The World Today

A freshly fallen meteorite has been recovered from a Western Australian farm, several hundred kilometres north-east of Perth. It was recovered by members of Curtin University's Desert Fireball Network, with the help of some helpful stargazers and a bank of special outback cameras.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.