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. The leader (i.e. Anit Singh) of a Fiji political group which claims the same name as the regime-backed party says they will fight the election under a variation of the Fiji First name.
2. There are calls for a University of the South Pacific student's scholarship, which was taken away because of his association with politics, to be immediately reinstated.
3. Two more opposition MPs (i.e. Sprent Dabwido and Squire Jeremiah) have been suspended from the Nauru parliament amid claims the government is trying to avoid scrutiny.
4. Health facilities in Solomon Islands are under pressure with the diarrhoea outbreak which has claimed the lives of 16 children over the past two weeks.
5. The New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key, says he will ask his foreign ministry to revisit its position on a Chinese made plane flying in Tonga.
6. The American Samoa congressional race is heating up with four candidates officially confirming they will run for the territory's seat in the American legislature.
7. A development economist in the Cook Islands says depopulation will continue to occur there until the government starts funding infrastucture and industries in the outer islands.
8. A Solomon Islands' exhibition that puts the spotlight on colonial Australia's so-called blackbirding past has sparked renewed calls for more acknowledgement of the country's South Sea Islanders.