Word: nauruans
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...week told that the island's neglected mooring facilities require substantial repair. The only economic cheer comes from the asylum-seeker processing center set up by Australia, which has the island's hotel fully booked with staff and migration officials. Criticized in Australia, the center is supported by the Nauruan government, which this year received $A22.5m in funding from Canberra. The center serves three meals a day, and many Nauruans feel the asylum-seekers are better fed than they...
Alas, the Nauruan experience, while extreme, is not unique. Asia, for instance, lags behind the U.S. and Europe in its obesity statistics, but Thailand, Malaysia, Japan and the Philippines have all reported troubling increases in recent years. In China, where a one-child-per-family policy has created millions of spoiled and overnourished children (feeding a phenomenon known as little-emperor syndrome), the rise in childhood obesity is particularly alarming. Up to 10% of China's 290 million children are believed to be overweight or obese, and that percentage is expected to have doubled a decade from...
...result is almost pure Utopia. Nauruans enjoy free schools, medical and dental care, electricity and water, pay minimal rents and no import duties or taxes. Under an agreement announced last week by Australia to the U.N. Trusteeship Council, Nauruans will be given partial control of the mining industry July 1; after they finish paying for it in three years, they will get complete control. Under the complex new arrangements, most of the profits from the phosphate diggings will be held in trust and reinvested. Conservative estimates are that 30 years from now, when the phosphate deposits have finally...
...islanders want only one thing that phosphate cannot buy: independence. However, as Chief deRoburt de parted for Manhattan last week to report to the U.N. Trusteeship Council, Australian Territories Minister Charles Barnes conceded cautiously that as a first step toward sovereignty for the island, his government will draft a Nauruan constitution; next January the first Nauruan Parliament will convene. If Nauru proves ready for self-government, Barnes says elliptically, "Further discussions will take place regarding the possibility of further political progress." In other words, it is only a matter of time before Nauruans will be independent-provided the Australian government...
Meanwhile, Nauruans have little to complain about. With 95% literacy, little or no disease, no taxes, and a per capita income of $1,800 a year (v. $1,350 for Australians), Nauruans work hard at having fun. They cruise about in 800 cars and motorcycles, watch free movies, indulge in their traditional hobbies of taming frigate birds or man o' war hawks, and grow steadily lazier, happier and fatter (a 250-lb. Nauruan is considered well-rounded...
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