The World Today

The Rod Culleton saga's taken another twist, with the colourful senator for Western Australia now claiming he was assaulted yesterday and that restraining orders against one of the men involved in the confrontation have been broken. One Nation leader Pauline Hanson is already distancing herself from the man senator Culleton is alleging attacked him. And hers isn't the only party dealing with conflict, with the deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce accusing former PM Tony Abbott of being 'unhelpful' with recent comments.

Two Iranian men who claim they were victims of an unprovoked bashing at the hands of Manus Island police and immigration officials are today expected to appear in court charged with being drunk, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Local authorities claim the men had been consuming an alcoholic 'home brew' on New Year's Eve and police had to use force to subdue them. The asylum-seekers deny they had been drinking and maintain they were the ones who were set upon by drunken attackers.

Fiji appears to have escaped major damage or loss of life after a powerful earthquake struck close to the city of Suva. The magnitude-seven quake sparked a tsunami warning, which was cancelled an hour later.

Turkish authorities are still working to catch the gunman who killed 39 people in a New Year's nightclub shooting in Istanbul. A selfie-style video, purportedly of the gunman, has also emerged in local media reports.

Members of Australia's deaf community have expressed concern about a lack of sign language interpreters. They are calling for more financial support and greater awareness of AUSLAN as a language, amid concerns that the shortage will impact on their ability to access essential services.

2017 is already shaping up as a year when humankind will be launching a growing number of space missions to push back those frontiers ever further. Even so, it seems would-be space travellers might need to keep their plans in check with promises about the emergence of space-tourism seemingly no closer to becoming reality. Privately-funded space programs lost momentum in 2016 after a string of setbacks raised questions about whether their ambitions outpaced the potential profitability and practicality of space travel. Even so, there's a busy schedule of missions planned for the months ahead.

The Turkish Government says eight people have been detained in connection with the deadly weekend attack on an Istanbul nightclub and it's close to identifying the man responsible for the assault. The Islamic State militant group has claimed responsibility for the attack, praising the man who killed 39 people during New Year celebrations, as a heroic soldier. Turkish authorities claim they're close to identifying the killer using fingerprints and the grainy black and white images from security footage, captured as he entered the club firing on the crowd of 600.

The government is defending its efforts to recoup the overpayment of Centrelink benefits to welfare recipients, saying the program's working well despite isolated complaints. But the opposition says that doesn't tally with a wave of complaints flooding into politicians' offices across the country from angry and frustrated Centrelink clients.

In Brazil, scores of prisoners are dead after a riot involving hundreds of inmates at a jail in the Amazon. Some of those killed were decapitated. Gang related violence in Brazilian jails is commonplace but this is the worst riot in more than two decades. To make things worse, as the violence broke out, hundreds more prisoners made their escape.

Housing affordability looks set to remain a hot button issue in 2017, after being a key topic during last year's federal election. Property research firm CoreLogic says home prices re-accelerated during the final months of 2016, with last year recording the strongest growth since 2009. The growth wasn't uniform, with Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart all growing by double-digits, while Perth prices kept going backwards. CoreLogic's head of research for Australia, Cameron Kusher, says the Reserve Bank and banking regulator will likely be forced into action early this year to try and cool runaway house prices in Sydney and Melbourne.