Subic Bay, Philippines-- The amphibious assault ship USS Wasp, carrying Marines from Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force, led by 4th Marine Regiment, arrived in Subic Bay, March 30, in preparation for exercise Balikatan. Balikatan is an exercise between the Republic of the Philippines and the United States, and also features participation from Australia. Balikatan is a Tagalog phrase for “shoulder-to-shoulder,” which characterizes the spirit of the exercise and repre

Beginning June 1, China Airlines, Taiwan’s flag carrier, will add another direct flight to Palau in hopes of prompting more Taiwanese to visit the Pacific nation that is beset by tourism crisis resulting from China’s travel ban in 2017. The additional flight will bring to four the total number of China Airlines’ weekly flights to Palau, one of Taiwan's 17 remaining allies in the world. According to Taiwan’s state-run Central News Agency, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen announce

[The author is one of two winners of the first Pacific Island Times Journalism competition at Yap Catholic High School. Five members of the Journalism Club at the school entered the competition.] A prizewinner! Lamar, Rull—Yap Yap Catholic High School is just shy of its seventh year of operation, but it carries on traditions that are much older. Case in point: its annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols event at its twenty-two acre rural campus in Rull Municipality. The la

[The author is one of two winners of the first Pacific Island Times Journalism competition at Yap Catholic High School. Five members of the Journalism Club at the school entered the competition.] A prizewinner! We islanders are on the front line of climate change. Our waters which were once peaceful and predictable are now devouring our shorelines. The heat, once tolerable and a blessing is now now often unbearable and deadly. The weather once happily anticipated is now drea

Ok, so here we go again. We get a new crop of legislators and lots of new ideas. And one of the ideas is to actually do something to protect the ocean that surrounds Guam. Something all of our island neighbors seem to proudly try to do, but not Guam. Palau set aside its first marine preserve in the 1950s. It banned scuba spearfishing in 1994. It announced last year to the world in a United Nations speech that it was banning commercial fishing, thus creating the world’s larges

The former chief executive officer of the Guam Regional Medical City, who was ousted from her job last year, is confident of getting her job back despite a recent court decision dismissing her plea for reinstatement. “I look forward to returning to GRMC and continue advancing our mission of improving health and life on Guam and in our region,” said Margaret Bengzon, who was replaced by Dr. Michael Cruz in December 2018. Bengzon was removed from her job as a result of a corpor