Australia

With regional tensions rising over China's aggression in the disputed waterway, the Assistant Chief of Staff to the US Army, Tom Hanson, also suggested Australia will need to make a choice between its long-standing alliance with the United States and economic relationship with Beijing.

"It's very difficult to walk this fine line between balancing the alliance with the United States and the economic engagement with China," he told Radio National.

It's a storyline that's telling about Australia's attitude to Asia's pre-eminent power. On the one hand, China is the country's biggest trading partner, but it also poses a potential regional military threat that's drawing the attention of the US, Australia's closest defence ally.

China, for its part, appears keenly aware of Australia's apparent reluctance to embrace it fully. In recent months, a series of bilateral irritations have sent relations between the two countries plunging to their lowest point for nearly a decade.

It's loud, with people cutting holes in the fence to get in at the corner of the ground where there are banks for standing.

During his countless skirmishes with authority did Australia's newest leader imagine this would be his fate? It is now. Nerves? Good luck telling with a bloke who bills by the hour in bravado.

It is understood the Australian Government is irked over PNG Government plans to provide an 80 percent quota to a proposed unknown rice importer Naime Agro Innovative Industry Limited.

Mr Dutton has accused The Guardian and Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC) of "trivialising" allegations relating to treatment of asylum seekers.

The Guardian last week published more than 2,000 leaked reports from the immigration centre on Nauru.

These revealed widespread abuse and trauma among asylum seekers.

The announcement came less than a day after more than 100 former and current staff members at Australia's offshore detention camps called for all refugees to be moved immediately, saying children's lives are being "destroyed."

"Both Papua New Guinea and Australia are in agreement that the center is to be closed," Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O'Neill said on Facebook.

Women make up majority of unbanked PNG population

http://www.looppng.com/content/women-make-majority-unbanked-png-population

It has been pointed out that the majority of PNG’s unbanked population is made up of women, especially in rural and urban settlement communities.

Tomscoll: PNG expecting downturn in rice imports

In a statement to the media, the Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison has said the foreign investment proposals from Chinese and Hong Kong bidders "were contrary to the national interest."

China's State Grid Corp and Hong Kong's Cheung Kong Infrastructure Holdings (CKI) were attempting to buy a 50.4% controlling stake in Ausgrid, which is New South Wales's electricity distribution network - the largest in the country.

Horton was the target of online abuse just hours after taking home the gold medal in the men's 400m freestyle final over comments he made calling Chinese runner-up Sun Yang a "drug cheat".

The Chinese swim team issued a statement, calling Horton's claims a "malicious personal attack" on Yang.

These are the words of the woman who is now one of Australia's most powerful politicians, newly-elected senator Pauline Hanson.

Hanson was confirmed elected to the Australian Senate last week, along with three other members of her One Nation party, according to the Australian Electoral Commission.