Australia Tuesday kept interest rates at 2.0 percent after slashing them to a record low last month, and called for a weaker currency to help counter a sluggish economy struggling with soft business spending.

The Reserve Bank of Australia has been loosening monetary policy as the country exits an unprecedented China-driven mining investment boom and non-resources industries strain to fill the gap.

The detention of indigenous children has become a national crisis in Australia, Amnesty International said on Tuesday, and demanded the government do more to stem what it termed a spiraling epidemic.

A new Amnesty report, A Brighter Tomorrow, said Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were 26 times more likely to be jailed than their non-indigenous counterparts.

Vatican finance chief George Pell on Monday summoned his lawyers after one of Pope Francis' specially-appointed commissioners for the protection of children accused him of being "almost sociopathic" and said his position was untenable.

Formerly the top Catholic cleric in Australia, Cardinal Pell is embroiled in a child abuse inquiry in his homeland which last week heard evidence from the nation's worst paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale.

Stronger regional cooperation is needed to counter the threat posed by foreign fighters returning from the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, Australia's foreign minister said Saturday.

About 90 countries have claimed that some of their citizens were involved in terrorism overseas, Julie Bishop said.

A Sydney mother has abandoned her two children and fled to Syria for a new life under the Islamic State group, media reported Tuesday, becoming one of more than 100 Australians who have joined the jihadists.

The Australian government said it was deeply disturbed by the report and that it was monitoring the situation closely.

Australia on Monday appointed a counter-terrorism chief to coordinate security agencies, while pointing to the United States and Britain to justify a proposal to strip citizenship from dual nationals linked to jihadists.

Like many countries, Australia is grappling with heightened threats from "home-grown" extremists with several alleged terror plots foiled this year inspired by the Islamic State group.

Australia must pour more money into transport systems or risk gridlock in its biggest cities costing more than Aus$53 billion (U.S.$42 billion) a year, an infrastructure audit published Friday found.

Road congestion across Australia's six largest cities, particularly in Sydney, cost the vast country some Aus$13.7 billion in 2011, the Infrastructure Australia report said.

Australia hit back Friday at criticism of its response to thousands of migrants stranded at sea in Southeast Asia, saying it was generous towards refugees in the region.

When asked Thursday whether Australia would offer to resettle the migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar's oppressed Rohingya minority, Prime Minister Tony Abbott replied, "nope, nope, nope".

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott Thursday ruled out helping resettle the wave of migrants fleeing to Southeast Asia, saying it would worsen the problem and "encourage people to get on boats".

Abbott, whose conservative government employs tough measures to stop boatpeople, said Australia "will do absolutely nothing that gives any encouragement to anyone to think that they can get on a boat, that they can work with people-smugglers to start a new life".

A 6.9-magnitude earthquake struck off the Solomon Islands in the Pacific on Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, but no tsunami warning was issued and no major damage was expected.

The quake hit at a depth of 19 kilometers (11 miles), some 184 kilometers from Lata and 487 kilometers from the capital Honiara. It was followed a smaller 4.9-magnitude aftershock.