Tower Insurance has increased the amount it is willing to pay towards repairing an earthquake-damaged Christchurch home, but is still refusing to pay for a more expensive rebuild.
Andre Lovatt grew up in Christchurch and completed a masters degree in Civil Engineering at Canterbury before taking up a position in Singapore working on, among other things, the $6.7 billion Marina Bay Sands waterfront resort. After almost 10 years in Southeast Asia he has returned to his earthquake ravaged home to take on a project with a much smaller price tag. Andre is the new CEO of the Christchurch Arts Centre and his job is to oversee the $290 million dollar project that will, if it's successful, return the centre to its former glory by the end of 2019.
The Insurance Council has shot down criticism the industry may be delaying earthquake claims for financial gain.
In a serious privacy breach - the addresses and earthquake claim details of almost ten thousand Canterbury people have been mistakenly emailed by Earthquake Commission to the wrong person.
The Earthquake Commission has admitted its privacy breach was almost 10 times worse than it had said, with the details of all 83-thousand clients in its Canterbury Home Repair programme being emailed out.
The Earthquake Commission has been granted an interim injunction stopping a blogger sharing details from a leaked email with Canterbury home owners.
Earthquake engineers working on the rebuild of Christchurch have been told they are in the most painful part, two years on.
A forum's heard from older people in Christchurch saying they feel vulnerable, misled, and left out in the cold when it comes to earthquake repairs and payouts.
Specially designed sleeping boxes originally made to keep babies safe during the Christchurch earthquakes are now being used for vulnerable infants in South Auckland. The little beds are called "Pepi-Pods" and they're being given to families with babies that might be susceptible to cot death.
Two former Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority officials attempted to use their positions for their own financial gain and their actions will now be referred to the Serious Fraud Office.
An audit of the Earthquake Commission's quake repairs in Christchurch has found many dissatisfied home owners and others being left in the dark.
Topics - Katy Perry opened the ceremony in Los Angeles with a Japanese-themed performance of Unconditionally, dressed as a Geisha. Within minutes, fans and viewers were accusing her of racism. A citizens initiated referendum on the sale of state assets is in full swing. The referendum isn't binding on the Government, in fact the Government has already promised to ignore it. Newly published research shows that the Canterbury earthquakes were even more unusual than first thought, with such a sequence unlikely to occur anywhere else in the world. The research, published this week in Nature Geoscience, challenges the common assumption that the strength of the Earth's crust is constant.
Topics - Twelve charges laid against the former Pike River Coal chief executive Peter Whittall in relation to the 2010 disaster at the mine have been dropped. In a shock development in the Christchurch District Court today, the Crown said that after an extensive review it was "not appropriate to continue with the prosecution against Mr Whittall''. More than half of the 2.15 million KiwiSaver members are either not contributing to the retirement scheme or not saving enough to collect the $521 annual tax credit from the Government, according to the Inland Revenue Department. The number of people with dire needs on Housing New Zealand's waiting list has tripled since the Christchurch earthquakes.
A book written by two Christchurch women to help the region's children deal with the stress of the earthquakes has been endorsed by the director of Civil Defence, John Hamilton.
Three years on from the earthquakes of 2011, Census data now confirms massive changes to the face and shape of Christchurch.
Topics - A big study from Harvard and UC Berkeley has looked back into family trees, over centuries, to determine how social mobility has changed. The "Moon man" has used his claimed Christchurch earthquake predictions to defeat an Advertising Standards Authority complaint over his weather forecasting website. The Prime Minister John Key says Labour's flat performance in recent polls is because it's focusing on the wrong issues.
Topics - The Gettysburg address, the short speech given by Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago today, the finest short speech in the English language, and one of the great political utterances of all time. A strong earthquake that hit Christchurch last night has been upgraded by GNS Science to a magnitude 4.6. It was also shallower than first believed, with GNS reporting it was 8km deep rather than 11km. Wallabies rugby coach Ewen McKenzie has made no apologies for suspending six of his players in what's been described as "a hard-line move designed to set the standards required to win the 2015 World Cup".
A structural engineer has told the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission that illegal building techniques are being used in the Christchurch rebuild because the engineering profession is in crisis.
Police officers and staff in Christchurch, who have been called the heroes of the February 2011 earthquake, have been honored today for their actions including a daring crane rescue.
The most comprehensive survey carried out so far of Canterbury businesses following the earthquakes, has found the majority of sectors have had to lay off workers.
Cabinet papers show the government's one-billion-dollar plan for reorganising Christchurch schools in the wake of the Canterbury earthquakes is one of the most expensive options it could have chosen.
Eighteen-year-old Josh Anderson was part of the team removing an organ from a church in Christchurch when it collapsed during the 22 February earthquake, killing three of his colleagues. Now, 18 months later, he is about to perform his first ever solo organ concert in his hometown, Timaru.
One hundred or so people who live in Christchurch's port hills have faced off with earthquake recovery leaders in a heated debate over zoning decisions.
American social-psychologist Tara Powell on the challenges of building confidence in children who have been traumatised by a natural disaster, such as Hurricane Katrina or the Christchurch earthquake.
The Government has handed the report of the Royal Commission on the Canterbury Earthquakes to the police to look at whether further action could be taken over the construction of the CTV building.
Earthquake damaged Christchurch homes written off by insurance companies are becoming hot property for investors wanting to make money renting them out.
Topics - appalling stories of Christchurch families living in garages and tents - even a couple renting a wash-house - are continuing to surface almost two years on from the February 2011 earthquake. Youth crime is described as "steadily falling" in New Zealand, with rates of police apprehensions and prosecutions of young people at record lows. Auckland Grammar has employed the services of a private investigator to check on parents trying to cheat on school zone boundaries.
The Christchurch City Council and the Earthquake Recovery Minister, Gerry Brownlee, have hammered out a compromise deal over setting the council's long term spending priorities.
Christchurch City Council staff have been given the hurry up from councillors over the length of time it is taking to repair or replace earthquake-damaged council housing.
For many years the Heathcote-Avon estuary was the dumping ground for Christchurch's sewage. Then, in 2010, the wastewater was diverted well out to sea, via a long pipe. David Schiel from the University of Canterbury and John Zeldis from NIWA were investigating the effects of this diversion on the health of estuary when the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes happened, re-engineering both the estuary and their experiments.