<p>Links and updates from across the migration and border policy field.</p>

James Batley says more attention should be paid to the role Pacific island countries play in regional security.

<p>More than bricks and mortar, the Philippines needs to rebuild relations between the local community and the state.</p>

Greg Earl with economic news from across the region.

More than a million Indonesian profiles are said to have been compromised in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

China’s new islands and missiles have changed our regional strategic balance.

Links and updates from across the Pacific islands.

Alliance sentimentalists are wrong to judge the entire heath of the US–Australia relationship through one diplomatic appointment.

In modern and multicultural Australia, sustaining a tangible connection to a national day of remembrance poses a challenge.

Publishing will be light on Wednesday.

<p>A surge in social media followers across Asia has raised questions about self-censorship.</p>

The UK announced three new diplomatic posts in the Pacific, bringing a new voice to regional strategic discussions.

Plenty of attention has been paid to the perils of the likely US–North Korea summit, but little has been said about the risks Trump would have faced had he declined Pyongyang’s offer.

Labour market participation is a key factor in determining monetary policy.

Links and stories from the aid and development sector.

But “satellite” launches could disguise more missile tests.

China has a bigger adversary to contend with before picking fights with Australia.

China has framed 5G as a technological arms race.

The week that was on The Interpreter.

Clearly, someone in Australia’s defence and security establishment wanted China’s challenge to be made public.

Links and updates from across the migration and border policy field.

China’s new approach to aid looks to be closely aligned to the Belt and Road Initiative.

Who is responsible for the behaviour of troops in the field?

Non-state actors using drones that cost a couple of grand to build are now pitted against some of the world’s most expensive and sophisticated weaponry.

<p>Sarah Logan’s links to digital news across Asia.</p>

<p>“Denuclearisation” is fraught with ambiguity and means very different things to each&nbsp;side.</p>

The responses to the Syria strikes illustrate a troubling divide in Europe in defending Western principles.

For a party with no interest in popular elections at home, the Chinese Communist Party shows remarkable curiosity about electoral democracies elsewhere.

It is one thing to be in possession of an unrivalled deposit of unmined ore, and quite another to unlock its vast potential.

The biggest destabilising player in Melanesia over the past five years has not been China, but Indonesia.

Links and stories from around the Pacific by The Interpreter team.

The Maldives’ experience suggests the need to adapt to global warming could in the future be manipulated for political leverage.

Wasting Prime Ministerial time is not good diplomacy.

Violence outside the spectacle of insurgency continues, as mundane as it is pervasive.

Perhaps France’s Emmanuel Macron can convince Trump he will retain far more leverage over Iran within the existing nuclear deal.

Refugees should have better access to labour migration schemes to reduce the pressure on humanitarian quotas.

The EPG says economic reforms proposed by the G20 are neither radical nor novel.

A new deal for amphibious aircraft shows just how far ties between the two countries have come.

The test of US policy is not how much it can hurt others but how much pain it will withstand.

Links and stories from the aid and development sector.

If anyone deserves protection at this increasingly protectionist time it is the least developed countries around the world.

Pacific island countries, especially, win big in a breakthrough event.

<p>The US felt compelled to act,&nbsp;Bashar al-Assad has been punished,&nbsp;yet may not be deterred.</p>

The week that was on The Interpreter.

“Confidence” was the message, reinforced in print and online.

Airstrikes aside, the US needs Moscow to influence the Assad regime and negotiate an end to this sordid conflict.

The triumph of Viktor Orbán in Hungary is not just a curious and isolated development.

Why did Japan and South Korea not join the expulsion of Russian diplomats after the Skripal attack?

In a world of significant change, Australia and New Zealand will need each other more than ever.

Greg Earl with economic snippets from across the region.