Powered by a tidy bowling performance, India registered a comprehensive 23-run victory over South Africa in their women's World Cup warm-up fixture in Sydney on Tuesday.

Batting first, the star studded Indian team could only score 167 runs in 45.3 overs.

Opening batsman Anjum Chopra top scored with 53. In a 107 ball knock, Chopra scored 73 runs for the second wicket with former skipper Mithali Raj, who scored a crucial 29 runs.

For South Africa, pace bowler Shabnim Ismail took 4 wickets for 35 runs.
 

Melbourne, Mar 4 : Punters in Australia look set to profit from the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore after opportunistically betting almost 20,000 dollars on their Test match against Pakistan being declared a draw.

Amid initial confusion over the shootings, TAB Sportsbet reported a rash of bets from Tasmania and the ACT as news began to filter through, the Daily Telegraph reported.

With almost no interest in the game from Australian punters until Tuesday afternoon, the market was suspended after the betting surge sparked internal alarms at TAB, but only once several four-figure bets had been laid.

Sydney  - The last survivor of a pod of 192 pilot whales that came ashore on Tasmania's King Island at the weekend swam back out to sea Wednesday.

A recalcitrant creature had beached twice in as many days to the dismay of a volunteer army of Australian nature lovers trying to refloat the stricken pod.

The whale was the last of 54 survivors of the mass stranding that returned to the ocean. All are now safely back in deep water.

The adult female was slung between two jet skis and towed out to sea, where delighted rescuers saw it join a group of at least 20 other whales.

Sydney  - The former world-beating Australian economy has joined most of the rest of the developed world and shifted into reverse, official figures released Wednesday showed.

National accounts showed the gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 0.5 per cent in the quarter ending December.

The figures prompted falls in the stock market and in the value of the local currency as modest growth had been expected.

Sydney - More than 34,000 applicants learned Tuesday they hadn't made the shortlist of 50 candidates for the dream job of highly paid caretaker on a paradise island in Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

The unlucky 34,634 are left clinging to the hope of being the sole wildcard entry when the final 11 contestants are selected and flown to Queensland's Hamilton Island in early May.

The Top 50 are from Britain, the United States, Japan, Canada, Germany, Greece, India, China and 14 other countries.

Sydney, Mar 3 : Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire's plot is "patently ridiculous conceit", says British-Indian author Salman Rushdie.

According to Rushdie's article in Britain''s Guardian newspaper, the central feature of the film - that a boy from the Mumbai slums manages to win the Indian TV version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire - "beggars belief", reports The Sydney Morning Herald.