Maritime court: Greenhouse gases are marine pollution

Weekender #45

You’re reading The Husk's Weekender, a countdown/roundup of miscellanea from Micronesia, Guam, and Earth.

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stories featuring the Micronesian region

• CNMI judge puts English-speaking attorneys on notice: Make arrangements for a Chamorro interpreter

  Judge Camacho issued the directive after attorney Joaquin DLG Torres indicated he’d be speaking in one of the NMI’s three official languages.

  I mean, yeah. Makes sense.

• Palauan ancestral remains were returned after about a century. A German university handed over the remains, according to an April article from Australian Broadcast Company Pacific. Other institutions in Germany and one in the U.S. that also have remains from Palau also reached out.

• Microwave Films launched a new Marshallese comedy show online, and it’s doing numbers!

stories from the Pacific

• One of many articles covering ongoing unrest in Kanaky New Caledonia. This report is from RNZ: Pacific NGO alliance condemns France for 'betrayal of the Kanaky people’. Also, from the Pacific Island Times, Pacific Elders’ Voice (which includes elders from Micronesia) called for “the importance of listening to Indigenous Kanak voices and the Pacific-wide support for self-determination.”

• A recent court ruling has been lauded as a big win for islands threatened by sea-level rise, according to Reuters. The Bahamas, Palau, Niue, Vanuatu, St.Lucia, St. Vincent and Grenadines and St. Kitts and Nevis are among the nations that brought the case. From the Reuters report:

  A global maritime court found on Tuesday that greenhouse gases constitute marine pollution, a major breakthrough for small island states threatened by the rise in sea levels caused by global warming.

  In its first climate-related judgment, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea said emissions from fossil fuels and other planet-warming gases that are absorbed by the oceans count as marine pollution.

bit of personal news

• I was a guest on ABC Pacific’s “Stories From the Pacific,” hosted by Bobby Macumber (a fellow Micronesian woman from Kiribati!). I got to talk about this newsletter. It was such an honor to chat with Bobby and producer Moale James. Their questions were insightful, and I found myself confronting feelings about my identity and purpose that I, quite frankly, had not confronted before. So beyond feeling honored to even have been considered to talk about The Husk on their show, I will be eternally grateful to them for creating a safe space to allow me to dig up those emotions and voice those thoughts. Have a listen:

https://www.abc.net.au/pacific/programs/stories-from-the-pacific/stories-from-the-pacific/103853880

Every week (that the Weekender comes out) we’ll leave you with a send-off song (not necessarily from a Micronesian artist) curated by my brother, Henry, whose musical tastes have left a lifelong impression on me and, now hopefully, you.

This week’s send-off song is “Burn One” by Fortunate Youth.

One more song I want to add that’s been in heavy rotation for me lately: “True Love” by Soja.

We’re building a send-off song playlist on Spotify that includes the songs mentioned in past Weekender posts. Check it out.

Thank you for reading! Have a great weekend,

Jasmine