Pacific Briefs

Chinese religious leader paroled on Guam

HAGATNA, Guam (PIR) — Controversial Chinese spiritual leader Zhang Hongbao has been released on parole after being incarcerated for more than 15 months.

The founder of the Zhonggong religious group in China, Zhang faces charges of entering Guam illegally.

Zhang, who has appealed for political asylum, is expected to remain on Guam for several more days before traveling to Washington for an immigration appeals court hearing.

The Zhonggong movement is banned in China as an “evil cult.”

Excess US military land returned to Guam

HAGATNA, Guam (PIR) — The federal government has returned almost 2,500 acres of excess military land to Guam.

In a brief ceremony, 20 different deeds to properties held by the U.S. Navy in various parts of the island were signed over to the territorial government.

After the land is surveyed, deeds will be processed by the Guam Ancestral Lands Commission, which is charged with identifying original landowners or their estates.

NZ attacks Japan over Pacific whale numbers

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (PIR) — Conservation minister Sandra Lee has strongly attacked Japan for what she called over-estimating whale numbers as justification for continued scientific whaling.

At the same time, Lee defended the rights of indigenous people to a whale quota.

She made the comments prior to the start of a regional conference this week in Apia, Samoa aimed at winning Pacific Islands nations’ support for a proposed South Pacific whale sanctuary. The sanctuary would stretch 4,400,000 square miles over a region inhabited by six whale species.

Fiji’s Rabuka, Speed form new party

SUVA, Fiji (PIR) — Former Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and Fijian Association Party leader Adi Kuini Speed have joined forces to form a new political party.

Ms. Speed said the move was initiated by a “group of people extremely concerned about the state of the country.”

“We are so concerned that we can’t just stand by and watch it sink,” she said.

Marshall atoll re-examined for radioactivity

MAJURO, Marshall Islands (PIR) — The safety of Ailuk Atoll – dusted with fallout from U.S. hydrogen bomb tests in the 1950s – is being reevaluated by independent scientists.

Ailuk, home to about 400 people, is classified by the U.S. as “not exposed to nuclear test fallout.”

However, a U.S. Department of Energy study shows that the atoll was exposed to levels of radioactivity significantly above internationally recognized exposure limits.

The current environmental radiological survey of Ailuk is being funded by the Nuclear Claims Tribunal, an agency established to compensate islanders for exposure to 67 nuclear tests in the Marshalls.