Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale said Wednesday he would be “reviewing” his country’s secretive 2022 security pact with China, which rattled Canberra and Washington.

Asked about that pact alongside Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the Solomons leader — who was elected last month — said he had been “praying and fasting” about the Chinese security deal.

“We are going to be reviewing, as we are reviewing other security agreements that we have with many other countries,” he said.

Australia and the United States have been sharply critical of the deal over concerns it could allow a permanent Chinese navy presence in the South Pacific.

It was signed under one of Wale’s predecessors, Manasseh Sogavare, who was seen as Beijing’s staunchest ally in the South Pacific.

Wale said the deal contained a non-disclosure agreement and he had not seen it until just before his visit to Australia.

“I have had to remove certain people from key positions. I have not been afforded a copy, even, of that agreement, until a day before I left, so I have not had a good look at it,” he told a news conference in Canberra.

Australia is the largest aid donor to the country of 800,000 people that sits 2,000 kilometres (1,240 miles) to its north-east and historically provided police support during crises.

After the Solomons switched diplomatic ties from Taiwan to Beijing in 2019 and struck the security pact, relations with Canberra and Washington deteriorated.

China quickly became the strategically located Pacific island state’s largest bilateral creditor, with Solomon Islands’ debt to Chinese banks for infrastructure projects doubling last year.

Seeking to counter Beijing’s influence, Australia has seized the opportunity to rebuild ties, hosting Wale on his first international visit as leader.

Albanese said Wednesday the two countries would begin work on a “comprehensive” new treaty as well as deepen ties in policing, with Australia seeking to be the top security partner for the Pacific.

The treaty will be “underpinned by mutual trust, respect, and open dialogue”, the prime minister said.

Deals on policing, infrastructure

“We have sought a reset in this relationship — we acknowledge there have been problems over the last few years,” Wale told reporters.

The Pacific should turn to other countries within the region for their security, he stressed.

The leaders also agreed to push ahead with a major police training deal.

Australia’s offer to fund the expansion of the Solomons own police force had stalled under the previous Solomon Islands government, which allowed Chinese police to enter villages to collect household and biometric data.

See also: Australia and New Zealand urge China to reveal details of Solomon Islands policing deal

Wale also said he was in discussions with Australia and the United States for financing for critical infrastructure such as ports.

Former Solomon Islands prime minister Sogavare rejected US offers of infrastructure grants, instead opting to partner with Chinese state companies.

Australia has sought to bind South Pacific countries closer by striking treaties with a string of small but strategically located island states, Tuvalu, Nauru and Papua New Guinea offering significant economic support in return for curbs on Chinese security ties.

Vanuatu and Fiji have said they are close to signing similar deals.

MADRID, June 6 — Pope Leo on Saturday urged global leaders to avoid dividing their electorates with “sterile simplifications” to gain popularity and called on them to listen to the world’s cries for peace, in a forceful speech opening a week-long tour of Spain.

Leo, who has ‌angered US President Donald Trump by criticising his anti-immigration policies and the Iran war, will meet homeless people in Madrid and migrants in the Canary Islands during a visit he has said he hopes will set an example to the world about respecting “every human being.”

“Today, the temptation to gain popularity by fanning the flames of polarization seems to have grown rather than diminished, and human dignity continues to be violated,” Leo said in a speech before King Felipe VI at the Royal Palace in Madrid.

“I invite everyone to set aside the divisive and polarising narratives of your societal reality and history, so as to overcome sterile simplifications through the fruitful appreciation of complexity,” he added.

Technology was partly to blame for creating an environment which magnifies prejudices and weakens critical thinking, Leo said. The world was crying “from its depths for peace”, he said.

He drew on Spain’s history as an example of peaceful co-habitation between religions and cultures, making reference to how Christians, Muslims and Jews cooperated during medieval times to enhance human knowledge by translating Arabic texts into Latin, ‌Spanish and Hebrew at the School of Translators in Toledo.

“Your own history suggests that a culture of encounter, not confrontation, is what fosters stability and ⁠prosperity. In reality, the message of peace, which at present unfortunately strikes some ⁠as naïve and others as confrontational, is welcomed by those who do not shut themselves off in ⁠preconceived ideologies, but are rather open to the truth,” ⁠he said.

Huge crowds expected for ⁠Pope

Crowds of people, some waving Vatican and Spanish flags, lined the street as Leo was driven to the Royal Palace. Huge gatherings are expected in the coming days for the first visit to Spain by a pope since 2011.

Leo, who has adopted a more assertive tone against the direction of global leadership ⁠in recent months, is scheduled to give more than 20 speeches during his first trip to a European Union country outside Italy, and will be the first pope to address the Spanish parliament.

Leo spent decades as a missionary and bishop in Peru before becoming pope last May, and will speak Spanish throughout most of the trip.

But when he meets migrants in Tenerife, part of the Spanish Canary Islands archipelago off the west coast of Africa, he expects to speak French, as many have come from Francophone Africa.

In sharp contrast to many leading Western powers, not least Trump’s United States, Socialist Prime ⁠Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government has opened a mass amnesty programme, allowing an estimated 500,000 immigrants to apply for legal status.

More than 3,000 people died in 2025 trying to reach the Canary Islands, often in makeshift dinghies, according to the NGO Caminando Fronteras.

Sanchez has been lauded ⁠abroad by some for criticising Trump, but at home is under heavy pressure from a string of corruption allegations against his party.

Meeting with victims of sexual ⁠abuse

During his June ⁠6-12 trip, the first US head of the Catholic Church will also inaugurate a new tower in Barcelona’s famed Sagrada Familia basilica and will meet survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, the Vatican said, adding that further details will be provided after the meeting.

