Wellington  - A year after David Beckham drew the biggest crowd ever to watch a football match in New Zealand, his star power attraction appears to be fading, according to news reports Friday.

Organizers of an exhibition match between Beckham's LA Galaxy side and Oceania All Stars XI on Saturday in Auckland were advertising two tickets for the price of one to try to fill the 32,000-seat Mount Smart Stadium.

Only 14,000 tickets had been sold by Thursday night, the New Zealand Herald reported.

Wellington  - A year after David Beckham drew the biggest crowd ever to watch a football match in New Zealand his star attraction appears to be fading, according to news reports on Friday.

Organizers of an exhibition match between Beckham's LA Galaxy side and an Oceania All Stars XI in Auckland on Saturday were advertising two tickets for the price of one to try to fill the 32,000-seat Mount Smart Stadium.

Only 14,000 tickets had been sold by Thursday night, the New Zealand Herald reported.

Wellington  - A Japanese climber stranded for a week on Mount Cook, New Zealand's highest peak in its Southern Alps, was airlifted to safety by a helicopter early Friday morning, police said.

The man, who was not identifed, was described as "sick but able to walk." After the rescue, the helicopter returned to search for his climbing companion.

Wellington, Dec. 4 : Kiwi all-rounder Jacob Oram has been declared fit for international assignments, and is likely to turn out for the national side against the West Indies cricket team.

According to a New Zealand Press Association report, Oram returned to action after a month off with Central Districts in last week''s State Championship four-day match against Northern Districts and bowled a total of 36 overs.

Oram, who suffered a hairline fracture to his left index finger attempting a catch in the match, told Radio Sport that he was available for Black Caps selection.

He will play in the four-day match against Otago beginning tomorrow at Napier.

Wellington, Dec 4 : For soccer ace David Beckham, New Zealand is one of the “nicest” places in the world.

While promoting Saturday''s LA Galaxy-Oceania All Stars game, Beckham revealed that he would look forward to visits to New Zealand at the end of his career, and thinks "this is one of the nicest places I''ve been."

"It''s an amazingly beautiful country, the people are great to us," the NZPA quoted him as saying.

On being asked if he ever considered playing rugby, Beckham said he had tried it but decided it wasn''t the game for him.

Wellington  - New Zealand's central bank slashed its benchmark interest rate on Thursday by a record 1.5 percentage points to 5 per cent and urged commercial banks to pass along the reduction to stimulate an economy in recession.

Noting that he had now cut a total of 3.25 percentage points from the official cash rate since July, Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard said, "We expect financial institutions to play their part in the economic adjustment process by passing on lower wholesale interest rates to their customers."

Bollard - who has now cut the rate four times since July after five years with no reductions - said that bank margins had "stayed quite high and indeed grown" and that he was easing monetary policy for a purpose.