Lote Tuqiri and Dean Mumm scored tries against the run of play to guide the New South Wales Waratahs to a 24-17 win over the ACT Brumbies in a Super 14 match on Friday. Wallaby wing Tuqiri intercepted a loose pass from Adam Wallace-Harrison to level the score, and then replacement lock Mumm charged down an attempted clearance to score the match winner.
Two lesbian lovers, one who drank blood as part of a vampire culture, were sentenced to life in prison on Friday for what an Australian judge said was the ”evil” killing of a girl they bludgeoned to death with a concrete block. Jessica Stasinowsky (21) and Valerie Parashumti (19) pleaded guilty to murdering 16-year-old Stacey Mitchell in Perth in western Australia in 2006.
Super 14 frontrunners the Auckland Blues are looking to complete their triumphant South African leg with maximum points against the unbeaten Sharks in Durban on Saturday. New Zealand powerhouses Auckland and the Canterbury Crusaders have shredded South African opposition to state their claims for the southern hemisphere provincial crown.
An Australian man has been arrested after taking a new car on a test drive that lasted 6 200km, five days and almost took him from one side of the continent to the other. Police said the 30-year-old man walked into a car dealership in the southern city of Melbourne last Friday and asked to take a 2008 model Honda Accord for a spin.
Australia all-rounder Andrew Symonds will face no action after he knocked over a streaker in his side’s nine-run one-day international loss to India in Brisbane on Tuesday. Robert Murray David Ogilvie stormed the field and ran towards Symonds, who shoulder-charged him to the ground.
India ended their tour of Australia on a high note when they beat the hosts by nine runs on Tuesday to win their best-of-three finals series 2-0. Sachin Tendulkar scored a superb 91 and paceman Praveen Kumar went on to capture four wickets as the tourists followed up Sunday’s six-wicket win in Sydney with a thrilling victory at the Gabba in Brisbane.
Indian spinner Harbhajan Singh has lashed out at Australian crowds after being cleared of allegations he made monkey gestures and spat toward fans in the tri-series final win against Australia. Harbhajan was cleared after match referee Jeff Crowe was unable to find any video evidence to confirm the claims by spectators and photographers.
Australia utility back Julian Huxley has been diagnosed with a brain tumour just days after he collapsed during a Super 14 match. The tumour, believed to be benign, was discovered following a series of scans after Huxley began convulsing while playing on Saturday. ”It was a huge shock when the doctor told me I have a tumour,” Huxley said on Tuesday.
India spinner Harbhajan Singh was cleared on Monday of making racist gestures and spitting at fans during his team’s one-day win over Australia on Sunday. Harbhajan was crucial in Sunday’s victory, which gave India a 1-0 lead in the tri-series finals, claiming the key wickets of Andrew Symonds and Matthew Hayden.
Auckland Blues edged ahead of Canterbury Crusaders to continue New Zealand’s early season dominance of rugby’s Super 14 competition with comprehensive victories in South Africa this weekend. The Blues and Crusaders, who between them have won nine of the 12 Super tournaments back to 1996, maintained their unbeaten starts to the Southern Hemisphere provincial series.
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/ 28 February 2008
Two armed thieves picked the wrong night to rob a Sydney club, disturbing a meeting of 50 motorcycle bikers, who tackled and hog-tied one of the thieves until police arrived. The Southern Cross Cruiser Club was staging its monthly meeting on Wednesday night in the club in Sydney’s west when two men armed with machetes entered the club.
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/ 28 February 2008
Claims and counter-claims flew on Thursday after senior Australian batsman Matthew Hayden was officially reprimanded for calling Indian spinner Harbhajan Singh an ”obnoxious little weed”. Tensions continue to simmer in a summer of cricket acrimony ahead of Sunday’s first final in the one-day tri-series between the two fiercely-competitive rivals.
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/ 27 February 2008
Australia batsman Matthew Hayden has launched a verbal attack on India’s cricketers, describing Harbhajan Singh as an ”obnoxious weed” and challenging Ishant Sharma to a fight. Hayden said the Australian players were fed up with the constant complaints from the Indians about their on-field behaviour.
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/ 26 February 2008
India thrashed Sri Lanka by seven wickets at Hobart on Tuesday to book their place in the tri-series finals against Australia. India wrapped up a comprehensive victory with more than 17 overs to spare when they bowled Sri Lanka out for 179 before reaching their target for the loss of just three wickets.
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/ 20 February 2008
Australia’s postal service has increased the maximum weight for its delivery staff after struggling to attract applicants weighing less than 90kg, local media reported on Tuesday. The old limit was designed to allow "posties", as they are known here, to carry 40kg of mail on their small motorcycles for a total load of 130kg.
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/ 20 February 2008
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd revealed on Wednesday that he is battling the bulge, while his deputy, Julia Gillard, was stunned to be voted one of the country’s sexiest women. Rudd said it is difficult to maintain a fitness regime while coping with the responsibilities of office.
