Vaccination drive in Tahiti tourism sector
President Edouard Fritch in Bora Bora Photo: supplied
The French Polynesian government has launched a vaccination awareness campaign in the tourism sector in the hope of attaining herd immunity for Covid-19.
Last month, the French overseas minister Sebastien Lecornu said French tourists would only be allowed to travel to Tahiti again once 70 percent of French Polynesians were vaccinated.
He has since rescinded that statement but the French Polynesian president Edouard Fritch says vaccinations are the only means to return to a normal life.
He and the French High Commissioner Dominique Sorain have met tourism employees in Bora Borae where a doctor provided information about the vaccine.
So far 48,000 mainly elderly people have been fully vaccinated, and territory-wide the immunisation rate is just above 20 percent.
After last July's reopening of the border, French Polynesia recorded more than 18,000 Covid-19 cases and 142 people died.
Indian Covid variant now in Fiji
Fiji Health authorities have confirmed that the Covid-19 Indian variant (B-1-617-2) is now in Fiji, as 29 more cases are recorded.
This takes the total number of active cases to 252.
Health Secretary James Fong says Fijians have become too "complacent and wishful thinking" in their response to the second wave of the virus.
He said positive samples sent to a Melbourne laboratory had confirmed that the Indian variant of the virus is circulating in Fiji.
Dr Fong says all the latest 29 patients are stable and isolated in hospitals.
The Indian variant was first detected in India last October and has since spread to more than 40 other countries.
Call for greater transparency in NZ aid spending
An academic says the New Zealand Government should be more open about spending under its aid programme.
New Zealand allocates more than 650 million US dollars ($NZ900m) annually on foreign aid but the budget documents give little detail.
The co-ordinator of the New Zealand Aid Development Dialogues, or NZ ADDs, Terence Wood, says in recent years the aid programme spending has become less and less transparent.
Mr Wood, who is with the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre, does say Treasury provides quite good figures on the total spend for this year and next.
"What you can't ascertain from Treasury's information though is money that will be projected aid spending for future financial years, beyond next financial year, and you also can't get any detail about where the money is going to go and what it is going to be focussed on," he said.
French Polynesia court orders French state to pay nuclear comp
A court in French Polynesia has ordered the French state to pay two people an interim compensation of $US5000 for the impact on their health of the French nuclear weapons tests.
Last year, the two had their claims thrown out by the French compensation commission, CIVEN [see-venn].
However, they say they met all the criteria under the compensation law and asked the court to order CIVEN to pay out $US300,000.
Tahiti Nui TV says an expert report has been requested to allow the court to make a final ruling.
It says the court rejected the cases of two other claimants.
The legacy of France's weapons tests has been a contentious for years and later this month, President Emmanuel Macron is expected to host a high-level roundtable in Paris on the subject.
The pro-independence opposition says it will boycott the meeting unless the United Nations is present.