EDITED BY KEITH JACKSON

Today is World Malaria Day
| Keith Jackson with assistance from Medscape

NOOSA – I remember all too clearly my two bouts with malaria in Papua New Guinea. The first occurred without my knowledge until later blood tests. It was 1966 and I was at my remote school at Gagl in Chimbu District, as it was then. My second, and far more serious, hospitalised me for two weeks in Kieta, Bougainville, in 1972. That one came with pneumonia and bronchitis – a powerful mix. More than 50 year have passed, and so it seems has the malaria.

KEITH JACKSON

Carteret Islands,  Bougainville. “We have to move now” -
Islanders watch as their home disappears into the sea
(The Catholic Leader)

NOOSA, QLD - Project 2025 came to public attention when it was serially savaged by the Democrats as they sought to lose the 2023 US presidential election.

The project came to life about this time in 2022 when some of the more active minds of the Republican Party came together to plan their blueprint for changing the USA if their party under Donald J Trump won the election – which he duly did.

KEITH JACKSON

Illegal logging of old growth forests is too often accompanied by dirty law cases against people trying to do the right thing (Bing AI Image Creator)

NOOSA - A criminal charge of identity theft against the heroic Act Now campaign manager Eddie Tanago has been struck out by magistrate Paul Puri Nii in the district court at Waigani.

Eddie is one of Papua New Guinea’s prominent civil society advocates, a man of courage and integrity, who has been hounded by corrupt public servants as he tries to protect PNG’s forests against criminal loggers.

EDDIE TANAGO
| Act Now!

At an ACT NOW! media conference Eddie Tanago (left) talks with Paul Barker of the PNG Institute of National Affairs

PORT MORESBY - Transparency International recently released its 2024 Corruption Perception Index revealing that Papua New Guinea is still languishing in 127th place out of 180 countries with a CPI score of 31 out of 100, the worst in the Pacific region.

At least in part, this abysmal result reflects PNG’s complete failure to tackle widespread forest crime, despite the establishment of the Independent Commission Against Corruption and repeated promises from the government.

KEITH JACKSON

Image by Reporters Without Borders (RCF)

NOOSA - In 2024, Act Now, one of Papua New Guinea’s few community-based advocacy organisations, was subjected to no less than three pernicious SLAPP lawsuits instigated by a Malaysian logging company.

SLAPPs (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation) are used by politicians, public officials, big companies and wealthy individuals to intimidate and harass journalists, campaigners and human rights defenders.

KEITH JACKSON
| Generated with AI assistance from Claude

NBC's Steven Mase (right) interviews Eddie Tanago (Act Now)

NOOSA - Eddie Tanago, the prominent campaign manager of the Act Now public advocacy organisation, has been charged by Papua New Guinea police under the Cybercrime Code Act.

It is alleged that Tanago published defamatory remarks on social media in an article about the managing director of the PNG Forest Authority (PNGFA).

PAUL OATES

A Papua New Guinean artisanal miner (Human Rights Watch)

CLEVELAND - The old expression is ‘follow the money trail’, but trying to find out where criminals are operating has just become harder.

I look at the escalating price of gold and wonder where the lucrative markets are.

GOVERNOR ALLAN BIRD
| Academia Nomad

Boram General Hospital

WEWAK - First of all, let me acknowledge that the National Capital District, Gulf and Central Provinces need level 5 hospitals and they should get them.

This will take pressure off Port Moresby General, which is full of patients mostly from Central and Gulf provinces.

KEVIN SWEENEY
| Refugees Off PNG Working Group

FOOTSCRAY, VIC - The Australian Government needs to immediately reinstate basic support for refugees and asylum seekers that it sent to Papua New Guinea.

If it is not able to do this, it should bring them to Australia as a matter of urgency so they receive basic support and adequate medical care while awaiting resettlement.

EDDIE TANAGO
| Act Now!

PORT MORESBY - Prime Minister James Marape spoke of the importance of preserving Papua New Guinea’s tropical rainforest in his address to the United Nations General Assembly last Friday

Yet  his government is doing nothing to stop widespread illegal logging, in particular the abuse of agricultural clearing licences.

Marape has described PNG’s rainforests as vital to PNG and to the global community.

PAUL OATES

Maslow's hierarchy of needs (CNN)

CLEVELAND - A few years ago, I read a report of some well-meaning people who tried to motivate youthful Papua New Guinean criminals, locally referred to as ‘raskols’, to change their ways and become more law-abiding.

The audience’s general response was, perhaps predictably, ‘So what’s in it for us?’

