Pacific

A La Nina system is likely to keep tropical waters cooler than normal.

New Zealand's NIWA agency said there was a 70 percent chance of La Nina conditions developing from now through January.

It was also predicting a moderate to high probability of below normal rainfall in Tuvalu, eastern, western and central Kiribati, the northern Cook Islands, the Marquesas and Nauru.

A number of places can be expecting higher rainfall - namely Tonga, Samoa, Fiji and Niue.

There are calls for price controls on widely available processed products in the Pacific.

The foods include high-fat Kiwi corned beef, biscuits and sugary soda.

Imported processed food inundate supermarket shelves in the Pacific, while junk food adverts even appear at school.

“There's a consensus here that there's a crisis when it comes to non-communicable diseases as a result of poor diet in the Pacific Islands,” Associate Professor Dr Jacqui Webster, from the George Institute For Global Health, told Newshub.

RNZI reports US and French nuclear tests at Bikini atoll in the Marshall Islands and Murorua and Fangataufa atolls in Tahiti feature regularly in discussions about the environmental and social legacy of Pacific nuclear testing.

But the author Nic McLellan says the fallout of Britain's hydrogen bomb tests at Kiritimati island in Kiribati isn't as well documented.

Have Your Sei, led by global advocacy group 350.org, is encouraging people from the Pacific region to lead climate change action by signing a Pacific Climate Warriors Declaration to be presented at the United Nations Climate Change Conference later this year.

The declaration wants to kick big polluters out of climate change talks and do what is needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celcius. 

Project co-ordinator Joseph-Zane Sikulu says most of the big countries in climate change conversations are the big contributors to the problem itself.

Ri Yong Ho was speaking in New York to reporters from South Korea's Yonhap news agency who asked him to clarify a threat made by his leader against the United States.

Kim Jong-un had warned of the "highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history."

Mr Ri said North Korea could consider a hydrogen bomb test, although he qualified this by saying he did not know Kim's exact thoughts.

Photo: STF / AFP A file photo from July 2014 shows an atomic bomb explosion in Bikini Atoll. 

The fungal disease known as Rapid 'Ōhiʻa Death was first discovered in 2014 and has affected about 75,000 acres of ōhi'a forrests on the island of Hawai'i.

The fungus behind the plant disease, Ceratocystis fimbriata, lives in the soil and causes leaves to turn black and fall off, killing a tree within in a matter of days.

The University of Hawai'i said that while some feral animals and beetles had been vectors for the disease, human movement was the biggest cause of its spread.

Pacific island countries have some of the highest electricity costs in the world, making power beyond the reach of many.

This is mainly due to high electricity tariffs, the high cost of service connections and the cost of wiring premises.

RNZI reports the conference will explore regulatory reforms, technology and innovative financing to make electricity more affordable.

Dame Meg Taylor who leads the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, stressed the vulnerability of the region's countries to global oil price fluctuations.

At a regional energy summit in Samoa, the World Bank said it was detailing the potential for its online solar atlas, which gives interested parties the means to find where solar power potential is most concentrated.

The CTU secretary Sam Huggard presented evidence to New Zealand Parliament's Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade select committee.

RNZI reports Mr Huggard examined the progress on the PACER-Plus trade agreement.

He said taxes on goods from Australia and New Zealand support health, education and social services, for which there are few alternatives.

"One of those would be a consumer tax like a GST or a VAT, and in the end those taxes hit the poor much stronger than they hit people who are well-off."