Word: kiribati
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...their flags. Unlike high-profile gold-medal hopefuls, many of whom travel with their own personal trainers and a fridge full of optimal training food, athletes from these smaller nations exist in an alternate universe of constant anonymity and more-than-occasional cash crunches. "I heard the team from Kiribati is selling its [Olympic-souvenir] pins so they have enough money for daily living," whispers Chhetri, Bhutan's Olympic chief of mission, referring to the tiny South Pacific nation that is participating in its inaugural Games. Chhetri hands out two Olympic pins as a gift, anxious to show that Bhutan...
...Zealand's Pacific neighbors - especially Niue and the Cook Islands, whose people carry N.Z. passports - are also potential back doors for those seeking a Kiwi identity. In December the government ended visa-free entry for citizens of Nauru, Tuvalu and Kiribati. It's also working with Australia to help Pacific states tighten notoriously lax border controls. "We are constantly vigilant," says Goff. So are most other nations - and they'll now look a little more closely at those blue passports...
...recently came upon a magazine article describing the problem facing the islands of Kiribati. If you don't remember the name, Kiribati is an obscure group of Pacific islands that became instantly famous as the location of the first televised sunrise of the new millennium. Not only are the islands experiencing more cyclones and droughts, but the fact is that rising ocean levels are eroding and contaminating the land. The dancing islanders we watched on television may now become environmental refugees. This scenario seems destined to be re-enacted on a much larger scale. The predicted effects of greenhouse gases...
After a dispute sillier than states competing to hold the first election primary, the Republic of Kiribati beat out Tonga and New Zealand's Chatham Islands for the media's anointment of birthplace of the third millennium. To jump in front of the Chatham Islands by 15 minutes, Tonga sneakily used daylight savings time, while Kiribati had the international dateline moved in 1995 so its snazzily named if unfortunately uninhabited Millennium Island would be first. Kiribati's Micronesian dancers, shipped in from Tawara, whupped it up before the world's cameras for six minutes and then prepped for the next...
Other adventures into the 21st century were fortunate. Photographer Steve Liss traveled to the Chatham Islands, which were, until the Kingdom of Tonga and the nation of Kiribati tampered with the rules, the first inhabited place on earth to greet each new day, and thus would have been the first to reach the new millennium. But when he got to the tempestuous isles, he was told, "We get to see the sun rise maybe four times a year." Nervously, Liss waited and was rewarded, along with the islanders, with a brief but stunning dawn, the first sunrise...