Australia is reducing its interaction with Thailand's military, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said Saturday, adding three planned activities had been postponed due to the coup.

Thailand's military seized power on May 22 and on Friday ruled out elections for at least a year to allow time for political "reforms", despite international alarm.

The head of Australia's transport safety bureau has defended the fruitless hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, saying he is confident that search teams are targeting the right area.

Satellite analysis in the days after the Boeing 777 went missing on March 8 with 239 people onboard placed the jet somewhere in a huge tract of the Indian Ocean stretching from near Indonesia south towards Antarctica.

One of Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspapers on Wednesday published a picture showing the bare bottom of Prince William's wife Kate, refusing to follow a "ridiculous" ban imposed by the British media.

The image was taken during the royal couple's hugely successful tour of Australia in April when they showed off their infant son George, and was run in the Sydney Daily Telegraph a day after it appeared in German tabloid Bild, which declared she had a "beautiful bum".

A review into a riot at an Australian detention center in Papua New Guinea found Monday that an Iranian man was "brutally beaten" to death by a Salvation Army worker, as it warned of a major task to rebuild trust.

The unrest at the Manus Island camp in February also left 69 people injured as tensions flared among inmates about their fate under Australia's hardline asylum-seeker policies.

Two alleged members of international hacker group Anonymous were charged by Australian authorities on Thursday with targeting local and Indonesian government websites.

The Australian Federal Police said the men, aged 18 and 40, knew each other online and "targeted organizations including a large Internet service provider and web servers" hosting the government sites.

Australia Wednesday announced further sanctions against allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin as it reaffirmed its "clear and unequivocal support for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine".

The financial sanctions and travel bans were expanded to cover an additional 38 unnamed Russians and Ukrainians and 11 entities. A total of 50 people are now affected.

A mini-sub hunting for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 will be back in the search zone within days, an official said Saturday, as the Australian ship carrying the device prepared to leave on the mission.

Australian vessel Ocean Shield is carrying the U.S. Navy Bluefin-21 mini-sub which had been scouring the seabed for the plane which disappeared on March 8 carrying 239 people until it docked to resupply early this week. 

An Australian mother was Monday charged with supporting terrorism after she was arrested trying to board a flight from Sydney with her four young children.

Reports said she was allegedly carrying cash and equipment -- believed to include camouflage gear -- for her husband fighting in war-torn Syria, although police would not confirm this.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Saturday canceled a trip to Indonesia amid reports that an asylum seeker turnback operation was underway that could renew tensions between the neighbors.

Abbott's office confirmed he no longer intended to travel to Bali on Tuesday for a meeting with Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono but declined to go into the reasons for putting off the visit, which had been seen as a thawing of ties tested by recent rows over espionage and Australia's controversial refugee policies.

Sri Lanka's navy Friday arrested 54 would-be illegal immigrants in the first major detection of boat people heading to Australia this year, an official said.

A fishing trawler was detected with the passengers, including 11 women and 13 children, off the island's north-eastern coast of Mullaittivu, navy spokesman Kosala Warnakulasuriya said.