The southern star is the equivalent of the North star. You can only see it in the souther hemisphere because it's over the south pole, it's called Sigma Octantis, although it's not perfectly over the south pole.

Sirius is the brightest star next to our sun in the night sky, with an apparent magnitude of about -1.46, (the sun is at -26.74, the full moon is -12.74).

Everything rises in the east. Venus will rise before the sun depending on it's orbit around the sun in relation to our orbit. Sometimes you can only see it as the sun sets.

Do to sidereal days being shorter than normal days (23hours, 56minutes), depending on what time of year it is changes when the stars will rise. There are some free downloads of star planetarium simulators u can download (like Stellarium) that will tell you exactly when things rise, where in the sky they'll be and when.

I don't know what the hell some of these other people are talking about. A pole shift takes many many years, it's very gradual. And We do in fact have very accurate predictions about how Venus and Jupiter move and where they'll be in the sky. Calculus was invented to figure that out. General relativity was created to predict the movements of Mercury.
Sirius is not the brightest star in the galaxy, just in our sky.