PINA

The 12 competing teams, match officials and the global rugby family were officially welcomed to Rugby World Cup 2021 in New Zealand on Monday in a ceremony hosted at SkyCity Theatre in Auckland. Dame Cindy Kiro, Governor-General of New Zealand, officially welcomed the tournament participants to Auckland, with just five days to go until the long awaited and highly anticipated...

Oceania Rugby was joined by its 17 member unions to celebrate its third women in rugby month in September. The regional body held a month of events, themed ‘Right Here, Right Now!’ to showcase and celebrate the events and people driving female development in rugby throughout Oceania in the lead up to Rugby World Cup 2021. Oceania Rugby Right Here, Right...

The Oceania National Olympic Committees (ONOC) is hosting its second Oceania Sport Education Programme (OSEP) Micro-Qualifications Stakeholder Endorsement Meeting from 03 to 6 October in Nadi, Fiji. Experts and key Pacific sport industry stakeholders will review and endorse three OSEP micro-qualifications as part of ONOC’s accreditation process of all courses under its flagship sport education programme. The need for accreditation of...

Solomon Islands has appealed to its neighbours to give it a break, repeatedly giving reassurance that its security agreement with China was a harmless deal. The leaked draft of the agreement sets out a broad framework covering Chinese “police, armed police, military personnel and other law enforcement and armed forces” deployments to the Solomon Islands. Manasseh Sogavare, the Solomons’ prime minister,...

Bougainville’s push for independence has hit a constitutional snag with top legal advisors telling the National Government that nothing can usurp the power and authority of the Constitution. The PNG Government’s paper delivered in Australia last week further detailed based on legal advice that this could not be allowed and that it would be unconstitutional. This would disappoint the ABG and...

Defence ministers of the United States, Australia and Japan have agreed to boost military cooperation to counter Chinese influence across the Asia-Pacific. As he welcomed his counterparts to the U.S military headquarters for the Pacific region in Hawaii, Lloyd Austin, the U.S defence secretary, said: “We are deeply concerned by China's increasingly aggressive and bullying behaviour in the Taiwan Strait,...

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a US$30 million grant to boost regional connectivity of Tuvalu’s outer islands. The grant agreement was signed today at ADB’s Pacific Subregional Office in Suva by Tuvalu’s Minister of Finance Seve Paeniu and ADB’s Pacific Subregional Office Regional Director Aaron Batten. “By replacing Tuvalu’s existing passenger and cargo domestic ship with a safer, more...

Nauru Airlines is expected this month to resume air service linking Brisbane with islands in the central and north Pacific halted two-and-a-half-years ago due to Covid border closures in the region. Nauru Airlines was the successful bidder for an Australian-government programme that will subsidise the service as it re-launches. Australian Ambassador to the Marshall Islands Brek Batley said that Nauru Airlines...

Almost all the world’s governments have failed to improve their climate plans this year, breaking a promise made at last year’s climate summit in Glasgow, UK. At Cop26, all countries agreed to “revisit and strengthen” their 2030 climate plans, to close the gap between national action and the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement. 23 September was the cut-off date for...

When and if an island nation fully submerges due to rising seas, what happens to the nationalities of its citizens? This and other related questions are being considered by island nations advocating for changes to international law as climate change threatens their existence. “Climate change induced sea level rise is a defining issue for many Pacific Island states and like most...