Tuvalu is awaiting two important court decisions in relation to a by-election to elect a replacement for the late Finance Minister Lotoala Metia who died last December. Government officials confirmed last month that they were awaiting the arrival of Chief Justice Gordon Ward in May. Ward will provide government with ...
Nauru’s parliament is again in the throes of uncertainty as moves within are preventing its dissolution, a legal pre-requisite to national elections as scheduled for this year. The 18-seat institution has been wrought with political and legal difficulties over the past month as a number of sittings have been characterised ...
If first impressions are anything to go by, Vanuatu’s new Greens Party prime minister will truly stamp his place in the country’s political history. Changing and chopping his predecessor’s appointments—ministerial and foreign diplomatic postings—was Prime Minister Moana Carcasses Kalosil’s first moves as he consolidated his support from within his new ...
Solomon Islands and Taiwan marked 30 years of diplomatic relations this year. None thought then their “marriage” would one day be the focus in the race for military and economic dominance in the Pacific.
It’s been a moment two years in the making, but the rising of the PIANGO phoenix from the ashes of its own implosion in 2009 may have finally arrived. The regional grouping of civil society national umbrella organisations has been conspicuous by its absence for the last few years as ...
Like many Pacific Islands leaders Tokelau’s head of Government or Ulu o Tokelau Kerisiano Kalolo is a worried man.
Between World War II and Papua New Guinea’s independence in 1975, the best of a generation of Australians, some still teenagers, travelled to the remotest corners of their country’s big tropical colony to administer vast areas and populations of PNG as magistrates, police chiefs, road and bridge builders, health and ...
As the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) scales down its operation, the country it came to rescue 10 years earlier from a deadly ethnic social uprising appears to be tethering on yet another.
As more and more weather systems develop over the next few months with potential to become full-blown cyclones that can ravage vulnerable islands countries in the Pacific and do untold damage to properties and lives, the importance of disaster preparedness is as critical as ever.
Deaths of young school-leavers partying after their exams in Australia has been alarming everyone in recent years but an incident in Fiji last month has sparked furore among parents.
Two world superpower nations—one global leader and the other second biggest—both had their elections in November. Washington re-elected Barak Obama as president and Beijing replaced a ten-year reformist with a billionaire businessman Wen Jiabao.
It was close to 4pm on a Tuesday afternoon. Parliament had just finished the day’s session. Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, in a grey suit and ulafala (pandanus fruit lei) walks out to the foyer of the Government Building’s fifth floor. There was hardly any space—his administration team had placed ...
“I did say once that the best business practice in sales would be to buy it when a pet is fat—not when it’s skinny and unhealthy…but this is not our pet, this is somebody else’s sickly pet and we need to make sure it’s fed well and gets fat,” says ...
Not far from the centre of Papeete, along an avenue lined with ancient trees, there's a small park called the Place de 2 Juillet 1966. It's a pleasant, sunlit area alongside the waterfront, with a great view over Tahiti's harbour. But today, this site has become a memorial for the ...
For the regional trade agreement known as PACER-Plus, the parallel push to conclude negotiations on the European Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) by the end of 2012 hold fundamental lessons.
Recognition of the role of traditional leaders in the Cook Islands took a turn for the better in July 2012, when the nation celebrated the inaugural national Ui Ariki Day.
People with disabilities can experience discrimination, exclusion and neglect. This is true in the Pacific and around the world.
A $500-million drug swoop in Australia and an undisclosed catch of cannabis in the Cook Islands in August have alarmed quarantine authorities and raised fears at how illegal drug traders have easy access into the region despite attempts to crack down on such illicit trade.
A resurgence of use of cannabis in Fiji and three American Pacific islands territories has the United Nations alarmed and looking for solutions.
Nearly one-third of all Marshall Islanders today live in the United States, attending school, working and seeking opportunities that do not exist in their poverty-ridden home. But an increasing number of islanders are finding out that the special relationship between Washington and this western Pacific nation that provides them visa-free ...
Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders meet is due to take place in Rarotonga, the capital of Cook Islands, from August 28 to 31st. Who exactly will be representing Papua New Guinea, the second most populous nation within PIF, remains to be resolved.
The Obama administration’s ‘pivot’ to Asia is a comprehensive military build-up throughout the Indo-Pacific region, greatly heightening the danger of war with China.
If you have a project in mind, just ask Beijing for yuan. You stand a better chance of a generous handout or soft loan from China than any other donor.
One man’s attempt to propel Fiji onto the international beauty pageant scene through the Miss World franchise in April turned into a curious and messy spectacle. It thrusted the country back into the global news agenda for all the wrong reasons and had the government annoyed at the damage to ...
Australia will break its pledge when it hands out aid monies from 2013 to Pacific islands countries, despite acknowledging a greater need in poor countries of the region.
The investigation of the United States’ nuclear test legacy in the Marshall Islands by a United Nations Special Rapporteur has for the first time put the issue under a microscope from a human rights perspective.
Banana trees in the garden, leafy greens for lunch, Lisa Hilli’s childhood was like many others in the Pacific. Only she grew up in the Queensland capital Brisbane, hundreds of kilometres from her ancestral home in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea.
Pedro Kaipat, 56, his wife Sinforosa, 49, and the whole household were roused from their sleep around 5am on April 11 when U.S. Marine Corps officers delivered the news: their 22-year old son, Marine Lance Corporal Ramon Taisakan Kaipat, was killed while on combat patrol in the Helmand Province in ...
Specialist Australian police officers deployed in the South Pacific attract most complaints of misconduct than those in other regions, claims a new report.
Political campaigns and bickering started much earlier this year in the Northern Mariana Islands.
Voters in French Polynesia go to the polls this month in an unexpectedly close presidential race. That is if they can afford petrol for their cars.
Around Sydney’s Western suburbs and the southern region of Brisbane, where Samoan communities are predominant, there’s been an increasing incidence of racial hatred-related violence, allegedly initiated by Samoans against other racial groups like the Australian Aborigines and migrant Tongans.
Barring any catastrophic event, Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) is on its way to economic recovery in 2012 buoyed by the July 1 launching of its first local airline, targeting its main tourism market of Japan.
In four years, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) government and some of its residents have filed lawsuits against the United States government over federal takeover of local immigration and related issues such as imposing federal taxes on transitional foreign workers, and there’s no telling when the lawsuits ...
