KEY POINTS:
Forget the stadium polls, radio host JJ Feeny ran a poll on her website, www.radiochick.co.nz, asking visitors who should replace Clint Brown as the permanent TV3 sports presenter. A total of 1409 people voted and it seems that women under 30 want Hamish McKay, who scored 680 votes, compared with 143 for Ant Stevens, 205 for Howard Dobson, 187 for Shaun Sommerfield and 194 for Michelle Pickles.
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Santa Claus is being banned from Christmas markets in Germany and Austria. Anti-Santa campaigners claim Father Christmas was invented by Coca-Cola and detracts from the true spirit of the festive season. A Vienna city hall spokesman confirmed: "There are rules governing what stallholders can do and one of them is to agree not to use the image of Santa as a condition of being able to trade there." Bettina Schade, from the Frankfurter Nicholas Initiative in Germany, said: "We object to the material things, the hectic rush to buy gifts, and the ubiquity of the bearded man in the red suit that are taking away from the core meaning of Christmas ... like the birth of Jesus." (Source: Ananova.com)
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According to an email security company, spam worldwide has tripled since June and now accounts for nine out of every 10 messages received. What makes these statistics even more worrying is that criminal gangs are supposedly behind 80 per cent of spam. "Email systems are overloaded or melting down trying to keep up," said Dan Druker, a vice-president at Postini. His company has detected seven billion spam emails worldwide this month compared with 2.5 billion in June.
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Toronto's Sutton Place Hotel faces more than $600 in fines after actor Sean Penn smoked a cigarette during a press conference there during a film festival. Some health officials wanted Penn also charged under the province's anti-smoking laws, but an investigation found the hotel had not informed Penn he could not smoke. (Source: reason.com)
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Were you driving down Pitt St in the rain just after 10.30pm on Monday night? If so, a witness saw how you were cut off by a cement truck and swerved into the parked car. She says, "rather than stop to check on you (it didn't seem like a big smash) I followed the cement truck which had kept driving, got his number plate and called it in to the police communications centre. So they have the details of the truck, and my contact details, if you decide to report the incident. I hate it when someone gets off scot-free".
