Islands

From the

Press

icronesian News Service ore than 2000 people from the Mortlock Islands in the Truk ter islands packed the Truk High School gymnasium on Sunday igust 19 to welcome the first president of the Federated States Micronesia, Tosiwo Nakayama . . . Misauo Petrus, Truk vernor’s representative to the Mortlocks, acted as master of remonies ... He presented three gifts to the president... a pair devil masks, a pair of lovesticks, and a turtle. The devil mask presents protection. It will protect the FSM from outside gression. ‘Our people are peaceful, and we want peace,’ Petrus ;d. The lovisticks represent love and affection. In the past, resticks were used between men and women for their love airs. The man used the stick to get a woman from her use ... ‘We want the FSM to remember the people of the Drtlocks,’ explained the Mortlockese spokesman. ‘The turtle gift nds for the courage and strength we have in leading the derated States of Micronesia,’ he said.

?ws Drum, Solomon Islands (reader’s letter)

m often sad to see letters in the Drum from people who think it anything ‘foreign’ must be no good. But now I see something eign that I too think is no good, an idea that I hope will not come popular in the Solomons. That is the idea (in the Drum May 18) that babies should be breast-fed for only a month, link your custom of feeding them for about a year is much tter. abanga, New Hebrides e fete run by the parish of Port-Vila at the scout grounds on igust 5 was a great success. From 9 am a large crowd gathered d proceedings were wound up at 6 pm with Tahitian dances d the drawing of the lottery ... icronesian News Service e people of Palau will be paid for giving birth to live children the Palau Hospital if a Palau legislature bi 11... becomes v ... Legislator Polycarp Basilius, author of the bill, says; ‘The ople are the roots, the source of energy and power from which ; nation will grow.’ Legislator Basilius says any children born e to parents both of whom are Palauans, or one of whom is *alauan citizen, shall receive $lOO provided that the child is m at the Palau Hospital. jview of the Local Press, French Polynesia wording to Les Nouvelles of July 25 Polynesia, which annually nsumes 300 000 tonnes of hydrocarbons, must cut back nsumption to 285 000 tonnes. Economies must be affected at ce, a ‘war on waste’ is an absolute necessity, and an increase the price of petrol is to be expected.

>nga Chronicle

ie brigantine, Eye of the Wind, which is retracing the 0-year-old path of Sir Francis Drake, was forced by adverse ;ather not to call at Tonga recently and continued on to ji. . . The brigantine’s two-year circumnavigation following •ake’s path is called ‘Operation Drake’. The operation is in nine ases, and 24 ‘young explorers,’ as they are called, participate each leg of the journey under the watchful eye of an

perienced crew.

*ws Drum, Solomon Islands ie Western Province Assembly has now agreed to accept a sum $9OOO as a fair and reasonable compromise for the poem West ind . . The West Wind poem, published in the News Drum last

year, had resulted in the author being imprisoned for six months, and the Western Province Assembly demanding compensation damage from the Central Government.

The Fiji Times The Colonial War Memorial Hospital’s blood donors are now properly screened and tested for syphilis and hepatitis, the Red Cross director, Mrs Susan Douglas, said yesterday. Many of the blood transfusion service faults found by the health inquiry 10 months ago had now been corrected, she said. The inquiry’s report said that about 10% of the CWM’s blood supplies were positive for syphilis or hepatitis, and that the hospital’s blood bank was in a ‘critical’ shape.

Marianas Variety News & Views (article by Erwin D.

Canham)

For us in the Northern Marianas last week’s anniversary of the Enola Gay’s mission from Tinian, carrying the atom bomb to Hiroshima, was particularly vivid. Most of us have visited our neighbouring island, driven down those disused and rather ghostly runways with the tangantangan pushing up through every crack in the paving. And we have come upon the old bomb pit where the Enola Gay was loaded with its lethal cargo which marked a turning point in the history of mankind. The fact that only a simple tablet marks the bomb pit and that it is far from human habitation, and not too frequently visited, certainly not celebrated, is somehow appropriate. The American view of the use of the atomic bomb remains at best ambivalent. It is therefore fitting that the Enola Gay itself should be gathering dust, dismantled, in a Smithsonian Museum warehouse in Maryland.

Cook Islands News (letter from E. Vuki, Fijian studying at the University of the South Pacific) Society is one big machine. Every day parts of the machine fall into depletion. Every day their places are filled in by new parts fresh from the innocent springs of youth . . . For society is gutless empty of personality and human feeling. It is only a machine.

A blatant conspiracy schemed by little goblins of men after their own exuberance. I choose to create my own niche and I promise myself that whenever this monster tries to waggle its tail into my affairs, if need be, with the entirety of my being, even if I demise in the process, I will give it a good painful kick in that vulnerable spot...

The Norfolk Islander (in article reproduced from the International Herald Tribune) For the millennium celebration (of the Isle of Man in July), perhaps the greatest day in the history of this fertile little island, which lies at a point approximately equidistant from Scotland, England and Ireland, visitors have come from all over the world representatives of other parliaments (than the Isle of Man’s Tynwald), as well as descendants of Manx emigrants. Among them was Charlotte Gertrude Christian from Norfolk Island in the South Pacific, a direct descendant of Fletcher Christian, the Manx sailor who led the mutiny on the Bounty. Descendants of the mutineers live on Norfolk and Pitcairn Islands.

The Fiji Times (editorial)

An Australian shopper’s accusation that a duty free dealer propositioned her has raised something of a storm in the trade.

Far more, in fact, than other recent complaints about over-charging and sales of broken equipment. . . Such proposals probably are irritating to visitors, particular coming from ‘pot-bellied’ men smelling srongly of after-shave. But most young women travellers of this day and age are self-possessed enough to be in control of such situations, particularly when they occur on public streets and in stores.

Cook Islands News (letter from ‘Round Ball’) So New Zealand’s minister of Maori affairs wants to build bridges with rugby (CIN, May 30). . . The trouble with rugby as a bridge-building material is that in the whole wide world only New Zealanders made it their national sport... The minister had better choose some truly international sport, such as football (soccer), basketball or volleyball.