Australia

A French woman with a fear of flying and a history of sleepwalking appeared in an Australian court on Monday after she attempted to open a jet airplane’s door in mid-flight so she could light a cigarette. Sadrine Helene Sellies had taken sleeping tablets and alcohol ahead of the Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to Australia on Saturday, Brisbane’s Magistrates Court heard.

Australians were urged on Thursday not to panic and fear a bio-terrorist attack after callers to Sydney radio stations reported glow-in-the-dark pork chops in their fridges. The New South Wales Food Authority said it regularly receives sightings of glowing food.

The reversal of a witchdoctor’s curse has been credited with the Australian national football team’s first qualification for the World Cup in 32 years. Australian television presenter John Safran, who hosts an irreverent religious-affairs show, said he learned of the curse in the late Australian captain Johnny Warren’s autobiography.

Australia’s Olympic and world champion swimmer Ian Thorpe makes his competitive comeback at this weekend’s World Cup shortcourse meet at Sydney’s Olympic Aquatic Centre. Thorpe will swim his first race since last year’s Athens Olympics in the 100m freestyle.

Judgement day has arrived for Australian rugby over the inadequacy of its scrummaging and something had to be done quickly to rectify it in time for the 2007 World Cup, Australian media said on Monday. Not only did the Wallabies crash to a record-equalling seventh successive defeat to world champions England at Twickenham last Saturday, but the scrum was humiliated.

The alleged emergence of a home-grown terrorist threat was a chilling development that dispelled any lingering misconception Australia was immune to attack, newspapers said on Wednesday. ”Osama’s Aussie offspring” declared The Australian following Tuesday’s raids in Sydney and Melbourne said by police to have foiled a large-scale attack inspired by a radical Muslim cleric.

A robot designed to disarm bombs was sent on Friday to rescue a pet bird from a Sydney apartment building crumbling because of a tunnel collapse. The cockatiel, Tweety, was stranded in an apartment directly above a section of the building that partially collapsed when a giant hole opened up near the site of a new tunnel earlier this week.

An Australian who had his nose bitten off in a violent argument over the merits of the latest Bruce Willis blood-and-guts feature film Sin City appeared in a Bathurst court on Monday along with his alleged attacker. The 20-year-old got into a fight with another man over the quality of the film.

It’s well known that smoking cannabis makes you hungry. What wasn’t so well known is why this is so. In a breakthrough that may help in stimulating the appetite of anorexics, or blunting the hunger pains of dieters, Australian researchers have found the receptors in the brain that make marijuana users ravenous.

The Australian navy on Wednesday denied its ships were behind two mysterious mass strandings in 24 hours that left 130 pilot whales dead on the coast of the island state of Tasmania. About 80 pilot whales beached themselves at Marion Bay on Tuesday, just hours after nearly 60 of the animals died in an earlier stranding in the same spot.

Former Australian captain Steve Waugh says he felt betrayed by a drinking culture and let down by his brother Mark and Ian Healy on his first cricket tour in charge of the Australian cricket team. Waugh takes aims at several high-profile Australian cricket figures, including Shane Warne and Ian Chappell in his autobiography, Out Of My Comfort Zone.

Ricky Ponting has defiantly told would-be suitors to his Australian Test cricket captaincy that he’s staying put and not going anywhere. Ponting, who along with team coach John Buchanan received most of the fall-out from Australia’s relinquishing of the Ashes to England last month, says he is running the show and intends to remain captain.

Former Australian captain Steve Waugh says star leg spinner Shane Warne is insecure, hits out at Ian Chappell and takes aim at the national selectors in his keenly-awaited autobiography. Prime Minister John Howard will launch Waugh’s Out Of My Comfort Zone in Sydney on Sunday with publishers Penguin reportedly paying Aus,3-million in the biggest advance paid to date for an Australian book.

Australia will throw the book at misbehaving Wallabies following a South African nightclub spat. The Wallabies were forced to send scrum-half Matt Henjak home in disgrace last July after he scuffled with teammate Lote Tuqiri at a Cape Town nightclub just two days before their first Test against the Springboks.

A man who died in his car at a busy Australian shopping centre sat there for a week and even collected a parking ticket on his windshield before anyone realised he had passed away, reports said on Friday. Sky News reported the 71-year-old motorist was issued with a parking ticket at the shopping centre in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs two days before his death was discovered.

Australia said on Thursday it was confident the Indonesian military was not involved in recent violence on the East Timor border and rejected a report that militia activity in the area was increasing. Australia, which angered Jakarta by supporting East Timor’s successful push for independence, said it had received no reports of Indonesia provoking border violence.

Tennis bad boy Lleyton Hewitt’s attempt to show fans his softer side in a documentary has ended up with the world number three facing legal action in Australia brought by his former best friend. Hewitt has included footage of himself and Australian-rules football player Andrew McLeod visiting Aboriginal sacred sites together.

Almost one in three people bitten by deadly saltwater crocodiles in Australia had been drinking alcohol before the animal attacked, new research has found. An Australian review of unprovoked crocodile attacks on humans between 1971 and 2004 found that 29% of the 62 attacks had involved some alcohol consumption by the victim.

An Australian scientific team set off for Antarctica on Tuesday to search for definitive proof in the polar ice cap that human activity is responsible for rising levels of greenhouse gases. The team from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation will drill 250m below the surface to obtain cylinders of ice containing trapped bubbles of methane dating back to 1750.