It’s close to midday on one of the busiest streets in Sydney’s centre and Juan Mann is getting nervous. Known to millions as the ”free hugs guy”, he is worried about the lunchtime rush. Ever since a video of Mann appeared on the YouTube website last September, he has become something of a celebrity in his home town.
The Western Force kept their slim Super 14 finals hopes alive with record 45-17 thrashing of the Central Cheetahs at Subiaco Oval in Perth on Friday. The Force, needing a bonus-point win to remain mathematically capable of reaching the play-offs in their second season, delivered with a six-try spree that took them to their highest score yet in the competition.
The Waikato Chiefs beat the New South Waratahs 28-23 in Sydney on Friday to stay in the hunt for a place in the Super 14 semifinals. A late try by replacement Tane Tu’ipulotou sealed victory for the New Zealand side, who climbed to third in the standings with one game left.
The Hurricanes held off New Zealand rivals the Highlanders 22-21 in Wellington on Friday to keep alive their faint hopes of reaching the Super 14 semifinals. The teams scored two tries apiece, the last of which was by the Highlanders’ Toby Morland in the dying seconds, but flyhalf Nick Evans missed the conversion that would have given his side victory.
Rapper Snoop Dogg has been refused entry into Australia because of his extensive criminal record, the immigration minister said on Thursday. It is the second time this year the troubled rapper has been barred from entering another country. Snoop Dogg was due to fly into Sydney this week to co-host the MTV Australia Video Music Awards.
A blind British pilot landed his microlight aircraft in the northern Australian city of Darwin on Monday as he neared the end of a London to Sydney charity flight. Miles Hilton-Barber (55) flew his aircraft into Darwin International Airport after strong headwinds had forced him to make an unplanned landing in Kununurra in a remote part of Western Australia on Sunday.
The Otago Highlanders kept their faint Super 14 semifinal hopes alive when they just held off a fast-finishing New South Wales Waratahs 26-25 on Saturday. Trailing by 20 points with 13 minutes remaining, the Waratahs launched a spirited counterattack and scored three tries to almost steal an unlikely win.
New Zealand flanker Jerry Collins has been cleared of a serious neck injury after he was stretchered off during a Super 14 match in Christchurch on Friday.The 26-year-old Hurricanes forward, capped 38 times by the All Blacks, was taken off after a seemingly innocuous tackle during the 23-13 defeat by the Crusaders at Jade Stadium.
The ACT Brumbies kept their Super 14 hopes alive with a last-minute penalty from winger Mark Gerrard to sneak past Perth-based Western Force 14-12 on Friday. The win, their fourth in a row, moves the Brumbies into fourth place on the Super 14 table.
The Crusaders held off a determined challenge from New Zealand rivals the Hurricanes to win a bruising Super 14 match 23-13 in Christchurch on Friday. The defending champions and competition leaders led 17-13 at half-time following tries by forwards Corey Flynn and Ross Filipo.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Tuesday decried the negative ”gun culture” in the United States after the deadly shooting spree at a US university, holding up tough gun laws in his own country as the answer. Howard introduced strict gun ownership laws after the shooting massacre of 35 people in the southern island state of Tasmania in 1996.
The New South Wales Waratahs defeated arch-rivals the Queensland Reds 26-13 here on Saturday in a battle between the worst two teams in the Super 14 rugby competition. The Waratahs scored two tries to one to outlast the visiting Queenslanders and almost certainly consign the Reds to the wooden spoon for the second year in a row.
The Waikato Chiefs ran in nine tries to beat the Western Force 64-36 in a highly entertaining Super 14 match in Hamilton, New Zealand on Saturday. Winger Roy Kinikinilau and replacement scrumhalf Brendon Leonard claimed hat tricks to help keep the Chiefs’ semifinal hopes alive and hit the Perth-based team’s chances of reaching the playoffs.
Australia’s top rugby executive Gary Flowers announced his resignation on Friday, paving the way for the possible return of his predecessor John O’Neill after this year’s World Cup. Flowers, who has been criticised for a lack of leadership, said he will leave when his contract expires on December 31 2007.
Extreme drought, ferocious bushfires and urban development are killing Australia’s koalas and could push the species towards extinction within a decade, environmentalists are warning. Alarms about the demise of the iconic and peculiar animal, which sleeps about 20 hours per day and eats only the leaves of the eucalyptus tree, have been raised before.
South Africa’s Sharks moved into third place in Super 14 rugby after a nine-try, 59-16 win on Saturday over Queensland, handing the Reds their eighth straight loss. ”I think this showed the difference between a top side and where we are,” said Queensland captain John Roe, who scored his team’s only try. ”It was very, very disappointing.”
