Pacific

Pacific nations are being brought together in January for what is called a two day TechCamp, which is funded by the US Embassy in New Zealand and organized by Otago University.

Faumuina Associate Professor Faafetai Sopoaga from the university's Health Sciences division said mosquito-borne diseases such as zika and dengue posed a major threat.

She said through the workshop they hoped to improve the island countries ability to cope.

Faumuina also said with the Pacific being a series of islands this could be a key factor.

Pacific Community Director General Dr. Colin Tukuitonga says climate change is beyond economic survival and it is now a moral issue world leaders must take a stand on.

He says Pope Francis reassured Pacific leaders of his support when they met him in Rome before the COP 23 talks in Bonn.

"Mostly people now are saying that clearly climate change is not a scientific discussion anymore it's actually a moral ethical one."

Mr Shaw and Pacific Peoples Minister Aupito William Sio are representing New Zealand at climate talks in Germany, and on the way there had an audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican.

The COP23 conference in Bonn is being convened under the presidency of Fiji, giving the international meeting a decidedly Pacific feel and focus.

A La Nina system is likely to keep tropical waters cooler than normal.

New Zealand's NIWA agency said there was a 70 percent chance of La Nina conditions developing from now through January.

It was also predicting a moderate to high probability of below normal rainfall in Tuvalu, eastern, western and central Kiribati, the northern Cook Islands, the Marquesas and Nauru.

A number of places can be expecting higher rainfall - namely Tonga, Samoa, Fiji and Niue.

There are calls for price controls on widely available processed products in the Pacific.

The foods include high-fat Kiwi corned beef, biscuits and sugary soda.

Imported processed food inundate supermarket shelves in the Pacific, while junk food adverts even appear at school.

“There's a consensus here that there's a crisis when it comes to non-communicable diseases as a result of poor diet in the Pacific Islands,” Associate Professor Dr Jacqui Webster, from the George Institute For Global Health, told Newshub.

RNZI reports US and French nuclear tests at Bikini atoll in the Marshall Islands and Murorua and Fangataufa atolls in Tahiti feature regularly in discussions about the environmental and social legacy of Pacific nuclear testing.

But the author Nic McLellan says the fallout of Britain's hydrogen bomb tests at Kiritimati island in Kiribati isn't as well documented.

Have Your Sei, led by global advocacy group 350.org, is encouraging people from the Pacific region to lead climate change action by signing a Pacific Climate Warriors Declaration to be presented at the United Nations Climate Change Conference later this year.

The declaration wants to kick big polluters out of climate change talks and do what is needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celcius. 

Project co-ordinator Joseph-Zane Sikulu says most of the big countries in climate change conversations are the big contributors to the problem itself.

Ri Yong Ho was speaking in New York to reporters from South Korea's Yonhap news agency who asked him to clarify a threat made by his leader against the United States.

Kim Jong-un had warned of the "highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history."

Mr Ri said North Korea could consider a hydrogen bomb test, although he qualified this by saying he did not know Kim's exact thoughts.

Photo: STF / AFP A file photo from July 2014 shows an atomic bomb explosion in Bikini Atoll. 

The fungal disease known as Rapid 'Ōhiʻa Death was first discovered in 2014 and has affected about 75,000 acres of ōhi'a forrests on the island of Hawai'i.

The fungus behind the plant disease, Ceratocystis fimbriata, lives in the soil and causes leaves to turn black and fall off, killing a tree within in a matter of days.

The University of Hawai'i said that while some feral animals and beetles had been vectors for the disease, human movement was the biggest cause of its spread.