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MELBOURNE, Australia (Nov. 5, 2002 – Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat)---A petition to allow Samoans the right to New Zealand citizenship has attracted 30,000 signatures from Samoans in New Zealand.

Former New Zealand member of parliament, Arthur Anae, says the claim rests on the fact that in 1982, the Privy Council in London ruled that all Samoans born in Samoa between 1924 and 1948 and their heirs were entitled to New Zealand citizenship.

The New Zealand government subsequently reached an agreement with the Samoan government that they say annuls that decision. But Anae disputes that.

"Samoans, at that particular time, it was stated, were in the same category as Cook Islanders, Tokelauns and the Niueans. They were all New Zealanders, initially under a British protectorate," Anae said. When the protectorate was passed over to New Zealand, they became New Zealand citizens.

"What we are looking for, more than anything else, is the freedom of access. People...

SUVA, Fiji (Nov. 6, 2002 - PINA Nius Online)---A European Union-funded center in Brussels is investigating restrictions imposed on the use of kava in herbal medicines and food supplements in Europe.

The Center for the Development of Enterprise -- an institution of the EU-ACP (Africa, Caribbean, Pacific) Group aid, trade and development partnership -- confirmed it has launched the investigation.

It comes amid increasing suspicions international pharmaceutical interests might be behind the attack on kava remedies because of the impact on sales of their own products.

Claims circulated in Europe that kava-based products caused liver damage devastated the once-thriving kava export industries of Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu.

This in turn hurt Pacific islands rural communities growing kava for a livelihood.

In response to anger that the claims are not true, the Center for the Development of Enterprise has commissioned an investigation to:

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PORT VILA, Vanuatu (Nov. 6, 2002 - Vanuatu Trading Post/PINA Nius Online)---Prominent overseas archaeologists and Vanuatu Cultural Center fieldworkers have made a landmark discovery to contribute to Vanuatu¹s early history.

The team found a broken piece of fishhook probably made from Trocus shell, the first pre-European fishhook to be found in Vanuatu.

People used this fishhook about 2,000 years ago. Similar fishhooks found in places such as New Caledonia and Papua New Guinea are associated with the Lapita people, who came into the Pacific about 3,000 years ago.

The fishhook discovery came during a training project funded by the Sasakawa Pacific Island Nations Fund of Japan.

This was aimed at deepening Vanuatu Cultural Center fieldworkers’ knowledge on pre-history and archaeology, as well as raising awareness of local people that their islands have a long history of human occupation.

One of the other aims was to identify areas where Vanuatu's...

PAPE‘ETE, French Polynesia (Nov. 6, 2002 - Oceania Flash)---French Polynesia is launching a major census operation this week, when some 400 officers will be dispatched throughout the French territory's islands, an area equivalent to that of Europe, the daily newspaper La Dépêche de Tahiti reported Tuesday.

The last census was done six years ago, and it found French Polynesia's population to be just under 220,000.

This year's census, which is being conducted by French Polynesia's statistics and economic studies offices, is expected to last for the whole of November and the first figures to be revealed early January.

"Population census is a major act in any citizen's democratic life, because we cannot have and manage ideas about our country's future if we don't know what population it consists of," statistics office ISPF Drector Bertrand Oddo told a press conference.

He said since the last census in 1996, there have been "many changes, many migrations,...