The world has been waiting for the day the United Nations put forward a plan on how to deal with the year-long global migrant crisis. With bated breath, we all waited for a moral compass, guidance on how to solve the world's worst people displacement since World War II.
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The day arrived today, but sadly without much of a concrete plan or a binding blueprint.
According to the UN, "world leaders came together at the United Nations General Assembly [on Monday evening NY time] to adopt the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, which expresses the political will of world leaders to protect the rights of refugees and migrants, to save lives and share responsibility for large movements on a global scale".
The issue of what to do about the world's 65.3 million displaced people occupied the minds of the 193 state members present, but activists and human rights advocates worry that what they were able to agree on falls short of what is needed.
It comes as an Afghan-born Muslim American citizen, Ahmad Khan Rahami, was arrested and charged in connection with the bombs found in New York and New Jersey over the weekend, helping to further fuel the anti-migrant radicalism proposed by US presidential candidate Donald Trump (he is now advocating racial profiling) and making it even more difficult for moderate voices to find their level in the United States and elsewhere. Don't miss that report from our correspondent Josephine Tovey in New York and analysis by our chief correspondent Paul McGeough in Washington.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has finally admitted to being unprepared when - led by the outrage of the world over little Alan Kurdi drowned on a Turkish beach - Germany agreed to open its doors and, unintentionally, flung wide the gates of Europe to more than a million migrants, contributing to the rise of the far-right movement in the continent. As a consequence, her party had its worst results in the national polls for four years and her personal approval ratings have plummeted.
Elections have also been the theme in Russia, where Vladimir Putin's re-election is now certain and in Chechnya, where leader Ramzan Kadyrov won 98 per cent of votes and chose to appear at a ceremony dressed in medieval armour, with a conical helmet, and sword and a spear in hand. The ceremony was billed as a "solemn reception" in honour of Chechnya's women, to boot.
More alarmingly, the week-old truce in the war in Syria is over. The Syrian army declared that on Monday, soon after resuming air strikes in the vicinity of Aleppo, where human rights workers reported an aid convoy was struck causing yet untold deaths and loss of goods.
Our European correspondent, Nick Miler, reports investigators have been able to pinpoint exactly where the missile that downed MH 17 was fired from, and what type of weapon it was.
And closer to home, Jewel Topsfield in Jakarta reports that killer haze from forest fires that raged across Indonesia last year may have caused more than 100,000 premature deaths in Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia.
Check back on the site after lunch, as we have more exclusive and breaking stories coming up. Our south-east Asia correspondent, Lindsay Murdoch, and photographer Kate Geraghty are in the Philippines with a not-to-miss report this afternoon.
