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By Shirley Joy

PORT VILA, Vanuatu (Vanuatu Daily Post, Sept. 27) - The Santo marine biodiversity survey currently being undertaken by a team of some of the world’s top scientists has so far revealed that [the island of Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu] could have more than 500 different species of crabs.

Dr. Tan Heok Hui and Mr. J. C. Mendoza from the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research, National University in Singapore said while these are not new species to the country and the island of Santo, they are still discovering more species from their daily collections and experiments.

In a report provided by Hui, land crabs are always interesting; they are obvious, often quite large and sometimes edible.

Until the 1990s, one of the least understood land crab was a species everyone was calling Cardisoma longipes. Supposedly described from New Caledonia, scientists never found the species there. It had been seen in some other small Pacific islands but never common...

Editorial

The National

PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea (Sept. 28) – Once again the indestructible Noah Musingku and his U-Vistract movement have made the headlines.

The Bougainville Administrator was "granted permission" to enter previously barred territory supposedly under the control of Musingku and his ragged bunch of oddly assorted guards and hangers-on.

[PIR editor’s note: Noah Musingku, whose "U-Vistract" pyramid scheme bilked millions of dollars out of investors, has long been a fugitive from the law in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.]

Suddenly we find Musingku and his supporters treated with kid gloves. The distinct impression is given that the official Bougainvillean party is in the area on sufferance, and that the failed U-Vistract promoter is a power to be reckoned with. The Bougainville Administrator is photographed with the fraudster...