that stood on a hillside overlooking the Cardrona Valley for the past eight years has been quietly removed.

Wanaka police are speaking to three 12-year-old and 13-year-old boys about how 24 windows in the former Wanaka Primary School came to be broken by bricks and stones.

A 4-year-old boy's life was saved by appropriate child seating when the car he was travelling in collided head on milk tanker.

Meanwhile Hokitika has just endured its wettest October on record.

Top trending topics on Twitter in NZ at noon were: #lukesbigass, #beauschickenlegs, #guyfawkes, Pike River, #MVvNIX, Melbourne Cup, MMP, #NativeAffairs, New Zealand and Chris Rene.