Christmas Day hasn't even arrived yet, but for the past few days the Stainer family has been celebrating like all its Christmases have come at once.

A brief deluge yesterday had central Dunedin on standby again as the mop-up continues from a storm on Monday that overwhelmed the city's stormwater system.

A flash storm that dropped hail stones the size of golf balls caught residents near Ashburton off guard last night.

'It's not the sort of thing you'd want to come across when you're getting the paper from the mailbox.' A fur seal surprised Dunedin residents yesterday.

Parts of Dunedin were flooded late yesterday afternoon when a thunderstorm struck, causing havoc for some central-city businesses.

'Not knowing whether they're going to survive is stressful,' says a man who hit a woman on a pedestrian crossing. The pair now want to prevent similar accidents.

Violent drunken offending in Dunedin was unrelenting and something needed to be done about it, Judge Michael Crosbie yesterday told a man who headbutted another man while drunk in a Mosgiel pub earlier this year.

What are the top toys for Christmas? 6-year-old Maya Satake can tell you - she's one of four official toy testers for The Warehouse.

Student numbers are expected to increase at the University of Otago next year, turning around three years of declining enrolments at the institution.

A Seventh Day Adventist Church pastor has denied encouraging members of his congregation to lend money to a church member now on trial for an alleged $850,000 scam.

Ireland as an opponent hold a special significance for Sam Cane.

A pastor and members of his congregation lost $850k to a fellow church member who falsely claimed he had $30m owed to him from a Nigerian oil contract, a court hears.

Offensive graffiti appearing on the site of a proposed secondary boarding school for Muslim boys, and negativity circulating about the Muslim education system, has dismayed the Al-Noor Charitable Trust.

Sarah Lang finds Dunedin is much more than a city of Scots and scarfies — and a special spot for a weekend getaway.

A swift crackdown is expected on what the New Zealand Taxi Federation calls illegal and unacceptable moonlighting by unqualified Dunedin drivers charging fees, having passengers buy them petrol, or accepting donations for their services.

A foreign student had nightmares after a shopper told her to either take off her burqa or leave NZ while she was shopping at a Dunedin supermarket, court is told.

The country is in for a mixed bag of weather over Labour Weekend, with sun, wind and rain predicted.

A van used in an attempted abduction at the weekend had been spotted in south Dunedin and the city's business district, police say.

New Zealanders' attitudes to Asian people are becoming more positive, with more than half of non-Asians believing Asian immigration to be a good thing, a study shows.

Two men have been charged with abduction after they allegedly tried to drag a 22-year-old woman into a van at 9.30pm in Dunedin on Saturday night.

The fixed speed camera on Caversham Valley Rd, near Lookout Point, in Dunedin, was removed as part of a multimillion highway safety upgrade.

A gas main was ruptured by workers at a construction site in the Albion Lane area, Dunedin, about 8.45am. The Fire Service has finished dissipating remaining gas residues.

A convicted sex offender who sexually assaulted a young woman at knifepoint while on parole has appealed against what he calls a "manifestly excessive'' open-ended preventive sentence.