Regional
Focus on climate change in Pacific
Monday 15 February 2016 | Published in Regional
WELLINGTON – The science is clear, climate change is upon us and nowhere is the impact more serious than in the Pacific.
'We're going to lose islands, whole nations'
Monday 15 February 2016 | Published in Regional
WELLINGTON – New Zealand needs to acknowledge that Pacific Island nations face an “ecological holocaust” and “ecocide” thanks to climate change, says Dr Pala Molisa.
Atolls seek alternatives to oblivion
Monday 15 February 2016 | Published in Regional
TARAWA – Giant floating islands, castle-like sea walls and mass migration are among some of the “crazy” plans the leader of Kiribati has to save his low-lying Pacific nation from global warming-induced oblivion.
Cyclones misses Vanuatu, heading for Fiji
Monday 15 February 2016 | Published in Regional
PORT VILA – Vanuatu’s southern Tafea province has been given the all clear as Tropical Cyclone Winston moves away from the country, but it now looks like the storm will curve back up towards Fiji.
Key not phased by Russian weapons
Monday 15 February 2016 | Published in Regional
WELLINGTON – New Zealand’s Prime Minister says he is not concerned about Fiji’s military receiving shipments of weapons donated by Russia.
Christchurch hit by 5.7 quake
Monday 15 February 2016 | Published in Regional
CHRISTCHURCH – A “severe” magnitude 5.7 earthquake has hit the New Zealand city of Christchurch almost five years after a deadly tremor devastated the region.
Valentine's day banned in Pakistan
Saturday 13 February 2016 | Published in Regional
A district in north-western Pakistan has banned Valentine’s Day celebrations.
Vanuatu PM well respected
Saturday 13 February 2016 | Published in Regional
PORT VILA – Vanuatu’s new prime minister is an accomplished and well respected figure in the country’s politics, according to the head of a Pacific think tank.
Superheated sea kills thousands of fish in Fiji
Saturday 13 February 2016 | Published in Regional
SUVA – Thousands of dead fish are washing up on the shores of Fiji’s Coral Coast as a result of the recent high temperatures, with a local expert saying reefs could lose a significant amount of coral if seawater temperatures remain high.
Opposition fails to oust Bainimarama
Saturday 13 February 2016 | Published in Regional
SUVA – The opposition in Fiji failed in an attempt to remove Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama and appoint Ro Teimumu Kepa as the new government leader in a vote of no confidence in parliament on Friday.
New Zealand's '8s' win to stand
Saturday 13 February 2016 | Published in Regional
SYDNEY – New Zealand will face no disciplinary action despite fielding eight players when the team scored a game-tying try against Australia in the Sydney Sevens.
Papua New Guinea's food bowl is empty
Saturday 13 February 2016 | Published in Regional
KANMA – Old Kaupa Bani walks with a tall cane fashioned from a black palm outside his hut in Kanma village. Blind, burdened by joint pains, too weak to work his garden, and with no children to look after him, he has been helped by extended family. But as a devastating drought hits Papua New Guinea with force few rural villages were prepared for, the flow of kindness has turned into scraps in the last nine months. Some days Bani eats nothing. “I have to be fed to get strength,” Bani tells an interpreter. “But since the drought, there’s been insufficient food, so I’ve grown very weak. Across the road from the home Bani rarely has the strength to leave, Anna Snaka peels a handful of weevil-ridden sweet potatoes. She adds ferns to this meagre meal she’ll feed her three children, and a barely edible yam scavenged from the bush. Until nine months ago a typical meal would have included fat, sweet potatoes, garden greens, and sometimes fish, corned beef, or chicken, and then pig or goat with taro and cassava on special occasions. Snaka says she has tried planting more food, but the soil is still too hot. She had four pigs, but two have died from lack of food. She bursts into tears as she holds up the bitter yam that she and others in her village must eat out of desperation. She’ll boil it twice and add salt so her children can stomach it. The Papua New Guinean National Disaster Centre estimates the severe El Niño-driven drought currently affects two million people in this large Pacific island nation. In a population of 7.3 million, 87 per cent live outside urban centres; most are subsistence farmers. The Highlands region is normally called the “food bowl” of the nation, so when drought strikes in the Highlands, the effects ripple throughout the economy. Food prices skyrocket, large-scale migration occurs as people search for work or short-term cash, and city workers send money to villages so families can buy food to survive. But the people in Kanma village in Chuave district have few such connections to the modern economy. Anna Snaka has two older children in the Highland hub of Goroka, where they have their own struggles surviving and are unable to send money to help her. Unlike villagers further east, who received 20-kilogramME sacks of rice in government aid, Kanma villagers say they have received no relief. By their own accounts, they are starving. Matthew Kanua, an agronomist and soil scientist, worked through the 1997 drought and now coordinates the response for PNG’s churches. Having assessed the evidence provided by a Fairfax news team, he says Kanma village is slipping from Category 3 to Category 4 in drought assessment terms– that means no food in gardens, only famine food (ferns, unripe bananas, bitter yams) being eaten. Chuave district lies in the central highlands province of Simbu in Papua New Guinea, just 435 kilometres north-west of the busy capital Port Moresby. This rugged, mountainous terrain produces coffee which attracts a premium. Yet the rural road remains a barrier for many in getting their beans to market and joining the cash economy in earnest. There are times, according to local farmer Max Soa, when the road is so wet and impassable that they put their coffee bags on the back of the car and carry the car along Gun-Beroma Road to the nearest junction. The road that becomes Gun-Beroma runs atop a ridge among a handful of narrow ranges that stretch finger-like out of the western slopes of Mount Elimbari. Heartbreaking stories of the drought pervade this 32-kilometre stretch, nowhere more than in Kanma, where the limestone-and-dirt track dips 500 metres before coming to a halt just as the valley tips sharply down to the Wagi river.
Territory confirms Zika cases
Saturday 13 February 2016 | Published in Regional
PAGO PAGO – American Samoa’s Lieutenant Governor, Lemanu Peleti Mauga, says the territory now has confirmed cases of the Zika virus and has issued an alert.
Doctors refuse to release baby
Saturday 13 February 2016 | Published in Regional
BRISBANE – Doctors at a Brisbane hospital have refused to release a one-year-old girl, badly burnt on Nauru, until a “suitable home environment is identified”.
Tourism industry to have its own police force
Friday 12 February 2016 | Published in Regional
PORT MORESBY – The tourism industry in Papua New Guinea will have its own police force.
42 rescued from fishing boat on fire at sea
Friday 12 February 2016 | Published in Regional
HONOLULU – Forty-two people forced to abandon a 89-metre fishing boat after it caught fire Wednesday were rescued about 2900km south of Hawai‘i in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean, the Coast Guard said.
Floods close roads
Friday 12 February 2016 | Published in Regional
RAKIRAKI – More roads and bridges in the Western Division of Fiji have closed because of heavy rain experienced over the past 24 hours.
Flying iron shows Sevens passion
Friday 12 February 2016 | Published in Regional
NABUA – A die-hard Fiji Sevens fan has largely been forgiven for a shattering show of passion last Saturday night.
Hollande to visit two island kingdoms
Friday 12 February 2016 | Published in Regional
SIGAVE – The French president is now expected to visit both kingdoms on the French Pacific island of Futuna during the first ever presidential visit to the island scheduled for later this month.
US offered tuna treaty compromise
Friday 12 February 2016 | Published in Regional
SUVA – Pacific nations have reached agreement to accept American terms to try and resurrect the tuna treaty which fell apart last month.
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