The Governments of Australia and Cambodia inked a refugee deal at Phnom Penh on Friday.

The Memorandum of Understanding will see genuine refugees sent to Cambodia from Australian-run Detention Centre on Nauru as early as the end of the year.

Speaking to News1st earlier in the day Immigration Correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald, Sarah Whyte said that the 157  Sri Lankan asylum seekers who are currently detained in Nauru could be among the 1000 refugees sent to Cambodia, if they are evaluated as refugees.

Australian-based ABC reported that few details of the deal are known but it has already been widely criticised because Cambodia is one of the poorest nations in the region.

Former Chief Justice of the Family Court, Alistair Nicholson, the spokesman for the alliance, said Cambodian Non-Government Organisations have advised the plan would overwhelm an already struggling welfare sector and exploit one of the poorest nations in south-east Asia.

The criticism comes despite Cambodia and Australia keeping details of the agreement secret.

Human Rights Watch said the agreement does not meet Australia’s commitment to send refugees to a “safe third country” and will undermine refugee protection in the region.

Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison is set to sign a deal on Friday to resettle refugees in Cambodia.

The Cambodian Government revealed on Wednesday that the country’s Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister of Cambodia Sar Keng and Morrison will sign a memorandum of understanding in Phnom Penh on Friday

It is learnt that the resettlement deal will be for up to 1000 asylum seekers who are found to be refugees.

Cambodian officials say the refugees, including Sri Lankans, will be encouraged to work despite the country being among the world’s poorest.

Australia says it is sending 600 troops to the Middle East ahead of possible combat operations against Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the deployment, initially to the United Arab Emirates, was in response to a specific US request. Nearly 40 countries, including 10 Arab states, have signed up to a US-led plan to tackle the extremist group.

France is hosting a regional security summit on Monday.US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Paris late on Saturday after a four-day tour of the Middle East trying to drum up support for action against IS.

Last week, US President Barack Obama presented a strategy to fight the group in both Iraq and Syria.Speaking on Sunday, Prime Minister Abbott said Iraq had made it clear that it would “very much welcome” a military contribution to restore security.

He said the force, which will also include up to eight Super Hornet fighter jets, was part of “an international coalition” not simply an “American-Australian operation”.

Mr Abbott said no decision had yet been taken to commit the forces, which will begin deploying next week, to combat action.The announcement comes two days after Australia raised its terrorism threat level from medium to high.

Security officials are thought to be concerned by the growing number of Australians “working with, connected to or inspired by” Islamist groups, Mr Abbott said on Friday.

Islamic State is now in control of large parts of Iraq and Syria and the CIA estimates that the group could have as many as 30,000 fighters in the region.

US air strikes have targeted IS in Iraq in recent weeks and President Obama has vowed to “hunt down” the group after it beheaded two American journalists.

Late on Saturday a video was also released appearing to show the beheading of UK hostage David Haines.

The talks come ahead of a UN Security Council meeting next week and a heads of state meeting at the UN General Assembly later this month

With cricket’s biggest extravaganza, the ICC Cricket World Cup, scheduled to be played in Australia and New Zealand next year, a potential threat has been unearthed by the Kiwi police.

According to a report published in The New Zealand Herald, the fixers and bookies might use honey traps as a weapon during the tournament to lure them.

“We know they bring in women into the country to fraternise with players. Afterwards, they’ll ask the players to do something and if they refuse they’ll say, ‘Well, see these photographs? They will be with your wife, your neighbours, your parents,” Superintendent Sandra Manderson, police chief for the Cricket World Cup, was quoted as saying in the report.

The report also suggested about a list of match-fixers which has been compiled by the police and anti-corruption investigators in a bid to stop them at the border before the World Cup.

The World Cup will be hosted jointly by Australia and New Zealand and the police is trying its best to depose off possible threats.

Of late, cricket’s image has been tarnished with instances of fixing and spot-fixing. Kiwi cricketer Lou Vincent was the recent victim where he publicly accepted involvement in fixing

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Australia’s highest court has set a date for a full hearing into how a group of purportedly Sri Lankan asylum seekers were detained at sea, a case that will test the Australian government’s authority to pursue its immigration policies.

Reuters quotes a lawyer for the group of asylum seekers as saying it was likely the United Nations would seek to join the case, a highly unusual step, they said showed the level of international concern over Australia’s “Operation Sovereign Borders”.

