Pacific news in brief for 3 July

RNZ News

03-07-2025

This handout photograph released by Buckingham Palace on 25 January
, 2025, shows Britain's King Charles III, posing for a photograph in the library at Balmoral, Scotland in Autumn 2024.
Photo:
MILLIE PILKINGTON / AFP
King Charles III has been made a "care-holder" of one square kilometre of the Moana Mahu marine protected area, as a gift from Niue.
Last week, ministers, indigenous leaders, businesses and investors gathered at a conference convened by the UK Government in London to discuss how to drive private money into restoring and conserving nature and natural services.
At the reception after the meeting, Niue natural resources minister Mona Ainu'u presented King Charles with Niue honey and a certificate showing he had been made a Moana Mahu "care-holder".
Niue said it is an innovative finance solution to protect oceans for future generations.
Police in Papua New Guinea have caught an assistant policeman who allegedly freed his partner and twelve others from police custody in Simbu province.
However 12 of the escapees are still on the run and pose a significant risk to the public.
The
Post-Courier
reported the auxiliary officer and the woman, facing trial for murder, were arrested on Saturday after a public tip-off.
Provincial police commander Superintendent Muzac Rubiang said the officer facilitated the breakout on 17 June by supplying spare keys to the cell block.
Superintendent Rubiang said the escapees are dangerous, with eight accused of murder and one of rape.
The assistant officer has now been charged with 13 counts of aiding prisoners to escape while his partner is charged with escaping from lawful custody.
A new study has found the Papua New Guinea Government lost 2.59 billion kina - more than US$600 million - to the illicit alcohol market.
The National
reported illicit alcohol makes up 71 percent of the PNG alcohol market.
Economic and financial consulting director Robert Southern has presented the report to the prime minister.
He said homebrew alcohol makes up a third of the whole market.
Fiji's Ministry of Finance has expressed confidence that the country will be removed from the European Union blacklist following an upcoming review.
FBC
reported Permanent Secretary for Finance Shiri Gounder saying the export incentive deduction remains the main hurdle keeping Fiji on the blacklist.
Gounder said they are having a review with the EU in the next four to six months, "and with the current circumstances and the situation as we have laid out, we are very confident that we should get out of the blacklist".
He said they will make a decision about the future of the export deduction, and whether they should modify it to suit EU requirements, at a later point.