Pacific

Low-lying Vanuatu is considering suing fossil fuel companies and industrialised countries that use them for their role in creating catastrophic climate change, the foreign minister of the Pacific island nation says.

Three accommodation units and a beach bar have been destroyed in a fire at the Aitutaki Lagoon Resort and Spa in the Cook Islands.

A massive new fissure opened on Hawaii's Kilauea volcano, hurling bursts of rock and magma with an ear-piercing screech as it threatened nearby homes and prompted authorities to order new evacuations.

Thousands of Kiribati people are living in Auckland illegally because climate change has made their homeland almost uninhabitable, a human rights lawyer says.

major undersea earthquake of magnitude 7.0 struck close to New Caledonia in the South Pacific today, the US Geological Survey said.

A New Zealand Air Force plane is taking generators, tarpaulins and other emergency aid supplies to Vanuatu to help cope with families fleeing a possible volcanic eruption.

Vanuatu ordered the full evacuation of the South Pacific nation's northern island of Ambae as a volcano there threatened to erupt.