Australian

Peter Weir, the Australian director, says he chose to write an direct ''Green Card'' because he felt it was time to ''dust off this wonderful and abundant genre.''The ''genre'' is the Hollywood comedies of the '30s nd '40s, movies made by actresses like Irene Dunne, Barbara Stanwyck, Carole Lombard, Jean Arthur and Claudette Colbert.''I didn't exactly grow up with them, but like all people who were raised during the '50s, the old Hollywood film was part of the decade. All those movies were being shown on television, in Australia, and I was taken by them,'' he said.

W. R. Grace & Co. of Columbia announced Wednesday that it acquired an Australian manufacturer of waterproofing and coatings systems for an undisclosed sum. Chemind Construction Products, a private research and manufacturing company based in Brisbane, Australia, brings waterproofing technology to Grace Construction Products division, which had $1 billion in sales last year. Chemind's waterproof coatings are used to protect commercial, residential and civil structures, the company said.

NEW YORK -- Andre Agassi lost to No. 13 seed Patrick Rafter the other day and after a moment's thought said that Rafter can't win the U.S. Open. Yesterday, Magnus Larsson walked off the tennis court, a 7-6 (7-4), 6-4, 6-2, loser to Rafter in the quarterfinals and shrugged."In the semifinals, you are not out of the tournament," said Larsson. "Anyone can win."Such a vote of confidence simply made Rafter smile."That's good, huh," he said. "I have a one-in-four chance of winning. That's the way I look at it."

The Baltimore Bombers, who are less than two weeks from their first season in the North American Lacrosse League, announced the appointment of Dan Marohl , Shawn Nadelen and Damien Davis as captains and assistant captains. Each player was chosen by teammates through an open election. The NALL is a professional box lacrosse league founded in 2011. Marohl is a native of Annapolis who attended St. Mary's and UMBC. He began his professional box lacrosse career with the Ottawa Rebel and the Philadelphia Wings of the National Lacrosse League.

BARCELONA, Spain -- He was born in Baltimore. He plays for the Bullets. He even got married at the harbor. But Leroy Loggins hardly qualifies as hometown hero.Loggins, 34, isn't a playground legend in Baltimore, he's a member of the Australian men's Olympic basketball team.He plays for the Bullets all right -- the ones in Brisbane. And he got married at the harbor all right -- the one in Sydney.Who is this guy?Loggins said he played only two games at Forest Park High in the mid-1970s before quitting because of a lack of playing time.

NEW YORK -- Pete Sampras was up a set and a break, but down a point, 0-15, in the third set of his U.S. Open match with Patrick Rafter last evening when he made a big lunge for a backhand volley.Sampras reached the volley and won the game. He even won the set. But in a classic example of losing the war, he pulled his left quadriceps muscle and lost his chance at tying Australian Roy Emerson's record of 12 major championships."You know, it shocked me a little bit," Sampras said after losing the semifinal to Rafter, the defending Open champion, 6-7 (8-10)

SYDNEY, Australia - In a little more than a week, a new grassroots political movement here has gathered more than 7,000 names of supporters on its Web site in a campaign to free David Hicks, an Australian citizen being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The organization, GetUp!, was founded in August by two young Australians. They collected the names for a letter to the Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, demanding that he take action to have Hicks, 30, brought back to Australia to stand trial.

LOS ANGELES - Australian distance swimmer Craig Stevens has stepped off the blocks, opening the way for his friend and teammate, Ian Thorpe, to compete in the 400-meter freestyle at the Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece. Although the decision had been anticipated, Stevens made his announcement on Australian national television last night. Apparently, altruism wasn't Stevens' only motive. Several Australian media outlets reported he received payment for his TV interview. The controversial episode began when Thorpe lost his balance on the starting blocks and tumbled into the pool at the Australian Olympic trials in Sydney in March.

The Board of Appeals will decide next month whether a cellular phone company can build a 125-foot communications tower near an Ellicott City middle school.The five-member panel plans tomake its decision during a work session Dec. 6 at 7:30 p.m.The board adjourned early yesterday morning after holding two hearings that attracted dozens of residents fearful of electromagneticradiation from the proposed tower.Cellular One, a subsidiary of Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems Inc., wants to build the tower near Patapsco Middle School on land it leases from First Church of the Nazarene on Rogers Avenue.

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Patrick White, a rancher who turned to writing and won the 1973 Nobel Prize for literature, died at his home yesterday after a lengthy illness. He was 78.The poet, playwright and novelist was born in London and educated at King's College, Cambridge. He worked as a "jackaroo," or rancher, in the Australian state of New South Wales but later returned to England to study languages at Cambridge. He served as an intelligence officer in the Royal Air Force in the Middle East during World War II.His first novel, "Happy Valley," published in 1939, won the Australian Literary Society Gold Medal, as did his novel "The Tree of Man."

