Pacific Islanders

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UN Chief's SOS: 'The Ocean Is Overflowing'

Speaking from Tonga, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has a stark warning about climate change

(Newser) - UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wants the bucks coming in to fight climate change to go way up in order to make sea levels go down, and he says there's no time to waste. Speaking from Tonga, Guterres called sea-level rise a "worldwide catastrophe" that's specifically endangering Pacific...

UN Chief Calls Rising Seas 'a Worldwide Catastrophe'

New reports show the situation worsening

(Newser) - Highlighting seas that are rising at an accelerating rate, especially in Pacific island nations, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has issued another climate SOS to the world. This time he said those initials stand for "save our seas." The United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization on Monday...

Harris Uses Obscenity to Motivate Young People

Vice president was talking about breaking down barriers

(Newser) - Vice President Kamala Harris apparently wanted a strong modifier to emphasize her point in answering a question at a gathering of young people on Monday. The word she settled on was a bad one. "We have to know that sometimes people will open the door for you and leave...

US to Establish Diplomatic Ties With Cook Islands and Niue

Biden moves to shore up ties in Pacific, whose leaders have issues on climate change

(Newser) - President Biden plans to establish diplomatic relations Monday with two South Pacific nations, the Cook Islands and Niue, as his administration aims to show to Pacific Island leaders that it is committed to increasing American presence in the region. The announcement comes as Biden prepares to welcome leaders to Washington...

This Nation Kept COVID Out. Now, a 'State of Disaster'

Pacific archipelago of Kiribati sees an outbreak after allowing citizen missionaries to come home

(Newser) - When the coronavirus began spreading around the world, the remote Pacific archipelago of Kiribati closed its borders, ensuring the disease didn't reach its shores for nearly two full years. Kiribati finally began reopening this month, allowing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to charter a plane to...

This US Territory Has a Big Issue: No Tests

A coronavirus outbreak could devastate American Samoa

(Newser) - Worried about the coronavirus? Imagine getting it in American Samoa, which can't test for COVID-19 and has only one hospital with space to quarantine 10 patients. Now, NBC News reports, someone living in the distant US territory appears to have symptoms. So American Samoa tried sending the samples to...

5 Pacific Islands Have Vanished

Study says climate change is to blame

(Newser) - At 94, the leader of the Paurata tribe on Nararo Island has had to abandon his village. "The sea has started to come inland, it forced us to move up to the hilltop and rebuild our village there away from the sea," he says. Nararo is one of...

US Wants to Wage War on This Island— 16 Weeks a Year

US citizens of Tinian, Pagan want Obama to reconsider military plan

(Newser) - President Obama may have to choose between keeping a tropical paradise as pristine as ever and seeing it transformed into US military training grounds. The Pentagon is toying with the idea of turning Tinian and Pagan—small US territories in the Northern Mariana Islands—into a place to stage war...

Nobody Home: Tiny Island Emptying Fast

Fewer than 1.6K left on Niue as many leave for New Zealand

(Newser) - While much of the world worries about how it will accommodate rapidly growing populations, some islands in the Pacific face the opposite dilemma: how to stop everybody from leaving. The population decline on Niue, a lush coral atoll about the size of Baltimore, has been steady and relentless. In the...

My Shrinking Island Serves as Climate Warning

Strip of livable land is all that's left for Nauru islanders: President

(Newser) - To witness the devastation of climate change in real time, Westerners need only look to the island nation of Nauru, its president writes in the New York Times . The country is smaller than Manhattan—and after phosphate mining and deforestation, there remains “only a thin strip of coastline for...

Dad: Palin Left Hawaii Because of Minorities

Too many Asians, Pacific Islanders, he says in new book

(Newser) - In a new book, Sarah Palin’s father says one reason she cut short her college career in Hawaii was because the heavy minority population made her uncomfortable—and not, as she writes in her book, because “perpetual sunshine isn’t necessarily conducive to serious academics.” Lefty sites...

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