Justice Kenneth Hayne, who has said the case appeared to be unique in the world and raised serious questions about how far Australian power extends, set an expedited two-day hearing before a full bench of the High Court for October 14 and 15.

The boat carrying the 157 asylum seekers was intercepted in late June and held by Australian authorities at sea for weeks. The group’s lawyers argue that the their detention and the government’s plan to send them to Sri Lanka or back to India, from where they had left, were illegal.

The fate of the group has highlighted Australia’s immigration policy, in which boats carrying would-be asylum seekers are intercepted at sea and turned back.

Reuters reports that the U.N. would not be a direct party to the case but could offer legal opinion, testimony and text evidence.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been accused of breaching international law amid reports he deployed the Australian navy to pick up more than 150 Tamil asylum-seekers and handed them over to the Sri Lankan authorities.

The Abbott government was accused of “sending the persecuted to the persecutors” but has so far refused to comment on the reports.

The asylum-seekers were reportedly picked up by the Australian navy near the Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean. There were reports a second boatload from Sri Lanka may also have been transferred.

Meanwhile, Scott Morrison, Australia’s immigration minister, would not comment on “water operations” but insisted the government had not breached international law.

However, an expert in international law, Donald Rothwell, told The Telegraph that a transfer of Tamil asylum-seekers to Sri Lanka would be a flagrant breach of the United Nations refugee convention.

A large group of high-ranking Navy officials, Commander of the Sri Lanka Navy Vice Admiral Jayanath Colombage and Chief of Staff Rear Admiral Jayantha Perera, were in attendance at the welcoming ceremony.

The vessel that was presented to Sri Lanka by the Australian government is a bay-class vessel.

The first bay class vessel that was presented to Sri Lanka by the Australian Government on March 30, arrived at the Colombo Harbour on April 24.

The two vessels were presented to Sri Lanka on an assurance made by the Australian Premier Tony Abbott in November last year to prevent illegal migrants and the strengthening of border protection.

The vessel is 38.2 meters in length, while it could reach a maximum speed of 24 knots.

The men’s national side has landed a massive coup with Test cricket’s greatest wicket-taker appointed as a spin consultant.

Muthiah Muralidaran, the world’s most successful Test bowler and the Sri Lankan who tormented rival batsmen for almost two decades, will join Australia’s coaching staff to help their bowlers and batsmen decode the conundrum of ‘mystery spin’.

Muralidaran, who captured an unsurpassed 800 Test wickets and more than 500 in limited-overs internationals, has signed on as a consultant to join the Australian squad ahead of the Test series against Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates next October.

The signing represents not only a significant coup to secure the foremost exponent of the ‘doosra’ delivery that has baffled Australian batsmen and bowlers for decades, and which is likely to play a decisive role in the UAE series with Pakistan’s Saeed Ajmal among the game’s most potent ‘mystery spinners’.

It also signals a fundamental shift in philosophy for Australian cricket which, until now, has declined to propagate its own exponents of ‘doosras’, ‘carrom balls’ and the other weapons employed by spinners throughout the globe because of ideological issues over the legality of those bowlers’ actions.

As a result, Australian batsmen have struggled to combat the increasingly prevalent craft when pitted against it in the international arena, and the decision to approach and employ Muralidaran is an admission that learning the art from a master is the best solution.

“I’m very much excited; I know the Australian team is a very good side, but hopefully I can have a little bit of input to help them do well in the series against Pakistan,” Muralidaran said.

“Those conditions might help spinners and I know a few tricks that might help them on what to do as I have played a lot of matches in those conditions in the UAE and hopefully I can help them a little bit.”

SOURCE: Australia Cricket

Faith and Hope, who had two brains in the same skull, died earlier today in Australia.

Conjoined twins Hope and Faith died in the early hours of this morning after surviving for 19 days.

They were born with two brains in the same skull earlier this month despite their mother, Renee Young, being advised to terminate the pregnancy.

However, she and partner Simon Howie, from Sydney, welcomed the astonishing little girls six weeks early.

Their deaths were announced this morning by Australia’s Channel 9 A Current Affair Twitter feed.

The girls were the result of a rare condition known as disrosopus, where a baby is born with two faces.