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PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea (PNG Post-Courier, Mar. 31) - The regulating of the security industry will allow police and security firms to share intelligence and infrastructure, says Internal Security Minister Bire Kimisopa.

Kimisopa said this after returning yesterday from Goroka where the Security Industry Council officially launched their operation in front of 18 participants from security firms around the country.

He said the meeting was chaired by Police Commissioner Sam Inguba.

"Once the regulation is in place it will assist the police in monitoring and also share infrastructure, so that is why we need to upgrade security industries in the country," Kimisopa said.

The minister has put the council on notice to complete the regulations by August so that it could be brought to the National Executive Council for approval and be budgeted for next year.

"The regulations will include such things as the type of weapons to be used, minimum...

NUKU’ALOFA, Tonga (Matangi Tonga, Mar. 31) - A recently published assessment of hardship and poverty in Tonga, which was carried out jointly by the Government of Tonga and the Asian Development Bank in 2003, states that 23 percent of the 16 communities surveyed in Tongatapu, Ha'apai, Vava'u, 'Eua, Niuatoputapu and Niuafo'ou, were living below the poverty line of $28.18 (US$14.72) per person per week.

The report said that living under such a condition these poor families had to make difficult daily choices between "buying food or paying school fees."

The figures were based on an analysis of the Household Income and Exenditure survey of 2001.

To have a clear understanding of the Tongan situation it was necessary for the assessors to define hardship, or Tu'utamaki and poverty, or ‘masiva.’

Poverty, or masiva, is being without or having limited access to land, food, housing, education, health services, and money.

Hardship, or ‘tu'utamaki,’ is living...

SUVA, Fiji (Fiji Times, Mar. 31) - Land security concerns have been cited as the major barrier for investment in the country, a study conducted by the Fiji Islands Trade and Investment Bureau last year found.

Bureau chief executive Lailun Khan told participants of the Fiji Indigenous Business Council meeting yesterday that lack of markets, bureaucracy and regulations, political instability and delays in receiving approvals from relevant agencies were the other reasons. The Bureau conducted the study with the assistance of the World Bank after it found that only 12 to 15 percent of $1 billion (US$598 million) worth of projects registered with them since 2000 had been implemented.

However, Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase who was also at the event said land issues and concerns being an impediment to foreign investment was only a perception.

Qarase said there were three categories of land in Fiji - native, State and freehold and the guidelines on leasing these types...

By Patrick Antoine Decloitre

PAPEETE, Tahiti (Oceania Flash, April 1) –An estimated fifty members of French Polynesia's controversial « GIP » intervention group has on Friday (Thursday Tahiti time, GMT-10) resumed a blockade of the capital Pape'ete's main wharf, saying the terms of a memorandum of understanding reached at the weekend has not been respected.

Last week, the GIP, using forklifts and other machinery, had already blocked access to the main wharf in Pape'ete.

The disgruntled group (which is only part of an overall twelve hundred staff) was contesting the appointment of Robert Maker at the helm of the GIP, to replace Léonard « Rere » Puputauki.

After protracted talks with the disgruntled men's leader, French Polynesia's newly-elected President Oscar Temaru had reached an agreement, based on a compromise: that Maker would not, after all, be appointed GIP head, but instead would simply remain Temaru's special adviser.

Puputauki was...