12:05:00 18/11/2016
General Wang Jiaocheng of the People's Liberation Army of China was in Canberra on Wednesday for a series of high-level talks with Defence Department secretary Dennis Richardson and other senior Australian military officials. The contentious issue of China's rapid build-up of military assets in the South China Sea was discussed. One expert expects that incoming US president Donald Trump will pressure Australia to perform freedom-of-navigation operations in the South China Sea. More
12:10:10 18/11/2016
Donald Trump's first meeting with a world leader as President-elect has taken place in Trump Tower in New York. He and the US Vice-President-elect, Mike Pence, met today with the Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, for a 90-minute meeting. The details of the meeting have not been released but Mr Abe said prior to the meeting that he wanted to raise security and trade issues with the President-elect. After the meeting, Mr Abe described the meeting as frank and warm.
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12:14:35 18/11/2016
Bets are rising that the US Federal Reserve will raise interest rates next month after chair Janet Yellen pointed to a hike 'relatively soon'. Dr Yellen said Donald Trump's election as US president had done nothing to change the Fed's outlook for higher rates. Speaking before a US congressional committee, Dr Yellen confirmed she would see out her term despite election campaign criticism from Mr Trump. More
12:19:05 18/11/2016
The UN special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants has spent 18 days investigating Australia's treatment of migrants, visiting on-shore detention centres and the Nauru Regional Processing Centre. He considers Australia's decision to remove children from detention "progress" and has welcomed Australia's deal with the United States to resettle refugees currently on Manus Island and Nauru. But he is highly critical of the length of time migrants are being held in detention, saying he met people who've been detained for up to eight years and have been deeply damaged as a result. More
12:23:50 18/11/2016
Victoria Legal Aid is warning against any moves to revoke the visas of South Sudanese youths caught up in gang crime. The Federal Government is conducting an inquiry into Melbourne's so-called 'ethnic crime wave' and is looking at visa screening processes and support services for new migrants. Already, the Immigration Minister Peter Dutton says he wants to review several elements of refugee resettlement policy in response to the youth violence in suburban Melbourne. Victoria Legal Aid executive director of criminal law, Helen Fatouros, says huge legal questions are raised by the prospect of cancelling visas for refugees involved in gang crime. Federation of South Sudanese Associations president Kenyatta Dei Wal says revoking visas is not the solution to youth crime. More
12:28:00 18/11/2016
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has put the focus back on company tax cuts, ahead of the final two sitting weeks of Parliament. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten says that the Government has its priorities all wrong and is accusing the Prime Minister of engaging in Donald Trump-style politics. But the business lobby argues that supporting the big end of town will trickle down to the rest of the economy. More
12:32:10 18/11/2016
Seventy-nine children died in New South Wales in 2014, despite being known to the state's child protection agencies. The State Government is holding an inquiry into the child protection system. After investigating the issue, journalist Ben Hills has recommended more be done to improve accountability and reduce secrecy in the system, saying those issues are at the heart of the state's child protection problems. More
12:40:00 18/11/2016
The Assistant Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle in New South Wales has been scathingly critical of a group of people within the church who have taken exception to disciplinary action against church officials. Peter Stuart has been called to appear at a public hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
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12:43:55 18/11/2016
There are calls for Barnaby Joyce to be pulled into line or sacked, over claims he's destroying the Murray Darling Basin Plan. The South Australian Water Minister, Ian Hunter, says his federal counterpart has reneged on a deal struck in 2012 to return an additional water to the river system and allocate the funding elsewhere. More
12:51:00 18/11/2016
The producers of a new documentary are hoping to shine a light on a little-known part of Australia's history. The film, 'Servant or Slave' follows the lives of five Aboriginal women who were taken away from their families as children and trained to be domestic servants in New South Wales. The filmmakers say the women are just some of the thousands of Aboriginal people who made up a huge, unpaid workforce.
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12:50:00 18/11/2016
While Year 12 students across Queensland are celebrating their last day of school today, three young graduates of Brisbane Boys College are busy raising money to combat domestic violence. Twins Spencer and Zach Hayward and Dhruv Goel started their social enterprise, One Quarter, to raise funds for the Women's Legal Service which supports domestic violence victims. They've raised more than $5,000 so far, but see this as just the beginning of the project. They make T-shirts with the One Quarter logo to try and change the culture and abuse suffered by more than one in four Australian women.
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