Melbourne, Dec 6 : American actor Ryan Phillippe will be heading for Australia next weekend, to meet actress Abbie Cornish''s side of the family.

This will be the first Australian trip for the two, who had stepped out together in June at a Hollywood awards ceremony, reports the Courier Mail.

Cornish will be introducing Phillippe to her parents, besides attending an exclusive party in Sydney for fashion brand Calvin Klein, which she is brand ambassador of, on December 16 on Cockatoo Island.

On their visit, the couple will travel to the Hunter Valley and stay with Cornish''s family on their 69ha farm at Lochinvar, where they intend to stay and celebrate Christmas.

Wellington - David Beckham and his LA Galaxy outclassed an Oceania All Stars team 3-0 in an exhibition game in Auckland on Saturday night.

Beckham starred with a brilliant display of football in the first 45 minutes when all the goals were scored, and his side held on in a scrappy second half despite playing the last 19 minutes with 10 men after midfielder Josh Tudela was sent off on his second yellow card.

Although Beckham failed to match the popularity from his last visit to New Zealand a year ago, when he drew the biggest crowd ever to watch a football match in the rugby-mad country.

Dhaka - Bangladesh's election commission began hearing appeals Saturday of rejected candidates for the December 29 parliamentary elections, officials said.

A total of 147 out of 557 rejected candidates appealed to the commission.

"We will try to dispose the appeals as quickly as possible," a commission staff member said, adding that the three-member panel headed by ATM Shamsul Huda would listen to appeals until Monday.

London, Dec. 6 : Indian police and government officials have said that they are likely to give the lone surviving terrorist behind last week’s terror attacks in Mumbai truth serum to make him spill the beans on the entire operation, but experts familiar with the drug and its uses, are skeptical about the results.

During police interrogations, Ajmal Amir Kasab has claimed that he hails from Faridkot in Pakistan’s Punjab Province and that he was trained with the Pakistan-based extremist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Washington, Dec 6 : Popstar Akon is considering a move into the film industry.

The ‘Smack That’ hitmaker has expressed his plans to retire from music career and turn to acting.

“On the movie side, acting is something I will entertain later. Now I''m into more of the behind the scenes stuff: producing the movies, scoring the movies, doing the soundtracks, and slowly I''ll make my way in,” Contactmusic quoted Akon, as saying.

Akon stated that he is waiting to fulfill his music commitments before moving his base to Hollywood.

Taipei - The Archbishop of the Taipei Archdiocese will invite Pope Benedict XVI to visit Taiwan next year, a newspaper said on Saturday.

According to the Taipei Times, Archbishop John Hung led a delegation to the Vatican on Saturday to report for the first time to the pope on the state of Taiwan's dioceses, and invite the pontiff to the island.

The invitation seeks his attendance at next year's celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the Catholic Church in Taiwan.