RABAUL, Papua New Guinea—A strong earthquake measuring 6.8 on the open-ended Richter scale has rocked the New Britain region.<\/p>\n
There were no immediate reports of casualties.<\/p>\n
The epicenter of the earthquake was placed 252 miles west-southwest of the city of Rabaul.<\/p>\n
Solomons charges public servants<\/p>\n
HONIARA, Solomon Islands—The Solomon Islands High Court is schedule to hear allegations that four former senior public servants, including a former government budget director and his deputy, stole millions of dollars in 1995.<\/p>\n
The Central Magistrates Court in Honiara carried out an inquiry into the allegations and sent the four to the High Court. No date has yet been set for the hearing.<\/p>\n
Key Cabinet members ousted<\/p>\n
MAJURO, Marshall Islands—Two senior cabinet members, Finance Minister Tony deBrum and Foreign Minister Phillip Muller, lost their parliamentary seats in Monday’s general election.<\/p>\n
Both ministers, who have served as legislators for 16 years, were the subjects of an anti-corruption campaign by the opposition United Democratic Party.<\/p>\n
Muller currently is the Marshalls chief negotiator in talks with the U.S. on extending long-term economic aid and military security provisions of the two nation’s Compact of Free Association.<\/p>\n
Vote counting is continuing on neighbor islands, with analysts saying the government majority in Parliament may now go to the opposition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RABAUL, Papua New Guinea—A strong earthquake measuring 6.8 on the open-ended Richter scale has rocked the New Britain region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48872\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}