Journal 10/1/1976
P1 Mink calls for end to Kwajalien apartheid July hearings of a US Congress Committee in the Marshall Islands have resulted in a strongly-worded demand for an end to discriminatory practices at Kwajalein Atoll. Letters signed by Phillip Burton (D-California), Patsy Mink (D-Hawaii) and Antonio Won Pat (D-Guam) to the Secretaries of the Army and Interior, dated August 24, contained demands for “fast, strong, corrective action” to end exclusion of Trust Territory citizens from the Kwajalein hospital and from shipping facilities on Kwajalein.
Journal 10/4/1991
P1 Budget slashes cut services The Nitijela trimmed expenditures by almost $3 million for fiscal year 1992 to pass a total national budget of $67,007,400.
P3 Navy demolition detonates Wotje bombs Normally peaceful Wotje Atoll was rocked by a series of explosions last week as over 1,000 pounds of ordinance, artillery and all kinds of bombs, detonated in uninhabited areas. Invasion? Misguided missiles? No, a four-man US Navy demolition team from Guam which had been called in to locate, identify and “neutralize” the half a ton of explosives found near the construction site of the new high school.
P10 ‘Global warming could be catastrophic for us’ President Kabua’s inaugural speech to the United Nations General Assembly “The problem of global warming is a most formidable one. It goes without saying that the possible consequences of global warming could be totally catastrophic for us as well as other countries similarly situated.”
Journal 10/6/2000
P1 PCB bomb at Bikini? Physicist Hans Behling — a scientific consultant for Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap and the Nuclear Claims Tribunal — said that PCB contamination at Bikini and Enewetak is potentially a “problem that could challenge the severity of radioactive contamination.” In a presentation to Nitijela, he indicated that a study of PCB contamination at the former nuclear test sites is to be launched shortly. PCBs, which were used in great quantities in electrical transformers before their extreme hazards were identified, weren’t even suspected of being a cancer-causing chemical until the 1970s, Behling said. There is a great deal of concern about PCB contamination of the lagoons at Bikini and Enewetak. The ships sunk at Bikini by nuclear tests contained electrical machinery that used PCBs.
P5 Senko set to be ambassador The Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week approved the nomination of Michael Senko of Washington as the US ambassador to the Marshall Islands and Kiribati.
P9 Women top in 1998 graduation class While RMI government scholarship-supported Marshallese men outnumbered women in graduating by a two-to-one margin since 1986, the number of Marshallese women graduates in a single year exceeded men for the first time beginning in 1998, according to an “Analysis of the RMI Scholarship Program: 1986-1999.”