PORT MORESBY - Community advocacy group Act Now! says a new logging operation in Milne Bay Province could be yet another example of a bogus agriculture project being used as cover for a large-scale forest grab.

The new logging operation began on Sideia Island earlier this year as part of the Loani Bwanabwana Integrated Agro-Forestry Project.

CAMERON HILL
| Bougainville Copper Limited

Sir Mel Togolo and Andrew Cooper sign the remediation agreement
(PNG Post-Courier)

BUKA - The Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG), Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) and Rio Tinto have signed a memorandum of understanding to address concerns around future risks of ageing infrastructure in the former Panguna mine area.

The agreement is a response to several ageing structures requiring prompt attention identified by an independent legacy impact assessment.

MARK PALM
| Samaritan Aviation Newsletter

WEWAK - One of Samaritan Aviation’s amazing stories is about the first patient we ever flew in 2010.

Her name was Antonia and she had been in labour for three days. She was unconscious when we got the call on Good Friday from the Timbunki Health Centre, located along the Sepik River.

I remember putting the stretcher in the airplane and taking off into the rain and clouds for the 35-minute flight.

NEWS DESK
| Bougainville News

          Bougainvilleans want compensation for environmental damage caused by the Panguna mine (Radio New Zealand)

BUKA - A class action involving thousands of people is being brought against Rio Tinto and Bougainville Copper Ltd over the environmental and social destruction wrought by the Panguna mine in the autonomous region of Bougainville.

The action is headed by Martin Miriori, the brother of Bougainville’s first president, Joseph Kabui, and former secretary of the separatist Bougainville Interim Government during the civil war.

MEDIA RELEASE
| Act Now

PORT MORESBY - The Malaysian owned Giant Kingdom group of companies, which is logging Papua New Guinea’s besieged tropical forests, has failed in an unprecedented bid to silence public comment on the money laundering risks associated with its chequered activities.

At a time when international standard-setting bodies are calling on civil society to help combat the money laundering risks associated with illegal logging, the Giant Kingdom group has engaged in lawfare to stop civic voices in PNG from documenting these risks.

MEDIA STATEMENT

New CEO of Bougainville Copper, David Osikore, has worked for more than 30 years in the PNG and Australian mining industries 

BUKA - Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) has announced the appointments of David Osikore as managing director and chief executive officer and Johnny Patterson Auna as chief financial officer and company secretary.

The appointments follow significant progress made by BCL over the past five months as it prepares to transition from a caretaker mode to a more operational exploration phase.

Photo-illustration by Bing.com

NEWS DESK
| Act Now

PORT MORESBY - The unlawful use of forest clearing authorities as a cover for illegal large-scale logging by foreign-owned companies in PNG has been further exposed in a new report from by Act Now!

The report focuses on the Mengen agriculture project in East New Britain Province and reveals how Malaysian logging company, KK Connections, committed to establish forest plantation and agriculture projects if it was given a forest clearing authority (FCA).

GEORGE D LUNDBERG
| Medscape
| Additional notes by Keith Jackson

LOS GATOS, CALIFORNIA - Death is not the enemy. Human death is normal; we all die. The real enemies are premature death, disability, pain, human suffering, and the prolongation of dying. All the rest is mostly noise.

At its core, the likelihood of an American experiencing premature death is all about availability and ease of access to beneficial and harmful products and services, determined by geography, driven by economics; diverse and often inequitable but with logical, even predictable, outcomes.

SHEILA EBERT

Nuclear waste water from Japan is destroying the environment of the Pacific Islands, including the fisheries resources of the world’s largest tuna producer. Not only that, but the price Japan pays for Taiwanese and South Korean tuna is twice the price of Pacific Islands tuna, acknowledged as the highest quality tuna in the world.

In July, for example, Papua New Guinea exported tuna to Japan at below average market prices, both breaching the Nauru Agreement and leading to harmful competition between Pacific Islands countries.

AINDIL MINKON *

Writer and traveller Karlina See Kee on Home Island in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Read more about Island Girl Discovery here 

HOME ISLAND - Last year we created one of the largest marine sanctuary areas in the world – the globally significant Christmas and Cocos (Keeling) Islands marine parks.

With your support we protected an area bigger than Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT combined.

NEWS DESK
| PNG Business New

An informal street dump in Boroko. The once garden suburb must be cleaned up says prime minister Marape   (Image by Malum Nalu)

PORT MORESBY - James Marape has expressed confidence that the Papua New Guinea economy is on the brink of an unprecedented surge, fuelled by the advancement of major resource projects.

