Sydney

Pakistan fast-bowler Shoaib Akhtar was on Thursday left out of the World team 12 for the Super Test against Australia starting at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Friday. World skipper Graeme Smith will finalise his starting team before the start of play in the one-off, six-day Test.

An Australian bank clerk who kept quiet about cash he found in the street was told by a Sydney court on Tuesday he might have got to keep the Aus 000 (R1,3-million) if he had been honest and reported his find to police. Sean Clifford (23) was instead found guilty of ”larceny by finding”.

The advent of male impotency drugs has brought unexpected benefits to the animal kingdom, which no longer needs to sacrifice seals, deer and turtles to make traditional cures for erectile dysfunction. A survey of 256 men who used traditional Chinese medicine to cure their ailments found that when it came to sexual problems, more men were switching to pharmaceutical products.

Eating chillis regularly could help people get a good night’s sleep and keep their hearts healthy, an Australian university study has found. Researchers at the University of Tasmania spent the past 18 months studying the potential health benefits of chillies on a group of 10 volunteers, national radio reported on Monday.

Skipper Graeme Smith has shrugged off the World XI’s inglorious showings in the Super Series one-dayers and has promised to lift the players’ commitment for this week’s Test match with Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground. The world players were booed by sections of the 30 000 crowd at Melbourne’s Docklands stadium on Sunday after they meekly succumbed to a 156-run loss to the Australians.

Australia rejected on Thursday a plan to let big-game hunters shoot crocodiles in the country’s tropical north, despite calls for a cull after three men were killed by the giant reptiles and a 10-year-old girl was attacked. Saltwater crocodiles, which can grow up to 7m long and weigh more than a tonne, have been protected since the early 1970s.

New franchises Western Force and Central Cheetahs have received home games in the opening round of next season’s expanded Super 14 provincial rugby series, which starts next February. The draw was released on Wednesday by Sanzar, the board representing the South African, New Zealand and Australian rugby unions

The lack of depth in Australian tennis will be put to the test in the opening round of next year’s Davis Cup teams competition in Switzerland. The Australians, 28-time winners of the tournament, have fallen on hard times with only journeyman Wayne Arthurs (97) ranked inside the top-100 to support world number five Lleyton Hewitt.

An Australian man has told how he was almost crushed to death after waking up in a garbage-compactor truck following a night out at the pub. Police said closed-circuit television footage showed three men dumping the retail manager in an industrial bin, which was then emptied into the truck.

Increasing numbers of Australia’s famously macho men are showing surprising metrosexual tendencies, ditching competitive exercise for the meditative calm of yoga. ”We are getting the rugby players, the body builders, the gym junkie guys,” says yoga teacher Duncan Peak, a former parachute officer and first-grade rugby player.

Wallabies centre Stirling Mortlock and prop Bill Young were dropped on Tuesday from the squad to tour Europe in November and told to work on their conditioning. The pair’s exclusion comes after hooker Jeremey Paul was ruled out of the tour earlier this week because of a neck injury and rookie forward Al Kanaar’s three month suspension for stomping on an opponent’s head.

The West Indies have replaced South Africa as the opposition for an annual cricket match against the prime minister’s XI at Manuka Oval in Canberra, Australia. The match was originally scheduled to feature an invitational side against South Africa on January 27.

Australia’s immigration department said on Friday it had wrongly cancelled the visas of up to 8 000 international students and asked diplomatic posts around the world to tell the wronged pupils they can resume their courses. In a major hitch for Australia’s stated goal of becoming Asia’s education hub, a court found the immigration department had been using incorrect paperwork.

A new Australasian Provincial Competition rugby series will kick off next year with the possible future addition of teams from Japan, the Australian Rugby Union said on Friday. The competition will comprise Australia’s four Super 14 teams — Queensland Reds, NSW Waratahs, ACT Brumbies and Western Force — playing in a home and away series with a final in a five-week June-July window from 2006.

Australia’s opposition Labour Party was in strife on Thursday after former leader Mark Latham said successor Kim Beazley was not fit to clean the toilets in Canberra’s Parliament House let alone head the country’s second biggest political force.

An Australian on Thursday admitted trying to hire a hitman to murder a teenage girl who had accused his son of rape. The plan to murder the girl came unstuck when Chouaki Bou-Antoun asked an undercover police officer to carry out the hit. Chouaki Bou-Antoun (50) pleaded guilty in the New South Wales District Court to soliciting the murder of the girl in December 2003.

An Australian professional football player said on Tuesday he plans to have one of his fingers amputated in an attempt to improve his game. Brett Backwell told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation he has suffered from pain and restricted movement since he broke his left ring finger three years ago.

Australia’s biggest media companies appeared in court on Monday for allegedly conspiring to deprive a rival commercial television network of lucrative sports broadcasting rights. The Seven Network, owned by media mogul Kerry Stokes, is seeking Aus-billion in damages from the country’s biggest media and telecommunications groups over the loss of football rights.

Australians are praying for a Shane Warne miracle to enable Ricky Ponting’s cricketers to hang on to the Ashes in the weather-marred final Test at The Oval. Australia have a minimum of 98 overs on Monday’s final day to conjure a win which looks virtually impossible with England 34 for one, holding a lead of 40, and needing to avoid defeat to secure a first Ashes series in 18 years.

Australia will launch an aggressive, all-out attack in the crucial final Ashes Test, captain Ricky Ponting pledged on Wednesday. Fighting to avoid the humiliation of being the Australian skipper who lost the coveted urn for the first time in 16 years, Ponting said he is counting on the team’s proven ability to lift itself for the big games.

Lamb chops, steak and rice cookers were among packages of contraband intercepted by prison authorities in a recent crackdown, an official said on Tuesday. New South Wales state Corrective Services commander of security investigations Brian Kelly said he didn’t see the need for visitors sneaking in food or cooking gear for inmates.

A South African flight attendant appeared in an Australian court on Saturday on smuggling charges after 1kg of cocaine was found hidden in his luggage, news reports said on Saturday. Abdengo Morema Serane (26) arrived at Perth International airport on a flight from Johannesburg on Thursday.

Australia’s media was accused of being ”ruthless” on Wednesday after a disgraced politician apparently tried to commit suicide over allegations of racism and sexism. But the publisher of one of the newspapers under fire hit back by revealing that the devastating stories about the politician came from within his own Liberal Party.

Springbok captain John Smit has been accused of racism after allegedly taunting a Samoan bouncer who ordered him to leave a Sydney bar, a report said on Tuesday. Smit called the bouncer a ”black …” at Hugo’s Lounge in the busy nightlife district of Kings Cross in the early hours of Monday morning, The Daily Telegraph reported.

The Australian Rugby Union and national team coach Eddie Jones on Monday voiced their support for embattled Wallabies’ skipper George Gregan ahead of this weekend’s final Tri-Nations match with New Zealand. There have been calls for Gregan to get the axe after a season of indifferent performances at the helm of the Wallabies.

Australian rugby captain George Gregan has denied published reports that he’s planning to retire from international play before the 2007 World Cup. The Weekend Australian newspaper said on Saturday that Gregan (32) will announce his future plans in the coming days and that his last Test could be the Tri-Nations match on Sept. 3 against New Zealand at Auckland.

Imagine a world where farmers greet the dawn from their beds and cows milk themselves. An Australian research consortium said on Tuesday that such a nirvana was not such a distant dream. They are working on a system that attracts cows to the milking shed and milks them with automated equipment while they feed.