Love Patrol breaks down barriers in the Pacific

Around the Pacific, the theatre group Won Smolbag and their TV production Love Patrol are a well-known part of the region’s cultural life. This week the 12,000 delegates at the International AIDS Conference in Melbourne were able to look some of the episodes and meet the actors and writers who bring it to the screen.…

Forum meeting starts tomorrow

More than 300 delegates including leaders, ministers and senior government officials from Forum Member countries, associate members and observers and development partners of the Forum, as well as representatives of the Council of Regional Organisations in the Pacific (CROP) and the media, are in Koror, Palau to attend the 45th Pacific Islands Forum and related…

Median training for election coverage

Media association of Solomon Islands (MASI) over the weekend kick off with its media training in preparation for the upcoming national general election. Ben McNair, a media trainer and Ms Josephine Teakeni a MASI member led out in the training. Members from all the mainstream media organisations in the country attended the training. It was…

How healthy is your relationship with food?

Count kilojoules, always eat breakfast, don’t eat carbs after 6pm. Whether it’s public health advice  or conflicting opinions in the media about nutrition, we hear a lot of messages about what and how we should eat.  But there’s one message that needs to be louder, says Gabriella Heruc, an Adelaide based Accredited Practising Dietitian –…

Samoan ‘ma’afala’ breadfruit to feed the world

The Samoan breadfruit variety ‘maafala’ will be distributed globally in an effort to help food security in vulnerable countries around the world. It is part of a partnership project that has been running for over ten years between the Samoan government and the Hawaii National Botanical Gardens where 120 varieties of breadfruit were tested over…

Working together on the next generation of infrastructure

Opinion by Shane Rosenthal, Resident Representative of the Asian Development Bank’s Timor-Leste Resident Mission Last week government officials, development partners and civil society groups will have met in Dili as part of an annual gathering to review achievements over the last year and consider priorities and plans going forward. Participants will speak about successes and…

IMF lowers 2014 global growth forecast

The International Monetary Fund has lowered its 2014 global economic growth forecast, warning of “negative surprises” from the United States and China and geopolitical risks in Ukraine and the Middle East. The IMF projected global growth of 3.4 per cent for this year, down from its April estimate of 3.7 per cent.  In 2013, the…

Condition of bigeye tuna worsening

The Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) this week released new assessments on the status of key regional tuna stocks – skipjack, yellowfin and bigeye tuna – which show that skipjack and yellowfin remain in a reasonably healthy state, but bigeye, the mainstay of the tropical longline fishery, has now been reduced to less than…