Pacific Roundup, Palau, Marshall Is., Fiji, New Caledonia, Solomon Is., PNG

 Palau and Marshall Islands

The US is revisiting its compact of free association with Palau and Marshall Islands. The US will invest $1.6 million to investigate water quality on Enewetak Atoll for radioactivity.

Enewetak nuclear explosion.     pn524

 Nuclear testing by the US totaling more than 30 megatons of TNT took place during the cold war; in 1977–1980, a concrete dome (the Runit Dome) was built on Runit Island to deposit radioactive soil and debris. The Runit Dome is deteriorating and could be breached by a typhoon, though the sediments in the lagoon are even more radioactive than those which are contained. -- Wikipedia.

Tidbits from the Pacific

Hon. Talagi's feet. pn323

Niue news Independence? https://www.talaniue.com/  Brief National Assembly session:  smoking a taoga? Niue-NZ meeting, PM to NZ for medical treatment "It's my foot that is giving me problems; nothing wrong with my brain."

The latest Tongan news https://kanivatonga.nz/ Petitions, King in NZ

Discussions on Vanuatu-New Caledonia border
http://dailypost.vu/news/french-gov-t-ready-to-host-vanuatu/article_28397281-8348-5ccc-935b-848ec8d059c0.html

Solomon Islands election
http://www.solomonstarnews.com/index.php/news/national/item/21465-international-election-observers-arriving

Cyclones cost Cook Islands
http://www.cookislandsnews.com/national/weather/item/72226-cyclones-cost-cooks-30m-plus

Lowy Institute's The Interpreter: PNG, Taiwan, Pacific Islands Forum, Indonesia, Indian aid, Niue, Vanuatu economy  https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/pacific-links-tsai-s-island-travels-new-niue-more

The Social Progress Index: an Exciting New Tool to Assist Policy-Makers and the Public

Listen to Michael Green on TED by clicking1
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This is an exciting new statistical  tool, first published in 2014,  that can assist policy-makers, and the public that elects or appoints them, by measuring  social wellbeing between nations, and within nations, by region,  urban places and their suburbs, and by socio-economic and socio-cultural groupings. 

"Development" in Port Moreby

A company with links to a politician from Southern Highlands has issued a 21-day eviction notice to more than 3,500 

2221 Development Assoc chair with eviction notice. Pn42

residents of a proposed suburb in Port Moresby*. 

The proposed eviction at 8-Mile in Moresby North East would also affect about 300 public servants and private sector employees, 1,000 school children, two schools and five Christian churches. 

The eviction could also set back plans to develop all settlements in the National Capital District into modern suburbs with basic amenities such as water supply, sewerage and waste managements systems, roads and electricity.

8 Mile, as the name implies, is  8 miles from Port Moresby itself, and home to about 15,000 of NCD's 250,000 residents. The settlement was established on vacant government land by rural migrants from the country’s Highlands region in the late 1970s and today provides housing for squatters and the better off in housing estates. According to some estimates, NCD's population will exceed more than half a million by 2020 with half of these living in squatter settlements.  

Conditions in another closer to Port Moresby can be guessed from its name: 4-mile Rubbish, built next to a rubbish dump, a rich source of its housing material.

Life for the poor at 8 Mile is harsh in every sense of the word. Jobs are non-existent, their dwellings are rudimentary and their part of the settlement lacks basic services. They have no official supplies of water and electricity, and there is no sewerage.

While some residents have low-paying jobs in Port Moresby, most are forced to eke out an existence growing vegetables and selling what is not consumed by their families, at road-side stalls. Substance abuse, violence and petty crime are commonplace, a product of the endemic poverty that has blighted this and other Port Moresby squatter settlements for decades.

ACW

* Loosely used 'Port Moresby' refers to all land within the National Capital District.