Tagata o te Moana. 2014-03-01. 17:30-18:00.

A weekly wrap-up of news, issues and current affairs from the Pacific. The programme is broadcast nationwide every Saturday evening on Radio New Zealand National and is produced by the newsroom of Radio New Zealand International. The following rundown is supplied from the broadcaster’s news system:

1. Australia's Immigration minister is defending the time it took him to admit that a 23-year-old asylum seeker [i.e. Reza Berati] was killed inside Australia's detention centre on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island, and not outside.

2. Exactly sixty years since the United States' biggest ever nuclear test - the Bravo blast on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands - the fight is still on for the United States to come clean on the true extent of its testing programme.

3. Five members of Samoa's ruling Human Rights Protection Party, including two former cabinet ministers, are believed to be breaking away and setting up a new party.

4. A lecturer in politics at the University of Otago, Dr Iati Iati, says there is a lack of awareness among some people in the Pacific about the impact of development policies imposed by foreign donors and international agencies, such as the World Bank.

5. The National Housing Corporation in Papua New Guinea has announced it will build 40,000 new homes in Port Moresby to alleviate a massive housing shortage.

6. Organisers are gearing up for next weekend's (8 & 9 March) Pasifika Festival in Auckland, the biggest celebration of Pacific Island culture and heritage in the world.