Word: fijis
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...very odd coup," the BBC dubbed it in a headline that certainly seemed to capture the quirkiness of the ongoing putsch on the tranquil South Pacific island of Fiji. But taking the prime minister hostage appears to be becoming less odd and more par for the course in some of Britain's former Pacific island colonies. With no end to the Fijian standoff in sight more than two weeks after coup leader George Speight and a handful of cronies first seized Mahendra Chaudry and 30 other civilians as hostages, the prime minister of the Solomon Islands on Monday found himself...
...Speight has demanded that Fiji be ruled exclusively by indigenous Fijians, while the country's Indian community - the 49 percent of the 800,000 inhabitants whose ancestors were brought to Fiji by the British 100 years ago to pick sugar - must accept second-class citizenship. The gunman's toppling of the country's first ethnic-Indian leader appears to have captured the imagination of many indigenous Fijians, and prompted the Fijian army to seize power and nix the constitution. Still, Speight refuses to free his hostages until he and his cronies are given a direct role in ruling the country...
...right up there with the steam engine, car, TV and computer. It promises the ultimate technological breakthrough for the information age. Virtually all information will be available to you at all times, whether you're taking a day off from work, visiting the in-laws or traveling to Fiji. With the importance of physical location diminished, even irrelevant, you'll be able to answer an e-mail from your boss, shift your 401(k) or sing your child a video-and-sound lullaby wherever...
What is rough, Hanks says, is carrying a major chunk of the movie solo. (Co-star Helen Hunt, who plays his girlfriend, isn't around for the scenes in Fiji.) "It makes you crazy," he says. "You're not sharing the storytelling lifting with someone you can react off of. It's almost like making a silent movie; you have to tell every aspect of the story physically, being totally alone." Well, not totally alone. The castaway adopts a piece of flotsam--a volleyball he names Wilson, for its manufacturer--as his best friend and foil. (Strangely enough, Wilson...
...went to college in Hawaii and then returned to Palau, where he started working for the government. In 1994 he founded the Palau Conservation Society, the archipelago's only homegrown non-governmental organization. He has traveled to Britain, Canada, Italy, the Solomon Islands and Fiji to study, but Idechong has never strayed too far from his village roots. Every time he begins a conservation program, his first instinct is to confer with the village elders. He is now starting to focus on ways of protecting the dugong (sea cow) and the hawksbill turtle, both of which are vulnerable to fishermen...