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There is speculation in New Caledonia that the final meeting of the signatories to the Noumea Accord will go ahead in Paris in three weeks. No date has been officially confirmed but New Caledonia's caretaker president Philippe Germain mentioned in New York last week that the meeting would be held on 2 November.

Papua New Guinea currently has 30 million hectares of untouched pristine rainforest cover in the country. This does not include an additional six million hectares currently subjected to human activities. Minister for Forests, Douglas Tomuriesa announced the figures for the country’s forest inventory at the launch of the country’s National REDD+ Strategy (NRS) 2017-2027.

Did you know that, if you live in the Northern Mariana Islands but used to live in a state in the U.S. mainland, you have a right to vote for President by absentee ballot? It now appears that the administration of U.S. President Donald J. Trump is planning to strip previous state residents of this ability—which Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP) opposes, saying every citizen has a right to vote. According to the Uniformed Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, or UOCAVA, U.S. citizens that were previously residents of a state and are currently residing in the CNMI are allowed to cast an absentee vote.

Becky Last, International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) Tourism Operation Officer (Pacific), explains that, IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, has been working with the Vanuatu Tourism Office (VTO) as part of the signed MOU partnership agreement for the last four years to grow the tourist market from China, with the goal of diversifying Vanuatu’s source markets into one of the world’s fastest-growing outbound tourism and travel market. A workshop in Port Vila was recently held in partnership with the Pacific Trade and Invest (PT& I) and the VTO on attracting Chinese tourists including lessons learned in developing this emerging market.