PINA

Florencina Kalifa made history when she scored Kiwi FC’s first goal of the inaugural OFC Women’s Champions League tournament in Port Moresby on Monday. The 13-year-old striker is the youngest player competing at the tournament. She took the ball she scored everywhere following the match, including to bed last night, and her story illustrates the ‘Power of Football.’ Growing up in...

The suspended former ruling FijiFirst Party has been given a strict deadline of 15 June to submit its audited financial accounts. Failure to comply with this requirement may result in the party’s deregistration, unless the Fijian Elections Office receives a compelling explanation justifying their continued registration. Acting Supervisor of Elections Ana Mataiciwa has emphasised the potential consequences for members of the...

The Forum Secretary General Henry Puna has welcomed the formal opening in Port Vila today of the permanent offices housing the Pacific Fusion Centre. The Centre is an outcome of regional security priorities identified by Forum Leaders in the Boe Declaration on Regional Security and operates under a Charter endorsed by the Pacific Islands Forum Officials Committee, or FOC. This...

Indonesian President Joko Widodo will be making a state visit to Papua New Guinea next month, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister James Marape has announced. Confirmation of the one-day visit on 06 July 2023, was made during a meeting between Prime Minister Marape and Indonesian Ambassador to PNG, Andriana Supandi, in Port Moresby last Friday. President Widodo’s State Visit to PNG...

Once a great invention for the service of humanity, plastics have become an enemy of civilisation. That’s an observation of Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka to mark World Environment Day on Monday 05 June 2023. In a one-page advertisement in the Fiji Times newspaper, titled, “A Ticking Time Bomb”, the Fijian leader called on all Fijians to take up the fight...

Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has arrived in New Zealand for a visit, including a number of scheduled formal engagements. Rabuka will spend time in Auckland and Wellington, meeting with Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta and Climate Change Minister James Shaw. “Prime Minister Rabuka officially visited New Zealand in 1998, over 25 years ago, and we look...

World Vision New Zealand is highlighting the urgent need for more innovative grassroots initiatives to help communities in the Pacific mitigate and adapt to climate change. On World Environment Day (05 June), the international aid organisation says it’s the right time to reflect on what more needs to be done to ensure communities in the Pacific can thrive in the...

Former staff have lashed the U.S Department of the Interior for failing to predict that a 2017 decision to lift oversight from a US$59million trust fund for Pacific Islanders displaced by American nuclear testing would lead to the fund’s exhaustion through mismanagement and alleged fraud. Tom Bussanich, who in 2017 was a senior official in the department’s Office of Insular...

350.org Pacific Climate Warriors has encouraged more Pacific governments to back the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty ahead of the Bonn Climate Change Conference next week. At COP27 in Egypt, Tuvalu and Vanuatu became the first state parties to endorse the Fossil Fuel Non Proliferation Treaty, a global initiative to accelerate an equitable shift away from coal, oil and gas, and...

New Caledonia's pro-independence parties are prepared to negotiate changes to the provincial electoral rolls, according to the French interior minister Gerald Darmanin. On his second visit to Noumea in less than four months, the minister announced the apparent change in the stance of the pro-independence FLNKS movement, which until now has ruled out any willingness to open the roll. As yet,...