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SUVA, Fiji Islands (June 25, 2000 – USP Journalism Programme/Pasifik Nius/Niuswire)---Rebel leader George Speight staged his attempted coup for Fijian paramountcy over Indo-Fijian and other races in the Pacific country. But the real struggle has been a fight for power among the Fijian leadership.

His rhetoric about the threat to indigenous rights posed by the 1997 multiracial constitution is based on myths.

Also, his representation of the elected Mahendra Chaudhry government as an Indian-dominated government is a myth -- just as it was in 1987.

Fijian paramountcy already existed under the constitution -- but the document was also fair to other races.

Here are some of the facts behind the racial myths:

1. In the prorogued Parliament, Fijians had 51 percent representation in the House of Representatives (elected lower house) and 72 percent in the Senate (appointed upper house). Overall, Fijians had 57 percent representation in Parliament during a...

PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea (June 19, 2000 - Post-Courier/PINA Nius Online)---Breast cancer is the second biggest killer of women in Papua New Guinea.

Public hospitals estimate 2,300 annual cases of breast cancer, saying the numbers could increase.

President of the Papua New Guinea Medical Society and a gynecologist with Port Moresby General Hospital, Dr. Mathias Sapuri, said many women who die of the disease are not recorded because they do not seek treatment at hospitals and die in villages.

Many of these women, he said, are influenced by western life and have high-fat diets.

"Breast cancer is associated with excess amount of estrogen that stimulates breast development and breast feeding," he said. "PNG women in rural areas are not normally fat, but they become fat because of westernization. This stimulates the development of cancer."

He said they could also get uterine cancer.

He said women who do not have children are more...

AUCKLAND, New Zealand (May 24, 2000 – Cook Islands Star)---Non Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) with an environmental agenda are on the warpath in Cook Islands as it becomes clear that the Minister for the Environment, Deputy Prime Minister Norman George, is dead serious that all environmental groups will have to register with government to maintain their credibility. And this controversy is taking place alongside growing complaints by the same groups over the draft of a new Environmental Act. And if that were not enough, one high profile environmentalist has been told to catch the next plane out by a traditional Cook Islands leader. DPM George introduced the registration idea just a few weeks ago as a simple way of keeping tabs on what can be a confusing number of NGO’s that define themselves as primarily guardians of the environment. Taken as a whole, these NGO's will be drawing down and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars each year funding their causes. Most of such...

By Aldwin R. Fajardo

SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Islands (June 12, 2000 – Saipan Tribune)---The United States owes the CNMI government over $100 million for reimbursement of the Compacts of Free Association’s fiscal impacts on local coffers between 1986 to 1999, according to records from Capitol Hill.

A summary of the Compacts' estimated financial impacts indicated that the Commonwealth government contributes an average of $15 million a year to subsidize various social services delivered to citizens of the three countries signatory to the agreements with the U.S. – the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau.

Between 1986 and 1998, the CNMI Department of Commerce estimated that the financial impact of the agreements between the U.S. and the Freely Associated States was between $80 million and $108 million.

CNMI records disclosed that citizens of the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau represented about 4...