Submitted by PIR Editor on Wed, 01/04/2017 - 11:14
Future joint exercises between Australia and Indonesia are in doubt after an Indonesian officer complained after seeing posters about West Papau at an Australian Special Forces base in Perth.
Submitted by PIR Editor on Wed, 02/01/2017 - 09:10
U.S. veterans who were involved in clean-up operations at Enewetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands experience much higher levels of cancer and other illnesses presumably related to their exposure to radioactive materials. So far the Department of Defense has refused to accept any link between their work and their health problems and has refused to pay for their healthcare.
Submitted by PIR Editor on Mon, 02/13/2017 - 12:17
About 700 foreign fisherman operating on vessels based in Hawaii harbors are not officially allowed into the U.S. The state has been granting them local fishing licenses in appararent violation of state laws. The employees vague legal status makes them vulnerable to exploitation.
Submitted by PIR Editor on Thu, 02/16/2017 - 10:53
16 members of the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have submitted their resignations ahead of the expiry of their term indicating uncertainty about whether President Trump would respect their advise if it did not conform to his predetermined beliefs.
Submitted by PIR Editor on Sun, 02/19/2017 - 09:58
New York Times "video journalist Megan Specia explains how she connected with and captured the harrowing ordeal of a Kurdish dissident from Iran who has been held for three years in an Australian-funded refugee camp on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island."
Submitted by PIR Editor on Wed, 02/22/2017 - 14:01
Dr. Craig Santos Perez, a native Chamorro from Guam who is an associate professor in the English department at University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, has become the first native Pacific Islander to win the Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship for Poetry.
Submitted by PIR Editor on Mon, 02/27/2017 - 13:39
"Pacific Island governments, nonprofits and a new group of entrepreneurs are trying to solve those problems. They are working to modernize kava cultivation in the hope that the drink’s budding popularity in the United States and Europe can be sustained."
Submitted by PIR Editor on Tue, 02/28/2017 - 14:34
NOAA's 2017 American Samoa expedition is revealing amazing images of sea creatures including a jellyfish that looks like a UFO and a venus flytrap like anemone.
Submitted by PIR Editor on Mon, 03/13/2017 - 13:50
Australian National University doctoral student Michael Main has conducted years of research in the highlands of Papua New Guinea surrounding the huge ExxonMobile natural gas development project. This commentary links the frustration at the failure of the national government to deliver on promises made in benefit sharing agreements to increasing unrest the government is struggling to contain.
Submitted by PIR Editor on Tue, 03/14/2017 - 09:48
Two villages in South Sorong, West Papua province have become the first in Papua to be granted hutan desa (village forest) permits. The permits grant the villagers customary ownership rights to their land and allow the villages to manage the land to improve their own welfare. 'Greenpeace Indonesia heralded the acknowledgment as a landmark decision.'
