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. Fiji is hosting its inaugural Pacific Island Development Forum meeting next week. Observers say it's an attempt to rival the Pacific Islands Forum from which Fiji has been suspended since 2009.
2. The Tuvalu opposition voted the Willy Telavi government out of the power yesterday, after weeks of political acrimony.
3. Indonesia's government says on-going violence in Papua region, known internationally as West Papua, cannot be solely pinned on the country's security forces.
4. The President of Nauru, Baron Waqa, has rejected claims by an opposition MP that the people of the island, called out during a riot at the asylum seekers' camp, were in a highly agitated state.
5. Nauru is struggling to cope with the challenge presented to the court system by the number of criminal proceedings that have followed the riot.
6. Niue is leading the charge among Pacific islands nations committed to achieving the goal of becoming smoke free by 2025 after a survey found a major drop in smoking rates.
7. The Cook Islands has overtaken Fiji as the most popular South Pacific holiday destination for New Zealanders, for the second year in a row.
8. New Zealand's University of Waikato is off to Samoa to encourage more Samoans to take up study at its Hamilton campus.
9. A new farming programme in Fiji has sugar cane workers converting to farming breadfruit and calling it a revolution.