Minister defends PACER Plus Regional deal in sight
WITH a month to go before regional governments sign a broad trade agreement with Australia and New Zealand, there are niggling doubts over whether every country will support the deal. Fiji and Papua New Guinea have
MSG’s coup de grace? Melanesia cracks up
WILL the controversy surrounding the appointment of a new director general of the Melanesian Spearhead Group be its coup de grace? The question is being posed as first Vanuatu, and now Papua New Guinea, the former being
CHASING THE BIG DREAM
PACIFIC ISLAND PLAYERS underpaid and overworked PHYSICALLY powerful young men have become Polynesia’s highest profile export. In a bittersweet trade, youngsters who dreamed of playing professional American
MSG
THE Melanesian Spearhead Group is headquartered in Port Vila, Vanuatu in a two storey building that was built and gifted to the MSG by the Government of China. It was founded from an informal meeting of leaders of Papua
Time for regionalism
REGIONAL tourism operators will gather on Australia’s Gold Coast this month to showcase the best there is to offer in the Pacific. The event offers opportunities for more than 80 hotel operators, airlines, national
Kiribati reforms; Free education, corruption probe, pay rise
THE new government of Kiribati last month announced sweeping changes in the country’s education, health and social welfare policies that will see free education up to year 12 in the whole of the country. The major
PNG court rejects detention centre Is Fiji next
WITH the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court ruling that the Manus Island refugee processing centre is illegal, Australia may be forced to look to other Pacific islands to house 800-odd residents. Australia’s detention
Islands reach out to visitors
WITH a 12 per cent growth in its tourism industry in 2015, Samoa will use its recent Tourism Expo and a national initiative to drive arrivals higher this year. Fresh from the Samoa Tourism Expo, a high-level delegation
Tribute to godfather of Pacific music Sounds of Sevesi
SEVEN months after becoming the first Tongan to be inducted into New Zealand Music’s Hall of Fame, Wilfred Jeffs, who went by the stage name Bill Sevesi, passed away, aged 92,,on April 23. When the news trickled out
Singapore – the new focus
FIJI’S national carrier has embarked on a twice-weekly service to Changi International Airport, Singapore, casting aside New Delhi and Shanghai. The airline’s intention is to use the new destination as a hub from
Down Memory Lane; History emerges in Fiji novel
FIJI changed forever when the then Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka walked into Parliament on May 14, 1987 and removed a democratically elected government. On that day Fiji lost her innocence and the nation was forced
Content is king for Vodafone Fiji
CELL phone users in Fiji should expect bigger, better and more variety in content of services they will be able to access on their mobile devices once the Fijian Government implements its digitalisation programme, so
English Channel firm does battles up North
AN interesting battle of sorts is taking place in the small telecommunication market of Kiribati in the northern Pacific; Fijian owned ATH Kiribati Telecom taking on the might of global telecom conglomerate 03b
Digicel chief upbeat
Digicel’s Chief Executive Officer in Fiji, Darren McLean, expects big changes in the television market with his company’s entry in television industry. He talks to Islands Business. ISLANDS BUSINESS: How
Drought fears grip Palau; Islands extend state of emergency
A PROLONGED drought blamed on the El Nino weather system has dropped water levels to an even critical threshold at the remaining reservoir that the National Emergency Committee (NEC) fears that without rain the
Be disaster prepared
FIJI was battering up for Tropical Cyclone Zena as we prepare to put this edition to bed, exactly 45 days after Category 5 Winston destroyed homes, villages and islands in eastern, central Fiji and the north-western
The power of names
NAMES have “mana.” They are powerful. We use names everyday to identify individuals, places and things. We therefore take for granted that they simply exist. We often forget that names were given, and the
Whispers
MIRACLE or mirage It’s making big news in Samoa with media reports about a young woman with stigmata, which in Christian tradition claims body marks on her body correspond to those left on Christ’s body when
Tonga’s race against time
Political row at centre of Pacific Games delay WITH less than three years to the Pacific Games 2019, Tonga is 18 months late in its preparations. This is despite Papua New Guinea’s pledge of $USD35 million –
Enter the dragon
THE need to boost national economies through foreign business investment is not lost on any Pacific island country. Talks in Brisbane last month saw the region’s leaders focusing on the need for a regional
PNG crackdown on bad Chinese traders
PAPUA New Guinea has seen a series of anti-Chinese protests and riots in recent years, driven by the increasing number of Asian nationals taking over small businesses. The latest anti-Chinese aggression, though less
FANTASY ISLANDS; Once polluted, unusable space is now Tuvalu’s future.
IN the South China Sea, the Chinese Government has now built up a string of artificial islands that are robust enough to hold aircraft bases and give their regional neighbours a serious case of the jitters. Millions of