Melbourne, Apr 20 : Australia’s captain for the Dubai series, Michael Clarke, has said that his team’s main focus will be on improving their batting during the one-day international series against Pakistan.

Clarke leads a squad without regular captain Ricky Ponting, strike bowler Mitchell Johnson and middle order batsman Mike Hussey, all being rested ahead of the Twenty20 world championship and Ashes campaign.

The Australian squad assembled in Dubai ahead of the tour-opener on Wednesday with Clarke predicting that Pakistan will prove a difficult opponent in their first ODI clashes in more than four years.

Sydney - Doctors at a Sydney hospital used saline solution to remove a leech that had attached itself to an Australian woman's eyeball, news reports said Monday.

"It was tucked up underneath her upper eyelid," emergency room doctor Toby Fogg said. "Our little fellow started off at about half a centimetre and by the time we removed it, it was about 2 centimetres long. It had quite a good lunch."

The 66-year-old woman was gardening when the leech found its way into her eye.

Sydney - An Australian law lecturer was jailed Monday for contempt of court after pulling down her trousers and baring her buttocks to the presiding judge.

Megumi Ogawa, 41, was sentenced to four months' jail in a Brisbane court for what Judge Stuart Durward said was "disgusting behaviour" at an earlier trial where she was found guilty of harassing court officials.

During the earlier trial, the court was told the Southern Cross University staff member threatened court officials with death and sent them 83 emails and made 176 phone calls.

Melbourne, Apr 20 : Brit schoolboy Shaheen Jafargholi is being considered as the “next Paul Potts” after his soulful rendition of Jackson Five’s ‘Who''s Loving You’ on ‘Britain’s Got Talent’.

Jafargholi, 12, almost did not make it when he sang a version of Amy Winehouse’s song ‘Valerie’, and he was asked by judge Simon Cowell to sing something else.

Melbourne, Apr 20 : Controversial Indian-born surgeon, Dr. Jayant Patel a. k. a `Dr. Death', who is currently facing a committal hearing into allegations of manslaughter over the deaths of three patients, will stand trial on 14 charges involving the death of three people.

Former Bundaberg Base Hospital surgeon Patel will also face trial on charges of causing serious injury to two others and fraud in getting his job in Queensland.

Sydney  - US doctor Jayant Patel on Monday was committed to stand trial in Australia for the deaths of three of his patients in a Queensland hospital in what police allege was bungled surgery.

The manslaughter charges stem from Indian-born Patel's time as director of surgery at Bundaberg Base Hospital between 2003 and 2005.

Patel, 59, was extradited from Portland, Oregon, to face the charges.