violent riots.

You mean dog whistle stop campaign rallies. Like Rump.

Has a change in leadership meant a change in direction?

Solomon Islands PM Jeremiah Manele asks Australia for help to expand police force in Canberra talks.

# In short: Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele has made his first trip to Australia since his election last month, meeting Anthony Albanese for talks in Canberra.

# Mr Manele said he asked Australia for help to expand his country's police force after recent bouts of unrest in the Pacific Island nation.

# What's next: Mr Manele will visit China, which struck a controversial security agreement with Solomon Islands in 2022....

.....Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele says he's asked Australia to help his country expand its police force to 3,000 officers, after sitting down with Anthony Albanese for bilateral talks in Canberra.

Solomon Islands has struggled with bouts of unrest in recent years, with Australia deploying defence personnel and police to Honiara to restore order following riots in 2021........

I wonder if Xi will be pleased seeing as his man in the Solomon's got badly dumped out of office (and his bribes down the drain).

Xi will not stop. The Pacific nations will have to be offered a far more profitable deal than China ever could. The alternative is Chinese military bases all over the Pacific, far more numerous than the Japanese ever had in WWII.

The pressure is building up for France to let go.

PALM meeting between Pacific leaders and Japan wraps up with focus on troubled New Caledonia.

Pacific leaders are ramping up pressure on France over tensions in New Caledonia, pressing Paris to allow a "high-level" Pacific delegation to visit the troubled territory before a critical regional meeting next month.

Both pro-independence politicians from New Caledonia and French diplomats have been meeting with Pacific leaders to press their case on the margins of the Pacific Alliance Leaders Meeting (PALM) with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo.

During the past two months, New Caledonia has been rocked by violent riots and widespread unrest that has left 10 people dead.

The situation has gradually calmed in recent weeks, but some Pacific leaders hold France responsible for the chaos, accusing it of backtracking on decolonisation commitments in New Caledonia — accusations Paris forcefully denies.......

The Xi debt trap is causing real concerns.

Pacific Island nations owe 'astronomical' debts to China. Can they repay?

......Over the past 20 years, China has become the largest lender in the Pacific.

Now Tonga, Vanuatu and Samoa are spending some of the biggest sums in the world to repay debts to China, as a proportion of their GDP, according to Lowy Institute analysis.

Tonga's annual debt repayments to China are nearly 4 per cent of its GDP — the third-highest level in the world.

It's a rate that Lowy research associate Riley Duke calls "astronomically high".

In Samoa, debt repayments to China are 2.6 per cent of GDP — the fourth-highest rate in the world — while Vanuatu's debt repayments (nearly 2 per cent) also put it in the top 10.

Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Cook Islands also have moderate levels of public debt exposure to China, according to the AidData research lab at William & Mary, a Virginia-based public university in the United States.

Aid and development experts say the debts carry large risks for Pacific Island nations, where frequent natural disasters and economic shocks can hobble their repayments.

It means their governments can face difficult choices as repayment deadlines loom, including sacrificing spending on pressing needs like health and climate change adaptation......

They can easily repay the largest debts with contracts allowing Xi to use their harbors and airstrips for any purpose that may benefit China.

They can easily repay the largest debts with contracts allowing Xi to use their harbors and airstrips for any purpose that may benefit China.

They could, but who would want too?

They've already had, or are having, a taste of Xi's infrastructure building and the Chinese security that comes with it and they don't like it at all, which is why no new such contracts have been signed since and why Sogavare got himself tossed out of government.

Oh dear, more trouble.

How an enemy nation targeted France's 'Achilles heel in the Pacific'.

It began with an enticing offer: an all-expenses-paid trip to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.

It was July last year and Roch Wamytan, a prominent leader in New Caledonia's independence movement, took up the offer to fly to the former Soviet state for a series of meetings.

On the surface, everything seemed routine.

Azerbaijan was hosting a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement, a group founded during the Cold War for states who chose not to align with either major power bloc.

But the host soon revealed another motive.

During one meeting, at the instigation of Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev, a new organisation called the "Baku Initiative Group" was formed.

Its stated aim was to help French territories "fight against colonialism", and before long a member of the group approached Mr Wamytan with a proposition.

"They offered to give us financial assistance," Mr Wamytan told Foreign Correspondent. "But given the request, or the opposition of the [French] government, we did not accept.".......

Xi's mob isn't happy.

China responds furiously as Pacific Islands leaders reject bid to cut Taiwan from bloc meetings.

China's ambassador to the Pacific has responded furiously after the region's leaders rejected a push from Solomon Islands to stop Taiwan participating in its top diplomatic gathering.

Pacific leaders have also formally endorsed a major new policing pact championed by Australia, as well as signing off on the terms for a high-level mission to the troubled Pacific territory of New Caledonia.

Solomon Islands had been pressing other Pacific nations to strip Taiwan of its status as a "development partner" for the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), with its foreign minister Peter Shanel saying this week that Taiwan was "not a sovereign country" and PIF should "follow international law"........

It looks like Xi's bribe money is still making its way into the back pockets of the Solomon Islands' politicians.