Pacific Review

With the standoff at the Manus detention centre making headlines, the refugees and asylum seekers there have been doing mobile crosses to media in Australia and sending updates on social media. Three people were temporarily held in the police lockup at Gordon's police station in Port Moresby, after telling police they had used sorcery to kill a young man in the capital.

With so few veterans from the campaign still with us today, teaching the generations that have come after about what happened at Kokoda and the significance of those events becomes more challenging as time passes.

Coming up, calls for the Papua New Guinea government to set up an emergency task force into gender-based violence and reports that suggest the repatriation effort of eleven thousand people back to an island in Vanuatu isn't going as well as officials have claimed.

Ambae islanders allowed to go home as the volcano settles down, and an upsurge in sorcery related violence in PNG causes concern. And, a major study into menstrual hygiene in the Pacific has found that harmful beliefs are hindering women and girls in their efforts to manage their periods effectively.

Emergency authorities in Vanuatu have started looking for safe areas on Ambae Island where villagers could settle when they return. Health services in the PNG highlands town of Mendi are severely depleted, with more than a dozen doctors evacuated following election-related violence in recent weeks.

Vanuatu copes with the evacuation of thousands from a volcano affected island and alllegations chinese teenagers were trafficked to Fiji,and Australian military jets arrive in Port Moresby.

Comments about Bougainville's independence referendum by PNG prime minister Peter O'Neill endangered the peace process, and a petition from West Papuans asking for their own referendum sparks a way of words with Indonesia.

PNG police frustrated by lack of cooperation from villagers over a suspected sorcery killing. And, New Zealand's Maori Party claims of support from the King of Tonga are denied.

Asylum-seekers who have already spent four years on Manus Island are now facing the prospect of an indefinite stay elsewhere in Papua New Guinea. And, an angry confrontation between Indonesian diplomats and Samoan journalists at the Pacific Island Forum leaders summit in Apia last week is being blamed on one reporter becoming aggressive over the issue of West Papua.

PNG slashes spending and vows to stop borrowing to get it's budget under control. And, a Tonga cabinet minister refuses to accept his sacking by the Prime Minister.

The new system of wireless internet using light bulbs to transfer data that could soon supersede WiFi. And, this year's winner of the Eureka prize for infectious diseases research tells us about the work his team has been doing in Fiji and Solomon islands to help tackle the scourge of scabies.

Traditional landowners in Papua New Guinea's national capital say it will cost at least two million kina to rebuild their homes after a series of fires in Hanuabada village destroyed nearly 20 houses. The Australian government has been accused of being in denial about corruption in Papua New Guinea, because it doesn't want to upset the refugee detention arrangement it has with its northern neighbour.