- It's pretty clear - Maryland has one tough kicker this season. Freshman Brad Craddock , who played Australian rules football, got rammed head-on by the ball carrier during the opening kickoff in Saturday's game and was credited with the tackle. On the next kickoff, Craddock met the same returner - Temple's Matt Brown - again. This time, Brown seemed to stiff-arm Craddock to the upper body before Brown was knocked down by Anthony Nixon at Temple's 45-yard line. Some kickers might shy away from contact, but not Craddock.

Expect a big dose of Diggs when Maryland's football season opens Saturday at Byrd Stadium against William & Mary. Freshman Stefon Diggs, the highly-touted recruit, will be the punt returner and kick returner. He is also listed as a backup receiver, behind Kerry Boykins. He was lining up in the slot during practices and scrimmages. Maryland today released its new two-deep depth chart, announcing its starters for Saturday's game. While there was little mystery over many starting positions, here are three I was watching, and the outcomes: *Running back: Redshirt freshman Brandon Ross has supplanted Justus Pickett as the starting tailback.

Colleges Australian lax player commits to Stevenson Callum Robinson , a 6-foot-4, 215-pound player from Western Australia, will join Stevenson for the 2013 season, according to the Lacrosse All Stars website. Robinson, 21, has primarily been playing at long-stick midfielder and is a member of the Australian squad preparing for the 2014 Federation of International Lacrosse World Championships in Commerce City, Colo. He also plays for the Wembley Lacrosse Club in the Western Australia State League.

Dew Tour Lasek takes second in shortened Skate Bowl Pedro Barros defended his championship in the rain-shortened Skate Bowl at the Dew Tour Pantech Beach Championships in Ocean City on Sunday, holding off Baltimore native Bucky Lasek . In the first-ever Mega 2.0 event, 12-year-old Tom Schaar threw down a front-side 180 melon over the gap and spun a 1080 out of the quarter-pipe to win with a score of 89.00. Second place was earned by New York native Elliot Sloan with a score of 87.00 by throwing a tail grab combo first with a 720 over the gap then with another in a 540 on the quarter pipe.

When Denis Ryan arrived in Maryland in 1998, he was closing out a yearlong vacation that had beaten him down. He was nearing the end of a working holiday and sabbatical, something common among young adults in Australia. Ryan wanted to return home but felt that if he did, he would have given up his last opportunity to travel the world and see more of the United States. After getting a job in security at the local Australian Embassy, Ryan received a $2,000 grant to teach the sport he loved, Australian rules football, to schools in the area.

It's good to be Gotye . The Australian singer/songwriter played his first show in Washington, D.C.last night - an electrifying performance for a sellout crowd at the 9:30 Club . One thing's for sure: The next time he comes to D.C., it will be at a much larger venue, like DAR Constitution Hall . Gotye (pronounced go-tee-ay) owes much of his seemingly overnight success here to " Somebody That I Used to Know ," an infectious breakup song that plants itself in your brain and refuses to leave for a few days.

BIRMINGHAM, England -- The Australians are talking trash.The English are talking of redemption.And the world of cricket is preparing for the biennial grudge match known as the Ashes, a summerlong series to capture the game's most symbolic prize -- a puny urn of ashes that could easily fit in the palm of a hand.Triggered by a mock newspaper obituary, emblematic of empire, the Ashes often defines the love-hate relationship between England, the mother country, and Australia, the colony whose first settlers were a flood of convicts from English jails.

Tucked away in small-town Easton is a tiny inn that's poised to conquer the hearts (and stomachs) of food lovers in the mid-Atlantic. From a cozy kitchen in a 1790s red brick house, a New York native with an Australian obsession has been quietly offering up dishes that meld Down Under flavors with Chesapeake delights. Soft-shell crabs are served with a Vietnamese-inspired caramelized coconut jus infused with lemon grass. Australian "bay bugs" (slipper lobsters) are grilled and paired with a green papaya salad and yellow bean dipping sauce.

Leslie C. Norins, a 1958 Johns Hopkins University graduate, has established a charitable trust to fund an exchange program for students and young science faculty between Hopkins and an Australian research center, the university announced Monday. In an effort to provide other young scientists with the same opportunities for international collaboration that he experienced after receiving his degree from the Hopkins Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Norins is endowing the exchange program with the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, a bioscience research center.

Australia's Lady Gaga, Kylie Minogue, has 20 years on her American counterpart. She has 12 albums to Gaga's three. And she's a major touring draw overseas. But despite all that, she's just a niche star in the United States. Her first American tour came only two years ago and stopped at just six cities. This year, though, she's at least doubling up on the engagements, and, she's playing a show at Patriot Center on Saturday. Perhaps it's unfair to compare Minogue to Gaga. Madonna would be the fairer analogy.