PACIFIC BRIEFS

Post-coup Fiji faces economic woes

SUVA, Fiji (PIR) — A just-released United Nations survey states that Fiji is facing a severe economic crisis. Following last May’s coup, growth plunged to minus 12.5 percent by December, its deepest contraction ever.

The UN’s 2001 Economic and Social Survey of Asia and Pacific states that the decline followed strong economic output growth of 6.6 percent in 1999.

The report also says that while sugar output, traditionally the backbone of Fiji’s economy, remains high, the future of the industry is clouded by land tenure problems, lower investment in cultivation and “uncertainties of continued market support from the European Union.”

Tourism earnings, which normally contribute 20 percent of the gross domestic product, dropped in half.

WWII US airmen killed on Bougainville go home

PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea (PIR) — A group of soldiers will return to Hawai’i from Bougainville this week carrying the remains of eight U.S. aviators killed in a plane crash near Alotau during World War II.

The airmen were on a bombing mission when bad weather caused their B-17 Flying Fortress bomber to crash on a Bougainville ridge during November 1943.

The recovery team, from the Central Identification Laboratory in Honolulu, was led by Captain Howard Coe.

He said the remains, mostly bones, will be DNA tested and the families of the fallen airmen notified following positive identification.

30 people saved in Fiji waters

SUVA, Fiji (PIR) — Thirty people, including nine children, were plucked from Fiji waters Monday thanks to a mobile phone. Their boat had became stranded on a reef and capsized.

The boat was bringing the passengers back to the mainland from a funeral at nearby Ovalau Island when the accident occurred.

They used the mobile phone to notify officials on the main island of Viti Levu and two boats were sent to pick them up.

Among the passengers who survived the ordeal were a two-month-old baby and a 58-year-old woman.

Jury convicts former A. Samoa manager

PAGO PAGO, American Samoa (PIR) — A jury in Washington, D.C. has found the former manager of the territory’s public service credit union, Bernard Gurr, guilty of more than thirty charges of fraud and embezzlement.

He had been on trial for three weeks and is now being held in custody awaiting sentencing.

During the trial, national credit union examiner Peter Steiger testified that on the day the federal regulators moved in on the American Samoa Government Employee’s Credit Union, Gurr emptied a drawer full of cash and checks totaling more than $35,000 into his briefcase.

Pacific encyclopedia published

MELBOURNE, Australia (PIR) — Scholars have completed work on a 664-page encyclopedia of the Pacific Islands.

Funded by Australian aid money, the encyclopedia was produced at the Australian National University and printed by the University of Hawaii Press.

The project was five years in the making, using the works of 200 experts and academics.

The encyclopedia covers the environment, history, politics, economy, culture and other aspects of the Pacific Islands.