Yaara Bou Melhem

We’ve been speak­ing to res­i­dents of a qui­et east­ern Aus­tralian town deal­ing with one of their own be­ing the sus­pect in New Zealand’s worst mass killing.

Doc­tors from an Amer­i­can not for prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion are pro­vid­ing in­ex­pen­sive eye­wear to refugees and vil­lagers in re­mote ar­eas of Thai­land.

A con­tro­ver­sial hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid group, Free Bur­ma Rangers, says it is plan­ning to in­crease its re­lief mis­sions in Myan­mar with the help of some un­like­ly vol­un­teers from Iraq.

Papua New Guinea im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials have start­ed dis­man­tling parts of a prison camp hous­ing hun­dreds of de­fi­ant refugees as an evac­u­a­tion dead­line looms.

The Myan­mar gov­ern­ment min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for repa­tri­at­ing Ro­hingya refugees from Bangladesh has told Al Jazeera the Ro­hingya may have ‘planned’ their ex­o­dus to give the ap­pear­ance of eth­nic cleans­ing.

The UN is ac­cus­ing Myan­mar’s se­cu­ri­ty forces of tor­ture, killings and the rape of chil­dren, as part of what it says were “well-or­gan­ised, co­or­di­nat­ed and sys­tem­at­ic at­tacks” against Ro­hingya.

Ac­cess to Ro­hingya towns is se­vere­ly re­strict­ed by Myan­mar’s gov­ern­ment, pre­vent­ing aid agen­cies from reach­ing them and re­sult­ing in warn­ings that a lack of food is lead­ing to an­oth­er wave of dis­place­ment.

The 1991 No­bel Peace Prize lau­re­ate, Aung San Suu Kyi, is wide­ly crit­i­cised for fail­ing to pre­vent eth­nic cleans­ing of Ro­hingya in Myan­mar.

Myan­mar and Bangladesh have agreed on a repa­tri­a­tion deal for half a mil­lion Ro­hingya civil­ians who re­port­ed­ly fled mil­i­tary atroc­i­ties in Rakhine state. The UN has de­scribed the cri­sis as the world’s fastest de­vel­op­ing refugee emer­gency.

Aus­tralians are suf­fer­ing from soar­ing elec­tric­i­ty prices and pow­er black­outs.