Australia pledged Au$2.5 million ($1.7 million) in aid to Pacific neighbors Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands Sunday, after tropical cyclone Maila caused devastating floods and landslides that killed 11.<\/p>\n
\nIn Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea that is seeking independence, school was cancelled this week after the cyclone destroyed critical infrastructure including roads and bridges and severely disrupted food supply chains, the region’s government said in a statement Saturday.<\/p>\n
\nEleven people were killed in the region, including eight in a landslide.<\/p>\n
\nAccess to Panguna, home to a gold and copper mine that was once among the world’s largest, had been cut.<\/p>\n
\nThe Bougainville autonomous region president, Ishmael Toroama, urged the population to “not lose hope” in a statement Friday.<\/p>\n
\nThe weather system began to weaken Saturday and has since been downgraded to a tropical low.<\/p>\n
\nAustralia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong pledged Au$1 million for Papua New Guinea to respond to the cyclone’s impact in Bougainville and Milne Bay.<\/p>\n
\nAnother Au$1.5 million will be provided to Solomon Islands, where severe impacts have been felt in remote communities across Western and Choiseul provinces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia pledged Au$2.5 million ($1.7 million) in aid to Pacific neighbors Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-601820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}