The prime minister emphasised that this remarkable economic expansion will inevitably foster the growth of the micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME) sector.

CODY SHEEHY

For decades this ‘nuclear coffin’ containing radioactive debris has sat on an uninhabited island in Marshall Islands. The Japanese are said to have convinced a UN agency to dispose of nuclear wastewater directly into the ocean (Image - ABC News Australia)

MAJURO, MARSHALL ISLANDS – Here in Marshall Islands we are very concerned at the news about Japan's nuclear wastewater being disposed of in the Pacific Ocean

The Korean media is going viral alleging that Japan manipulated an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on the safety and security of nuclear wastewater which is soon to be released.

PORT MORESBY – The independent community watchdog ACT NOW has launched a new website to increase transparency and promote community participation in monitoring public spending.

For the first time, communities across PNG can observe the use of ‘slush funds’ by local members of parliament.

MARK PALM *
| CEO & Co-Founder |Samaritan Aviation

Semi-conscious snakebite victim, Junior, safely on the way to Wewak Hospital aboard one of Samaritan Aviation's float planes. The aircraft provide an aerial ambulance service that has brought a new dimension to PNG health services

CALIFORNIA - Our floatplanes can turn a three-day trip to the hospital into a one hour flight. On a recent trip to Papua New Guinea, Jim Mott and I experienced a flight just like this.

We were on our way to deliver medicine to a remote village, when an urgent message came: 'Snake Bite - Chambri Lakes - 10 year old'.

A hostile crowd gathers in Kaugere, Port Moresby, after a young man was fatally knifed. The mob later torched several houses owned by Engan residents (Photo: Courtesy Hon Justin Tkatchenko's Facebook)

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA –Papua New Guinea has underestimated its population by nearly half, research by United Nations and British experts have found.

Previous estimates, based on the last census 12 years ago, had put the population at about nine million.

The properties before they were destroyed. Daniel Kumbon feels the pain of personal loss after writing about tribal warfare for years 

DANIEL KUMBON

PORT MORESBY – For nearly 40 years, I have been reporting about the consequences of tribal warfare which every year continues to claim hundreds of lives and destruction to property in Enga.

I never thought the threat of tribal warfare would reach me and my Aimbarep tribe. But right now, as I write, this evil scourge is knocking on my door.

I am desperately trying to repel it from here in Port Moresby, where I am seeking medical treatment.

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - I have spent many decades studying the wise, wonderful, astonishing, strange and all too often terrible and cruel behaviours of human beings as, collectively, we have created what we call history.

One thing is obvious. History does not follow a predictable and linear trajectory by which we collectively reach progressively higher levels of economic success and enlightened civilisation.

In fact, a feature of history is how good we are at engineering the collapse of elaborate, successful and productive civilisations.

MEDIA RELEASES
| Act Now PNG | Edited Extracts

PORT MORESBY - More than 30 large-scale logging projects in Papua New Guinea appear to be operating in defiance of a court ban issued by the deputy chief justice in June 2021.

Together the logging operations accounted for 40% of PNG’s total log exports in the 12 months to June 2022.

Anthony Walep is a lawyer assisting the Alliance of Solwara Warriors and the Centre for Environmental Law and Human Rights (CELCOR)

PAUL OEKA
| PNG Business News

MADANG - The Alliance of Solwara Warriors, a coalition of coastal communities, has appealed to the Papua New Guinea government to cancel seabed mining and exploration licenses in the country.

The Alliance also called for the termination of Nautilus Minerals’ mining license, which is still active even though the company went bankrupt in 2019.

Centre, Jerry Ubase (Secretary, Community Development & Religion Department); right, Wesley Serber (Aramba Development Foundation); with  members of organisations working to prevent family and gender violence   (Lydia Kaia,  UNDP PNG)

NEWSLETTER
| United Nations Development Program PNG

PORT MORESBY - Wesley Serber is a man on a mission, determined to end the cruelty and abuse caused by sorcery accusation-related violence (SARV) in the remote communities of the South Fly region of Papua New Guinea.

A large number of sorcery accusation-related violence cases use glasman or glasmeri (akin to witchdoctors) to falsely and maliciously accuse men and women of sorcery for financial gain.

PRISILLA MANOVE
| Prisilla’s Notes

GOROKA - In the remote and rugged highlands of Papua New Guinea, traditional Indigenous communities have practiced sustainable farming techniques for centuries.

Kuk in Western Highlands Province is one of the first places on earth where people started farming.

