Pacific Beat

An Australian youth worker has repeated a call for an urgent trans Tasman summit on the subject of gangs.

The CNMI looks likely to open its first tourism office in Russia, possibly by the end of the year.

The head of Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Peter Varghese, says Australia will continue to encourage the return to a democratic government in Fiji.

Corals off the island of Ofu in the National Park of American Samoa have the ability to grow in water that's warm enough to kill other species of coral.

Australian Scientists have discovered that malaria parasites communicate with each other in the human blood stream.

China is reportedly planning a major summit of Pacific leaders in Guangzhou in November.

Vanuatu's new Prime Minister, Moana Carcasses Kalosil, says his Government has already implemented more than half of the sixty-eight items it listed to be implemented in its first one hundred days in office.

Right now the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation is getting ready to begin a new round of research in the Pacific into the best way to eliminate bycatch of non-tuna species on Tuna Fishing boats.

In Guam the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is investigating reports of illegal dolphin poaching.

A prominent dolphin exporter from Solomon Islands says he plans to resume live-exports next month.

A group in the Northen Marianas has attacked a proposal by the US military to conduct live fire training on Pagan Island saying it will damage the ancestral land of the indigenous Chamorro and Carolinian people.

Oxfam Australia says Australian mining companies operating overseas often fail to obtain permission from the indigenous land owners before commencing projects on their land.

In Australia, New Zealand, America and across the Pacific, doctors, dentists, and military engineers are gearing up to take their skills on tour.

There'll soon be light past the end of the power lines in Samoa with a plan to provide solar lighting kits to small isolated villages.

Cronulla Sharks chairman Glen Coleman has quit the NRL club, after just two months in the job.

The winner-takes-all final of the Oceania Football Confederation's Champions League will be fought out between defending champions Auckland City and fellow New Zealand team Waitakere United in Auckland on Sunday.

For the world's cricketers, there's no richer competition than the Indian Premier League.

Fiji's main opposition political parties held a joint meeting near Suva last night which they are calling a success, despite only attracting an audience of 80.

People in Fiji who think the media supports the views of the coup installed military government should not blame the journalists.