Wellington- New Zealand joined international condemnation of North Korea's satellite launch on Sunday, saying it had not helped efforts to build peace and stability in the region.

"North Korea's actions are provocative, despite their claim that the satellite launch was for peaceful, scientific purposes," Foreign Minister Murray McCully said in a statement.

He said the launch ran contrary to clear messages given to North Korea by United Nations Security Council resolutions following missile and nuclear tests in 2006.

Wellington, Apr 5 : New Zealand coach Andy Moles has rubbished suggestions that Jeetan Patel should be picked regardless of whether a pitch favours spinners or seamers.

"We always look at the surface first and the team is selected based on that. Jeetan bowled really well in Napier and there's no doubting that when the wicket suits two spinners, we are lucky to have someone of his quality ready to play," Moles told Sunday News.

Wellington  - The head of New Zealand's main returned servicemen's organization urged young people to stay away from annual World War I commemorations in Turkey because they are damaging the environment and disrespecting the dead, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

Tens of thousands of young New Zealanders and Australians go to the Gallipoli peninsula every year to mark the anniversary of their ancestors' disastrous landing on April 25, 1915, to fight Turkish troops.

Wellington  - New Zealand's answer to Spain's "Running of the Bulls" - the "Running of the Sheep" - went haywire on Saturday when about 1,000 of the normally placid animals ran amok through the North Island rural town of Te Kuiti.

They leapt over barriers designed to keep them on the main street and protect 7,000 spectators who turned up to watch the New Zealand animal icons given free rein in the normally sleepy town, TV3 reported.

Wellington  - A Wellington sex shop has upset the Catholic Church with a billboard advertisement showing a praying woman with a smile on her face, a newspaper reported on Saturday.

The D. Vice store's ad shows four parishioners in a church and three of them have their eyes closed and hands clasped. But the fourth, a woman, is smiling and below her is a tagline describing a sexual aid and its price, the Dominion Post reported.

Wellington, Apr. 3 : Legendary New Zealand all-rounder Sir Richard Hadlee was formally inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame during the lunch interval on the first day of the third and final Test between New Zealand and India at Basin Reserve, Wellington on Friday.

The 57-year-old from Christchurch, who was appointed as a Member of British Empire (MBE) in 1981 and knighted in 1990, received his commemorative cap from ICC President David Morgan as ICC Chief Executive Haroon Lorgat looked on.