From PACNEWS

Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister, Peter O'Neill, says he will do everything possible to protect his people and his country from irregular land dealings.

The comments come in response to the scandal surrounding the issuing Special Agricultural and Business Leases (SABLs).

“We have made some fundamental mistakes over the past few years,” O'Neill told ABC Radio Australia.

“One of them is the Special Agricultural and Business Leases that has been given out by government over the past few years.”

Prime Minister Peter O'Neill has admitted the SABL land grab in which control of more than 5 million hectares of land was seized from customary people was a fundamental mistake by the government

Speaking on Radio Australia's Background Briefing program Mr O'Neill said the government had made "some fundamental mistakes over the past few years".

Jamaica to break links with Queen, says Prime Minister Simpson Miller

Jamaica's new Prime Minister, Portia Simpson Miller, has said she intends to make the island a republic, removing Queen Elizabeth as the head of state.

By Patrick Levo

Serious concerns have been expressed about the ‘modus operandi’ of the Pacific International Hospital in Port Moresby.

Public anger was raised against the private hospital after yet another avoidable death caused allegedly by the hospital’s uncompromising policy of “cash before treatment”.

While the Commission of Inquiry into Special Agriculture and Business Leases continues, revealing the layers of corruption and incompetence in the allocation of the 99-year SAB leases, the PNGExposed blog has republished the findings of an earlier Commission of Inquiry which reported in 2009 the Department of Lands was corrupt and incompetent. Its recommendations for a full Commission of Inquiry into DoL were ignored….

Diabetes, obesity and heart disease rates are soaring in developing countries, as multinationals find new ways of selling processed food to the poor

By Felicity Lawrence (Guardian UK)

We are all Occupiers

People the world over salute the Occupy movement for standing up to injustice and fighting for equality at the heart of empire

By Arundhati Roy*

Forty-two years ago, in March 1968, Bobby Kennedy explained to Americans why they were wrong to judge progress through the prism of the US's gross domestic product, which made them slaves to consumption and the accumulation of material things. 

Exactly the same arguments apply equally well today in Papua New Guinea where we are constantly been told to judge the quality of our lives and our development progress through the prism of 'economic growth'. But economic growth does not reflect either what is really important or the daily reality of life in PNG for ordinary people.

Anti Corruption, Waigani

To avoid negative public perception that Prime Minister O’Neill’s anti-corruption drive as only a smokescreen to lull the nation into a sense of false security while the treasury is plundered unhindered and unnoticed with only 10 months remaining before the next general election, the Prime Minister must take swift action where it matters most.

The National newspaper, owned by Malaysian logging giant Rimbunan Hijau, and partisan supporter of the Ramu nickel mine and foreign owned resource operations in general, has taken a swipe at the SABL land grab Commission of Inquiry and just about everything else the government is trying to do to protect the interests of ordinary Papua New Guinean's. When your read your daily newspaper it is good to remember whose interests it is representing and protecting....