As Malcolm Turnbull prepares to embark on his first official visit to China as prime minister, some 60 Chinese community leaders in Australia gathered in Sydney urging him to watch his words when discussing the South China Sea in Beijing.

A Chinese mother has been charged with human trafficking for allegedly conspiring with a doctor to sell her baby boy for more than $A8000, media have reported, the latest case highlighting the country's lucrative child market.

US Navy SEAL forces moved the wounded hostages to an aircraft and flew them to an awaiting naval ship, the Makin Island, off the coast of Yemen. Surgeons and medics worked on the two men on the way to the ship, but one died en route and the other on the operating table, according to the officials.

The massive tar-coloured dunes of Titan, made of fine and powdery hydrocarbons and possibly ice particles, are the product of long-term weather cycles, scientists now believe.

In his blog Alek Sigley said his father was an "Anglo-Aussie sinologist" and his mother was Chinese - she spent a "tumultuous youth during the Cultural Revolution", he wrote.

Australia is the worst-performing developed nation when it comes to climate-change action, a survey by European non-government organisations shows.

The International Criminal Court says Libya has violated an obligation to hand over Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and it has referred the matter to the UN Security Council.

The iCloud account of Pippa Middleton, younger sister of the Duchess of Cambridge, has allegedly been hacked and 3000 photographs stolen.

Twenty-four people are stuck near the top of of a 24-metre rollercoaster in Maryland in the United States, after the ride stalled.

New York's top prosecutor seeks the power to probe all police killings of unarmed civilians in his state, following two grand juries' moves to clear officers in the deaths of unarmed black men.

The CIA used much more brutal methods of interrogation on terrorism suspects than previously disclosed, according to a US Senate report.

Law enforcement officials in Montgomery County were searching Monday night for a man suspected of fatally shooting six people and seriously wounding another person at three homes in towns outside Philadelphia earlier in the day.

When the so-called Islamic State began preparing for war in Iraq, it targeted the country's Sunni tribal leaders. One American was counting.

Hong Kong's highest-profile corruption trial opened the door on a world of fine wine, race horses and mistresses - exposing cozy ties between government and big business as protesters demanding free elections camped within view of the court.

A transgender woman who was sent to a male prison has been found dead.

The technique could in future be used to control the spread of malaria, which affected 216 million people in 2016.

Ongoing record warmth in the world’s oceans has increased the likelihood that 2014 will be declared the hottest year since reliable data began more than a century ago, US and Japanese agencies say.

A massacre in a riverside village called Tula Toli has emerged as the most horrific atrocity in Myanmar's Rakhine State since security forces there launched a brutal offensive against Rohingya Muslim civilians in late August.

A jury on Friday found the Minnesota police officer who fatally shot a black motorist during a traffic stop last year not guilty.

Almost 200 cruise ship passengers on a tour of New Zealand have come down with a stomach bug.