papua new guinea

With its magnificent beaches, turquoise seas and a spectacular active volcano, Kokopo has already stolen the heart of the team.

Survivor is a part competition, part docu-drama, which continues to be the centrepiece of broadcasting schedules around the world and currently airing in more than 50 countries.

It is a much followed TV show among PNG households and will soon be a platform to market PNG to the world.

Four of them have travelled to Sydney's Australian Museum for a new exibition, where Ian Lloyd Neubauer found out more about the masks and the men behind them.

With their skin painted white, elongated bamboo fingers, and of course the eerie masks, the four mud men - who have never left Papua New Guinea's highlands before - are at the Australian Museum for a week as "artists in residence" as it opens a new permanent mud men exhibit.

Eco-tourism business owner Vincent Kumura described this sector in the tourism industry as a sleeping giant that is now a fast growing industry.

Kumura said large scale tourism organizations or businesses must not dominate every single aspect of the tourism market.

He said this will kill equal participation by locals, discourage specialisation, slow economic growth and increase poverty.

To further develop the industry, Kumura says all stakeholders must work together.

With an absolute showdown against the big crowd at the Port Villa stadium, the U20 men fail to make it through as they go down against the favorites on their home soil under a spot of rain that made the pitch a bit greasy underfoot.

Regardless of the weather, PNG made their first attempt seven minutes into the game when Alu AWI tries his luck from a very tight angle but can't beat Vanuatu’s goalkeeper Willy Dick was too good for the shot.

After several attempts nothing separating the sides as they went into the break scoreless.

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Damukana Sogavare told LOOP PNG resolving past differences is the only path to true peace and security in the border regions.

“We have the Bougainvilleans also here, they come as observers, and we look at how we can do peace building on the border between PNG and Solomon Islands a bit better and in a way that can promote and harness peace among our people,” Sogavare said.

Bougainville civil war, the largest conflict in Oceania since WWII, raged for a decade from 1988, with thousands of lives lost.

Men:

Samoa - Nevo Ioane (62kg category)

Australia – Simplice Ribouem (94kg category)

New Zealand - Richard Patterson (85kg category)

Fiji - Manueli Tulo (56kg category)

Kiribati - David Katoatau (105kg category)

Nauru - Elson Brechtefeld (56kg category)

American Samoa: Tanumafili Jungblut (94kg category)

PNG -Morea Baru (62kg) category

Women:

Samoa - Mary Opeloge (75kg category)

Australia - Tia-Clair Toomey (58kg category)

New Zealand - Tracey Lambrechs (+75kg category)

The display is the first of a series that TPA would like to install in the Kokoda Track region. It has been developed as part of the Heritage Supporting Tourism project.

This new interpretive display will provide visitors with an insight in the shared history between the two countries, as well as the region's natural, cultural and military history.

Tourism Minister Tobias Kulang unveiled the interpretive display on behalf of the Kokoda Initiative and said this is a significant achievement in preserving this tourism heritage and site.

The application for an urgent injunction was filed with the High Court on Wednesday by human rights barrister Jay Williams. 

It follows last week's decision in the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court which ruled that the Manus Island detention centre breached the country's constitution. 

The group of 757 asylum seekers is also seeking an order from the court preventing the Australian Government from moving them to Nauru. 

Last week, the Supreme Court declared the detention on Australia's behalf of asylum seekers on Manus Island unconstitutional, and the government later announced that the centre would close.

Ben Lomai - who represented many of those detained on Manus Island - said he would be seeking to make the Commonwealth of Australia a defendant in the asylum seekers' challenge to their detention.

He said that if successful, and if the Supreme Court ruled in their favour, they would have to be released back into Australia's care as their first port of entry.

The 23-year-old man was flown to Australia yesterday, 24 hours after he set himself ablaze in apparent protest in front of visiting United Nations officials.

But he died of his injuries in a Brisbane hospital on Friday afternoon.

In a statement, Australia's immigration minister, Peter Dutton, said appropriate support was being provided to the man's wife and friends.

His death will be referred to the Queensland coroner.

He was one of six people sent by Australia to Nauru who harmed themselves this week.