As 2009 and the decade draws to a close, let’s now take a look back on a year which has seen some momentous events take place in this, our Pacific home. Bookended by the intractable political situation in Fiji and Papua New Guinea’s unchartered future with its new energy wealth, the year 2009 will instead be remembered for its deadly disasters.

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0500 TO 0530–Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat AM program of the Pacific quake and tsunami of September 30, 2009. This program went to air 68 minutes after the first wire flash of a quake off American Samoa, Samoa and Tonga.

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0530 TO 0600–Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat AM program of the Pacific quake and tsunami of September 30, 2009. This program went to air 68 minutes after the first wire flash of a quake off American Samoa, Samoa and Tonga.

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0600 TO 0630–Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat AM program of the Pacific quake and tsunami of September 30, 2009. This program went to air 68 minutes after the first wire flash of a quake off American Samoa, Samoa and Tonga.

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0630 TO 0700–Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat AM program of the Pacific quake and tsunami of September 30, 2009. This program went to air 68 minutes after the first wire flash of a quake off American Samoa, Samoa and Tonga.

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What happens when the world’s most famous Chinese movie star, Jackie Chan, inadvertedly belittles a large part of his ethnic audience? As the blogs and China’s widespread diaspora agree, they tell him to shut up and keep kicking the bad guys and not them.

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Many people consider the steppes of Kazakhstan as a largely desolate place - the large, flat plains that cover about half of the country being the home of shepherds, sheep and hot dry winds. But last year’s most awarded international film, Tulpan, has shown audiences worldwide that the most simple settings, and the most simple things in life, still hold the strongest bond.

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Australia’s Home Affairs Minister has continued to stress that this situation should not be politicised, wary of the political repercussions of this latest people trafficking incident. It all stems from several tragedies off Australia’s north coast in 2001, when the last large-scale arrival of asylum seekers occured - swinging whole elections.

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The island of Bali has historically been isolated from much of what happens throughout the larger Indonesian landmass. But as most small islands thoughout the world have found, globalisation and transport does not just bring tourists and business, dollars and tasty new foods - it can also bring disease.

With two deaths last week from an outbreak of rabies, authorities in Bali are racing to educate, vaccinate and control its spread.

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While most of the world’s economies come to terms with the massive crash of the international finance system, Japan instead finds itself in a familiar situation. The world’s second-largest economy had just pulled itself out of fifteen years of stagnant growth when the global financial crisis hit, and its central bank had tried almost everything just to achieve that aim. With the global crisis worsening, some members of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party - having lost confidence in the Bank of Japan - have suggested the government print its own money from its vast reserves. Professor R. Taggart Murphy of Japan’s University of Tsukuba is the author of Japan’s Policy Trap: Dollars, Deflation, and the Crisis of Japanese Finance. He says that while the Bank of Japan is not viewed favourably in some circles, the idea of the government releasing a second currency sounds like desperation.

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