CANBERRA, Australia, Feb 18 (IPS) – While Pacific Island countries have, so far, been spared a catastrophic spread of COVID-19, their economies have been devastated by the effects of border closures, internal lockdowns and the demise of international tourism and trade. With the global pandemic far from over, Pacific Islanders are looking to their local and regional economies to drive resilience and recovery.
Egypt: Fact-checking site’s entire newsroom jailed as assault on press freedom widens 
Nearly 64,000 flee Nigeria for Niger where a humanitarian crisis is deepening 
Ebola: IOM urges wider surveillance beyond formal routes in DR Congo 
Before We Declare Gender Bias Dead, Read the Footnotes 
World News in Brief: Ending cholera by 2030 ‘within reach’, Haiti displacement and hunger, US human rights review rescheduled 
Climate crisis could push 141 million more women into extreme poverty 
Light is hard to block from every direction. This physicist found a way