Island nations have long been hard-pressed to deal with serious medical conditions and disease. The coronavirus is not helping.

Coast Guard cutter Oliver Berry has spent September patrolling Samoan waters after the Pacific nation’s fleet was left underpowered.

The leaders of the U.S., Japan, Australia and India have finished an in-person meeting in Washington, D.C., as China looks on.

Issues are being raised ahead of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Thousands of Pacific Island workers were stranded in New Zealand and Australia when the pandemic began. Others were stuck at home.

Vaccines likely will be a main item on the agenda.

The effects and memory of U.S. nuclear testing endures in the Pacific. “It is a level up from urgent for us,” one Pacific leader says.

The U.S. territory has been closed since March last year, and opened up its Hawaiian Airlines link on Monday.

Pioneered by Barack Obama, the Pacific trade pact, formerly known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, was initially seen as a means to balance China’s increasing influence.

The Maori party of New Zealand has said they are “sick to death” of their ancestral names being “mangled, bastardized and ignored.”