When people look at the map of the Pacific Ocean, they see isolation. Tiny islands appear as scattered dots separated by thousands of miles of open water. It’s easy to imagine that ancient Pacific Islanders lived in small, disconnected communities with little contact beyond their own shores.

When the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Trump v. Barbara on June 30, it reverberated far beyond Washington, D.C.

After nearly 50 years of living in Micronesia, I have come to appreciate something that I did not fully understand when I first arrived in the Pacific as a young Peace Corps volunteer. The most valuable historical records in our islands are not found in libraries, archives, government offices, or museums. They are found in the memories of our elders.

Nauru has severed its diplomatic ties with South Ossetia and Abkhazia effective immediately, withdrawing its recognition of Georgia's breakaway jurisdictions as independent states.

That is the trap. Pacific publishers depend on Meta to reach their audiences. Meta can change the way it distributes their work without warning, cut their reach without explanation and leave them with nowhere meaningful to appeal. Better internet will help connect the Pacific. It will not solve the problem of one foreign company controlling so much of the region's news distribution.

Facebook is strangling Pacific journalism, with some news organizations losing up to 70 percent of their audience almost overnight. The sudden falls have hit The Pacific Newsroom, the Vanuatu Broadcasting and Television Corp. (VBTC) and the Solomon Islands-based Melanesian News Network, raising fears that changes to Meta's algorithms are pushing verified news out of Facebook feeds.

Indigenous health experts in the Pacific island region are seeking active participation in medical research, particularly in precision medicine, an emerging approach to treating diseases based on individual factors.

Nauru's Office of the Trade Commissioner to the United Arab Emirates has launched the Pacific Digital Assets Forum, the first regional platform dedicated to digital assets and finance across the Pacific.

Because American Deep Sea Minerals is seeking a U.S. permit and the international rules governing seabed mining are not yet settled, there’s no guarantee that neighboring Pacific nations would see any revenue from seabed mining just beyond their borders.

Inch by inch, year after year, the sea levels across the Pacific are rising, forcing island communities to abandon family homes and move to safer grounds. Lands are being washed away by climate-led change, eroding the very foundations of peace and stability.

The bureau has marked 33 million acres of seabed near the eastern edge of American Samoa’s exclusive economic zone for the mining of polymetallic nodules, which are critical to the production of clean energy and military technologies.

Despite their smaller populations, most Pacific countries are struggling to meet the 90-percent goal of vaccinating their children against deadly but preventable diseases, according to a joint World Health Organization-UNICEF report released Wednesday.