BRENDAN CRABB & MIKE TOOLE

 "The nurses would spend hours sitting with their dying patients holding their hands
ensuring they weren’t alone in their final minutes of life" - Emma Reardon

MELBOURNE - The arrival just over a year ago of the new and different-looking Omicron variant of Covid-19 brought much hope that this would usher in the end of the pandemic.

That hope was based on two assumptions: that Omicron led to milder disease than earlier variants, and that its extraordinary capacity to spread fast would mean that the wider population would rapidly be exposed to this ‘milder’ virus and further boost the immunity that 95% of Australian adults already had through two doses of the vaccine.

HOGANDE KIAFULI

LAE - The Jimi District in Jiwaka Province is one of the most remote areas in Papua New Guinea.

I have travelled to Middle and Upper Jimi on my way to Kompiam and experienced firsthand the struggles of access that the people of Jimi have when it comes to accessing primary medical services.

Jimi district represents the many rural and remote (some very isolated) places in PNG where accessing primary medical care is limited by poor road access.

STEPHEN CHARTERIS

“Audacious women leaders from across the Oceanic Pacific have simply had enough [and] a re-imagined positioning of women in the Oceanic space. When this happens, women can begin to confidently resist being ‘confined physically and psychologically’ by demanding supportive, equitable and decolonised relationships” - ‘Ofakilevuka Guttenbeil-Likiliki, Enough is enough: audaciously decolonising the development and humanitarian nexus, Mitchell Oration 2022

CAIRNS – ‘Ofakilevaku (‘Ofa) Guttenbeil-Likiliki is Director of the Women & Children Crisis Centre in Tonga and a filmmaker and women’s rights activist.

In a recent speech she addressed a serious and not uncommon issue: the high-handed attitudes of those who believe they know better than people with lived experience.

MICHAEL DOM

LAE – Census data in Papua New Guinea have always been considered less a reflection of ground truth and more a best approximation based on available reported figures from household interviews.

(Rule of Thumb: Always have the salt handy.)

Rather than arguing theoretical knowledge, I'll make an educated guestimate of what's likely in terms of rural population growth rates.

KANNI WIGNARAJA & DIRK WAGENER
| United Nations Development Programme

PORT MORESBY - Papua New Guinea’s natural beauty is undeniable. Home to lush tropical rainforests, magnificent mountains and pristine islands and seas, PNG is one of the world’s 17 megadiverse countries, accounting for about five percent of global biodiversity.

A little-known fact is that the country’s rainforest is the third largest in the world.

PNG also lies at the heart of the Coral Triangle – a region that is home to 76% of all known coral species.

BOMAI DOO *

PORT MORESBY – I remember that morning well. It was around eight and the streets of Four Mile were filled with people, some going to work, some coming from work, plenty looking for work.

Many of the multitude were street sellers trying to make a few bucks from the crowd, or from each other.

Our bus stopped in front of Mondo clothing with the crew shrieking ‘hurry up, hurry up, this is police stop, you want us to get caught?’

The 17 million population estimate rang alarm bells in Canberra and was considered so sensitive the PNG government initially refused permission for it to be published

Koki, a suburb of Port Moresby best known for its market and other commercial activities

BEN PACKHAM & TICKY FULLERTON
| The Australian

CANBERRA - A new United Nations study has found Papua New Guinea could have a population of 17 million – almost double the official estimate.

The new population forecast would, if accurate, would slash measures of PNG’s living standards and ramp up concerns over its fragility as a nation state.

“I'm afraid to live in this country. Police officers and army men think they're above the law and that they can get away with so many things. Corruption runs rampant in these streets” - Kaliop Ingirin Tomai

Port Moresby is considered to be one of the world's least livable cities

BOMAI DOO *

PORT MORESBY – I am still on probation in my job and the pay is really not enough to live on. I spend half of it on bus fares to get to and from work.

But who am I to complain or quit my job when so many accounting graduates from the universities are roaming the streets doing nothing.

LEONARD FONG ROKA

PANGUNA - Sometime in 2017 or 2018 I wrote an article for the PNG Post-Courier office at Arawa warning people that the Panguna mine pit could turn into a lake.

Twenty years of earth being chipped away by small scale alluvial gold operations had brought the Kabarong river perilously close to breaching the pit wall.

Now, in 2022, it is happening.

