Melbourne, Apr 10 : Australian skipper Ricky Ponting has asked his teammates to start "putting their hands up" after the top five batsmen let the side down again, giving a 2-1 lead to South Africa in the five match series.

Needing to win their five-game one-day series against South Africa to claim the world No. 1 ODI ranking, Australia lost the third ODI by 25 runs.

Sydney - Hollywood heartthrob Hugh Jackman has apologized to fans for getting staff to post bulletins on the social-networking internet site Twitter on his behalf, news reports said Thursday.

The new medium is supposed to be a way for people to spontaneously communicate their everyday thoughts and actions, but increasingly is being used by celebrities like Jackman to fake the personal and the intimate.

The Australian actor was exposed as a fraud when a posting referred to the Sydney Opera House as the Opera Center.

Sydney, April 9 : A joint European-Australian study has determined that ancient stalagmites from a submerged Italian cave have revealed sea level rises caused by global warming more than 200,000 years ago.

According to a report by ABC News, the finding suggests the current melting of ice sheets may happen faster than expected.

Melbourne, Apr 9 : Cricket legend Shane Warne who saw much of Victoria's fire-devastated areas, has opened up about a friendship that he has forged with a young bushfire victim.

Warne has already arranged to fly 13-year-old Aiden Buchanan to Sydney for a cricket match and organised tickets for him to last month's MCG Sound Relief concert. Now the boy has been invited to the Warne family home for a barbecue.

Sydney, Apr. 9 : Cricketers Brett Lee and Andrew Symonds are likely to lose millions of dollars in Indian Premier League (IPL) earnings if they are chosen to play for Australia in forthcoming international fixtures.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, both are set to miss out on about 1.75 million Australian dollars of IPL loot to play for the national team in the upcoming limited-overs series against Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates.

Melbourne, April 9 : Authorities in Colorado have disallowed a Denver woman to express her love for tofu through her 4WD''''''''s number plate.

Kelly Coffman-Lee, 38, wanted to tell the world about her fondness for bean curd through a number plate reading `ILVTOFU'.

However, the Division of Motor Vehicles blocked her plan suggesting that the combination of letters could be interpreted as profane.

"We don''''''''t allow ''''''''FU'''''''' because some people could read that as street language for sex," the Courier Mail quoted Mark Couch, a spokesman for the Department of Revenue, as saying.