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/ 19 February 2008
Wallabies winger Lote Tuqiri has labelled as ”short-sighted” remarks by Springbok flyer Bryan Habana that the new laws on trial in the Super 14 are making rugby union become more like rugby league. Tuqiri also applauded the way the new game requires players to be better all-round athletes.
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/ 17 February 2008
South Africa’s World Cup winner Bryan Habana picked up where he left off last season to help the Bulls make a successful start to the defence of their Super 14 title. Habana, who was named as the IRB’s world player of the year after a magical season in 2007, continued his fairytale run of form.
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/ 16 February 2008
The Blues scored three second-half tries to beat New Zealand rivals the Chiefs 32-14 in an entertaining Super 14 match in Auckland on Saturday. Lock Troy Flavell, winger Joe Rokocoko and replacement Ben Atiga took advantage of the tiring Waikato defence to cross the line after the Chiefs had led 11-8 at the interval.
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/ 15 February 2008
Adam Gilchrist hit a century in his final hometown appearance in Perth to lead Australia to a 63-run victory over Sri Lanka in Friday’s tri-series match. Gilchrist bowed out with 118, scoring half of Australia’s all-out total of 236. It was his first one-day hundred since he made a breathtaking ton against Sri Lanka in last year’s World Cup final in Barbados.
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/ 14 February 2008
Matt Henjak is free to play in Western Force’s opening Super 14 rugby clash this weekend after a hearing into his alleged altercation with teammate Haig Sare was adjourned until next week. After scathing criticism from the Australian Rugby Union over the club’s handling of the incident, Force bosses fast-tracked a serious misconduct tribunal to Thursday.
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/ 13 February 2008
The world’s third-largest miner, Rio Tinto, said on Wednesday its full-year net profit fell almost 2% in 2007 to $7,312-billion as it again rejected a takeover bid by rival BHP Billiton. But underlying profit rose 1,4% from 2006 to $7,443-billion as the firm said it produced record amounts of iron ore, bauxite, aluminium, gold and copper.
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/ 10 February 2008
The Australian Parliament’s apology to Aborigines to be delivered next week will remove a ”blight on the nation’s soul”, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said on Sunday. Rudd, who was elected to the government in November, has pledged to offer the apology to the so-called ”stolen generations”, who were taken from their families as children.
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/ 8 February 2008
Australia crushed Sri Lanka by 128 runs in a surprisingly lopsided tri-series one-day international at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Friday. The Australians racked up a respectable total of 253-6 from their 50 overs then bowled the Sri Lankans out for just 125 in the first meeting between the sides since last year’s World Cup final in Barbados.
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/ 6 February 2008
The cash-strapped Australian Rugby Union said on Wednesday it was shocked at a government decision to scrap funding for a national rugby academy in Queensland state. Former prime minister John Howard committed Aus-million to the project last June but the new Labour government of Kevin Rudd said it was now being axed under a cost-cutting programme.
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/ 6 February 2008
BHP Billiton launched a hostile ,4-billion bid for rival Rio Tinto in a move that could trigger a Chinese-led counterbid in the world’s second biggest corporate takeover. Combined, BHP and Rio would create the world’s third-richest company, with a market capitalisation eclipsed only by Exxon Mobil and General Electric.
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/ 5 February 2008
Torrential rain forced the abandonment of Tuesday’s tri-series limited-overs match between Sri Lanka and India at the Gabba in Brisbane. It was the second match in a row that had fallen victim to the foul weather after Sunday’s opening game between India and Australia was also washed out.
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/ 2 February 2008
African author Ishmael Beah is under intense pressure to admit that his best-selling memoir of child soldiering in Sierra Leone is a mix of fact and fiction. A Long Way Gone has sold almost 700 000 copies and transformed Beah from penniless orphan to millionaire writer and the United Nations Children’s Fund poster boy.
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/ 31 January 2008
International Cricket Council chief Malcolm Speed said on Thursday the organisation accepted the blame for the administrative blunder that enabled Indian spinner Harbhajan Singh to escape a stiffer penalty in his racial-abuse case. Harbhajan’s three-Test suspension for allegedly racially abusing Australian Andrew Symonds was overturned on Tuesday.
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/ 30 January 2008
The Australian Rugby Union’s (ARU) chief executive, John O’Neill, has called for major changes to reinvigorate the game or it will slip into irreversible decline here. Amid falling attendances, ratings, revenues and performances, O’Neill said the ARU is in serious financial trouble.
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/ 22 January 2008
Two Australian thieves were labelled "a pair of fools" by a judge on Tuesday as he jailed them over a bungled restaurant robbery in which one shot his female accomplice in the buttocks. Donna Hayes was shot by her former boyfriend, Benjamin Jorgensen, during an attempt to rob the Cuckoo Restaurant in Melbourne on April Fool’s Day last year.
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/ 21 January 2008
Almost 60% of Australians are either members or want to join the ‘mile-high club’ — where membership is gained by having sex on an aircraft. Asked whether they would consider making love at altitude, almost half of the 1 110 surveyed by a travel website said they would but had not yet satisfied their desire.