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. Managers of the Nauru detention camps have been admonished for not answering key questions during an Australian Senate inquiry into sexual abuse, violence and neglect at the facility.
2. The Tongan government is facing increasing pressure to stop the ratification of a major UN convention on womens rights.
3. The official bill for rebuilding Vanuatu after March's devastating Cyclone Pam has been put at more than 400 million US dollars.
4. New Zealand's Council for International Development says it is pleased to see more money for foreign aid but says this country is lagging behind most of its peers.
5. An opponent [i.e. Biman Prasad] of Fiji's controversial media decree says while it's still in place, it will be like a noose around the neck of the media industry there.
6. The caretaker Bougainville President [i.e. John Momis] says the people in the autonomous region are the ones who will suffer if the spat between Papua New Guinea and Australia is not quickly resolved.
7. The head of an organisation representing victims of nuclear testing in French Polynesia [i.e. director of Moruroa e Tatou, Roland Oldham] says a commission set up to assess the aftermath of the testing could just be a charade.
8. The director of public health in the Cook Islands [i.e. Neti Herman] says she's not sure how the World Health Organisation came to conclude that her country is the fattest in the world.