Rising carbon dioxide emissions are making the world’s oceans more acidic, particularly closer to the poles, heralding disaster for marine life, a major United Nations report on climate change impacts says. The report, released in Brussels on Friday, carries the toughest UN warning yet about the impacts of global warming.
Gerhard Zandberg won the men’s 50m backstroke final on Sunday to provide South Africa with their second gold medal at the world championships. Zandberg stormed to victory in 24,98 seconds, giving South Africa their second win after Roland Schoeman won the men’s 50m butterfly.
Five-times Olympic champion Ian Thorpe has denied using performance-enhancing drugs and vowed to clear his name after a drug test before his retirement last year showed unusually high levels of naturally-occurring hormones.
Australian swim officials huddled on Saturday to discuss a report that Ian Thorpe, the world record holder and Olympic champion, showed ”abnormal levels” of two banned substances in a doping test last year before he retired. Anti-doping officials in Australia threw out the case against Thorpe, one of the sport’s most recognisable athletes, for lack of scientific proof.
Michael Phelps scooped up his fifth gold medal at the World Swimming Championships on Friday but is still to face his toughest test. The 21-year-old American stayed on course to win an unprecedented eight titles in Melbourne when he made it five from five with victory in the 4×200 metres freestyle relay.
The Western Force notched a club-record third straight victory with a gritty 22-12 Super 14 win over the often undisciplined Coastal Sharks at Subiaco Oval in Perth on Friday. The result in front of a noisy crowd of 28Â 400 kept the Force right in the hunt for a finals berth in just their second season in the competition and confirmed their status as the leading Australian contender.
The remarkable Michael Phelps shattered his third world record of the Swimming World Championships in Melbourne on Thursday to bag a fourth gold medal and stay on course for an ambitious tilt at eight titles. The American marvel took apart his own world mark in the 200m individual medley, lowering it by almost a second.
Australia, which refuses to sign the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, will ask other nations to contribute to a new fund to combat deforestation and global warming, Prime Minister John Howard said on Thursday. Howard said his government would give Aus-million (-million) over five years to the World Bank-backed fund to help stop forest destruction.
An Australian schoolgirl, a Chinese adulterer and several South Korean celebrities have one thing in common: all have been victims of cyberbullying, a modern version of mob cruelty. The case of the girl was particularly horrific and led an Australian state to ban the popular internet film-sharing website <i>YouTube<i> from school computers.
Michael Phelps, Laure Manaudou and Leila Vaziri obliterated world records in Melbourne on Wednesday on another sensational night at the World Swimming Championships, but Grant Hackett’s reign as king of the 800m freestyle ended. Phelps (21) carved a huge 1,71 seconds off his own 200m butterfly world record to set a new mark of one minute 52,09 seconds.
A Ukrainian swimming coach has been banned from making contact with his daughter after they were filmed fighting in Melbourne in what a leading athlete called another example of ”that ugly parent syndrome”. Mikhail Zubkov (38) was thrown out of the World Swimming Championships and police issued a domestic violence order against him.
Australia’s women’s water polo team has lodged an official complaint alleging an Italian opponent bit their star player Kate Gynther. The incident apparently happened in Australia’s 12-8 victory over the Olympic champions at the world championships in Melbourne on Tuesday.
South Africa’s Cameron van der Burgh broke the African record in the men’s 50m breaststroke at the Rod Laver Arena on Tuesday. He broke one of the oldest records in the swimming history books when he completed the race in 27,49 seconds. The 18-year-old could not improve on his time in the evening’s semifinal, but qualified for the final in 27,99 seconds.
American Michael Phelps smashed Ian Thorpe’s 200m freestyle world record on an extraordinary evening at the World Swimming Championships on Tuesday. Four world records tumbled in the space of 90 minutes at the Susie O’Neill pool with Aaron Peirsol, Natalie Coughlin and Federica Pellegrini setting new marks in one of the most remarkable days in the event’s history.
American Michael Phelps smashed Ian Thorpe’s 200m freestyle world record to win gold at the Swimming World Championships in Melbourne on Tuesday. Phelps left his rivals in his wash as he raced to a stunning victory in one minute 43,86 seconds, wiping 0,20 seconds off the previous record of 1:44,06 set by Australian Thorpe at the 2001 world championships in Japan.
A ”monster” cane toad the size of a small dog has been captured by an environmental group dedicated to wiping out the toxic amphibian, which has killed countless animals since being introduced to Australia in the 1930s. The volunteer-run organisation picked up the 40cm-long, 1kg cane toad during a raid on a pond.