Sydney - He can sing. He can dance. He can drive cattle. He's a mean half-man half-wolf with retractable metal claws, and in film director Baz Luhrmann's epic Australia, Hugh Jackman even looks the part bedding Nicole Kidman.

Local fans Friday were coming to terms with the fact that their hunky all-rounder is in Australia no more.

The 40-year-old has taken his family off to New York and is unlikely to again call Sydney home for at least the next decade.

Sydney, Nov 21: Almost all the leading news agencies across the world have decided to boycott covering the first Test between Australia and New Zealand, which began yesterday at the Gabba, because of ‘conditions imposed by the organizers’.

The agencies — Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, Reuters and Getty Images — have also suspended coverage of all Australian cricket news until further notice over demands made by the governing body, Cricket Australia (CA), reported The News.

Sydney, Nov 21: Defending his “third world country” remark, Australian opener Matthew Hayden has insisted that he meant no disrespect to any nation or its citizens in that category.

Hayden felt that he had been made a victim of “certain sections of humanity (who) want to take someone like myself down.”

“The politics of cricket, I think, has gone mad,” The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Hayden, as saying.

Sydney - Australian stocks went on a roller-coaster ride Friday, losing more than 3 per cent on the bell but ending the session almost 2 per cent higher.

The ASX 200 added 63 points, or 1.8 per cent, to 3,416. The choppy trading came as the market realized a 50-per-cent fall from its November 2007 peak.

It's the second-worst bear market since shares fell 59 per cent in 1973-74 and had Reserve Bank of Australia governor Glenn Stevens anxiously trying to take investors out of dumping more stock.

Sydney, Nov 21: Former Australia cricket captain Allan Border has reportedly strongly criticised the practice of cricketers writing books, which, according to him, were nothing more than a medium to create controversies.

The comment comes in the wake of the recent controversy triggered by a book “Captain’s Diary” written by Aussie captain, in which he said that former Indian Test Sunil Gavaskar was “no angel” when it came to on-ground controversies.