“Deep sea mining is not wanted! The PNG government should be following in the footsteps of other Pacific states like Fiji, Samoa, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia calling for a pause, moratorium or complete ban”

Alliance of Solwara members are leading the push against deep sea mining (Jonathan Mesulam)

REILLY KANAMON

PORT MORESBY - Community leaders from atolls and coastal communities in the Bismarck Archipelago and Solomon Sea region are calling for a ban on seabed mining and the cancellation of all seabed mining licenses in their Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

There are hundreds of communities in New Ireland, East New Britain, Manus, Madang, Bougainville, and Milne Bay provinces whose EEZ holds the fishery and tuna stock for Papua New Guinea.

We have created a civilisation capable of destroying the environment on a global scale and that is exactly what is happening.  The warning bells from history are ringing loudly but our leaders and too many of the rest of us are not listening

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE – The proposal by Newcrest Mining and Harmony Gold to dump plans to dump hundreds of millions of tonnes of mining waste into Huon Gulf shows why the people of Planet Earth are collectively doomed to disaster.

There is no chance this side of hell that international capitalism will stop despoiling the planet as long as there is money to be made.

“The legacy we want to leave our children is simple. We want them to be able to live in an environment that is clean, healthy and safe. We do not want an ocean full of toxic waste” - Reverend Yasam Aiwara

NEWS DESK
| Say No to Wafi-Golpu

LAE - A coalition of Papua New Guinean and Australian civil society organisations has launched an international campaign to stop plans to dump hundreds of millions of tonnes of mining waste into Huon Gulf.

The Say No to Wafi-Golpu DSTP group is fighting to protect the ocean, marine ecosystems and coastal communities of Huon Gulf from becoming a dumping ground for the Wafi-Golpu copper and gold mine, one of the largest in the world, operated by Newcrest Mining and Harmony Gold.

New Britain island is under threat from rapid forest loss due to agricultural conversion with over 450,000 hectares under permits for forest clearance

West New Britain dancers welcome delegates to the official launch of the sustainable development project (Clive Hawigen,  UNDP )

NEWS DESK
| United Nations Development Program

PORT MORESBY - A project has been launched in West New Britain to promote sustainable land-use.

New Britain island’s ecosystems range from dense lowland plains to a central mountainous spine with peaks of over 2,000 meters.

"Even in the hell of life, God reminds us of the beautiful gift of children. I reached out my hand as tears rolled down my eyes. Their gentle hands were rich in kindness, gratitude and smiles. I could not speak"

West Papuan refugees at Hohola with visitors from Caritas and the Catholic Bishops Conference who have supported them in Port Moresby and PNG’s border provinces (Reilly Kanamon)

REILLY KANAMON

PORT MORESBY – The plea from the West Papuan refugees in Port Moresby was resounding.

“All we long for now is a piece of land we can own. A piece of land that is all we need to rebuild ourselves, that is home to us.”

The kwila trees are considered to be ancestors and are never cut down. The Tivia clan only use the wood when the trees fall naturally. "Our belief is that when the masalai touch that sap, humans come out from that. It is the creation of our clan”

JO CHANDLER
| The Guardian | @jo_m_chandler

MADANG - In mid-May, a bulldozer began clearing a logging road into an area of largely untouched rainforest near the village of Suburam, on Papua New Guinea’s north coast, between the mountains of the Adelbert Range and the Bismarck Sea.

Towering kwila trees were among those locals say were felled by loggers. This is a coveted, high-value species that yields the rich red timber familiar in Australia as merbau.

Two new vaccines may finally turn back the ancient plague of malaria. But the arrival of the vaccines also complicates the path to ending the disease

It’s beautiful but Kenya’s Wigwa River is a breeding site for mosquitoes (Photograph by Kang-Chun Cheng)

APOORVA MANDAVILLI
| New York Times

Link here to read the complete story

NEW YORK, USA - All through childhood, Miriam Abdullah was shuttled in and out of hospitals, her thin body wracked with fever and ravaged by malaria.

She was so sick so often that her constant treatments drained her parents, who also cared for her many siblings, both financially and emotionally.

 Ten years after Julia Gillard's landmark speech on misogyny, Dr Victoria Fielding examines why not much has changed and why Australia offers no template for addressing sexism in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere

In the Australian parliament in 2012, responding to opposition leader Abbott accusing her of 'sexism', prime minister  Julia Gillard delivered a powerful speech against misogyny that gained global attention

VICTORIA FIELDING

ADELAIDE - This week, misogynist Steve Price decided to spew out his sexist opinion of the Australian women’s football league (AFLW), calling it “substandard” and that “even high school boys are better to watch”.

Price and the Herald Sun newspaper, which published his filth, don’t care about the damage this ‘opinion’ does to the AFL women players, the women and men who admire them and the young girls aspiring to be equal to their male peers.