A 75-year-old Australian missionary held in North Korea for allegedly distributing religious materials arrived in China Monday after being deported, an Agence France Presse reporter saw.

Hong Kong-based John Short was arrested after leaving "Bible tracts" in a Buddhist temple in Pyongyang during a tour.

Young, elderly and pregnant residents of a Australian town cloaked in smoke from a coal mine ablaze for three weeks were Friday urged to leave over mounting air quality concerns.

Morwell has been shrouded in haze since a nearby open cut coal mine ignited during a spate of wildfires in Victoria state earlier this month, prompting respiratory health fears.

Australia said it remained in the dark Thursday on the whereabouts or wellbeing of a Christian missionary detained in North Korea after leaving a pamphlet in a Buddhist temple.

Hong Kong-based Australian citizen John Short, 75, was taken from his Pyongyang hotel by police earlier this month for allegedly distributing Korean-language Christian pamphlets and attempting to proselytise.

The U.N.'s human rights office on Friday urged Australia to reconsider its policy of shipping asylum-seekers to Papua New Guinea and detaining them there, after rioting at a holding center left one person dead.

Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said this week's violence at the Manus Island facility had thrown the spotlight on a wider problem.

The Australian navy violated Indonesian territorial waters six times between December and January as part of border security operations, an official report revealed Wednesday.

Canberra has previously only said its ships "inadvertently" violated Indonesian waters, without saying how often. It has formally apologized to Jakarta, which demanded Australia suspend its operations to deter asylum-seekers.

Australian state governments that sell assets such as airports and utilities as part of a national policy to rekindle economic growth will get new tax arrangements to offset lost revenue, the federal treasurer said Wednesday.

Treasurer Joe Hockey wants to reinvest the money from asset sales into new national infrastructure that he hopes will fill the investment void left by the slowing mining industry. The government hopes sales of state companies will raise as much as 130 billion Australian dollars ($117 billion), but the policy would also result in some lost revenue for states by putting the businesses in private hands.

A Lebanese man was on Tuesday refused bail after allegedly bashing his wife to death in Sydney, Australia, media reports said.

Police said Margaret Tannous, 47, had been bludgeoned to death with a broom handle in their south west Sydney unit, Australian dailies reported.

 One person was killed and 77 injured as tensions boiled over during a second night of violence at an Australian immigration detention center on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island, officials said Tuesday.

Thirty-five asylum-seekers broke out of the same facility on Sunday evening, with several hurt, as unrest flared about their fate under the Australian government's hardline policies.

Thirty-five asylum-seekers broke out of an Australian immigration detention on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island and several were injured, officials said Monday, as tensions mount about their fate under hardline policies.

Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said the asylum-seekers escaped Sunday evening but were quickly rounded up by private security contractors at the facility, one of two remote Pacific camps used in Canberra's punitive off-shore detention policy.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said Monday that reports of Australian spies targeting Indonesian officials during a trade dispute with the United States were "mind-boggling".

Indonesia has been embroiled in trade disputes with the U.S. over its exports of clove cigarettes and shrimp in recent years, and has lashed out at Canberra over previous allegations that it spied on the Indonesian president and other top officials.