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Wellington - A New Zealand town council wants to dig up the grave of a dog that was sentenced to be destroyed for killing a protected fur seal to prove it is dead, a newspaper reported on Friday.

Peter Ray, 44, told the Greymouth District Court that his Alaskan Malamute called Hercules, which killed the seal after getting away from him on a beach walk, had subsequently died of a kidney infection and been buried in his garden.

Wellington - An earthquake registering 5.8 on the Richter scale hit New Zealand on Monday, seismologists at GNS Science, the official monitoring agency, reported.

The quake, centred near Turangi in the central North Island, was felt 260 kilometres to the south in the capital, Wellington, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

The quake's epicentre was 80 kilometres below the surface, 50 kilometres deeper than the country's last big quake of magnitude 5.9 which was centred near Hastings, on the east coast of the island, on August 25.

Wellington, Aug 30: Schools in Christchurch, New Zealand are teaching their children with the help of movies – a move that they believe would raise their reading levels.

During the Audio-visual Achievement in Literacy, Language and Learning (Availll) programme, pupils watch films with subtitles, based on popular children's books. They watch for about 10 minutes each period and do exercises such as checking words in dictionaries and reading the novel.

Wellington  - The Maritime Union of New Zealand slated Friday a free trade agreement negotiated between New Zealand, Australia and the 10-member Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), saying it was bad for workers because it included Myanmar.

Union general secretary Trevor Hanson said it would boost the "violently anti-worker regime in Myanmar and threatened workers rights."

He said the union had many concerns about the treatment of Myanmarese maritime workers, some of whom worked in New Zealand waters and had been mistreated and abused in the past.