A 2023 report by Spain’s human rights ombudsman estimated hundreds of thousands of victims ‌of clergy abuse there over decades, echoing similar scandals that have shaken the Church internationally.

Later on Saturday, the pope will meet young people in the square outside the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, home to the Real Madrid soccer club, and visit a Catholic charity for homeless people. — Reuters

Gabriel Raimondo put his A-levels on hold to run in Channel Islands and ‘represent the younger voice’

Most politicians who win an election in Jersey are probably satisfied with a pat on the back from their supporters and a mention in the local newspapers.

But after becoming one of the youngest politicians in the world, Gabriel Raimondo received a message of congratulations from Donald Trump.

Rock shochu and reggae shochu really do taste different from each other.

The island of Amami Oshima is part of Kagoshima Prefecture, and Kagoshima is usually pictured as making up the southwest tip of the island of Kyushu, one of Japan’s four main islands. Amami Oshima, though, is far, far away from the Kyushu coastline, so far away that the ferry from Kagoshima City takes 13 hours to get there.

▼ The route from Kagoshima City to Amami Oshima, which can alternatively be reached by plane from Tokyo in two and a half hours.

With its remote location, Amami Oshima is famous for its lush mangrove forests, beautiful beaches, and clear, sparkling ocean waters.

Oh, and it’s also famous for shochu, a distilled spirit with longstanding cultural connections to southwest Japan. Specifically, Awaji Oshima’s kokuto shochu, made with rice and brown sugar, is highly prized, and so on our recent visit to the island we didn’t just want to drink some, but also see how it’s made.

We lucked out when we contacted Nishihira Shuzo, an Amami Oshima shochu maker that’s been in business for 99 years, and they said they could offer us a tour of the facility, and a tasting too, with some very unique beverages to sample.

▼ The rustic exterior of the Nishihira Shuzo distillery

Despite being around for nearly a century, Nishihira Shuzo is still a family-run operation, and we were told that the fourth-generation owner of the business would be our guide. With shochu being a high-alcohol drink with an old-school vibe, our mental knee-jerk reaction was to expect a stern-looking, silver-bearded gentleman, but instead we were warmly greeted by Serena Nishihira and her friendly smile.

▼ Serena Nishihira

In addition to being a skilled shochu distiller and businesswoman, Nishihira is also a musician, which is something that’ll come into play later on. To start, though, she led us into the distillery’s production area.

As mentioned above, Nishihira Shuzo’s shochu is made from rice, so steaming the grains is the first step in making it. The distillery has a gigantic cylinder-shaped apparatus that’s used for washing and steaming, with a typical batch using about 400 kilograms (882 pounds) of rice.

Once the rice is cooked, it’s taken out of the drum and sprinkled with koji, a fermentation-triggering type of mold that’s also used in making sake. The rice is then put on racks in a temperature-controlled environment for its initial fermentation.

The next morning, the rice is put into jars with yeast and water to ferment for an additional five days. This isn’t a step that all shochu makers include in their process, but Nishihira Shuzo says it’s a key element of theirs.

After its time in the pot, the mixture is transferred into tanks and combined with liquified brown sugar, then given another two weeks to ferment.

That produces the fermented mash which is then distilled.

But that doesn’t mean Nishihira Shuzo can whip up a whole batch of kokuto shochu, start to finish, in just three weeks, because the final step (before bottling) is to age the shochu in tanks for at least one full year.

From a 400-kilogram load of rice, Nishihira Shuzo can produce roughly 800 1.8-liter (60.9-ounce) bottles of shochu. Luckily for us, some of those bottles end up in the distillery’s tasting room, which was the next place that Nishihira led us to.

The tasting room has chairs, a projector, and a screen set up for use for group events or musical performances, but we had the place to ourselves on this day.

Nishira poured us a selection of the company’s products, and we found them all extremely enjoyable. But just when we thought things couldn’t get any better, she led us through a door at the back of the room where we saw this.

Those are shochu barrels with speakers attached to them. And not some little mini speakers that you might have set up in your kitchen to listen to tunes while you cook, but concert-size amps!

This is where the Nishihira’s Sonic Aging Project takes place. While the speakers were quiet as we looked at them, Nishihira turns all of them on when the distillery starts its shift for the day, and has them play for eight hours. Different amps play different genres of music, with a total of six styles: house, reggae, hip-hop, Latin, rock, and shima uta, or Japanese southern island folk songs.

“We play the music at high volumes,” Nishihira explained, “Depending on the genre, the music produces different vibrations within the barrels, and we want to see how that affects the shochu.”

▼ The shima uta barrel

Like we said, Nishihira is a musician, so at first the idea of playing music for the shochu sounded like a whimsical, creative, but ultimately inconsequential idea. Nishihira, says, though, that with the barrels being music-treated for roughly 2,000 hours in a year, it really does make a difference.

Genres with more bass produce stronger vibrations in the barrel, and also with the shochu itself. That increased interplay between the container and its contents causes the wood to have a more significant influence on the color and flavor of the shochu that’s aging inside.

To prove this, Nishihira ushered us up to the second floor of the tasting area to try some of the Sonic Aging Project series.

Out of the six music genres, Nishihira says that reggae produces the strongest vibrations, and shima uta the softest. So we definitely wanted to taste those two, and she also poured us some of the rock shochu, which is somewhere between the other two in the spectrum.

And you know what? We really could taste the difference! The reggae shochu was darker in color and had a rich flavor with some notable bitter notes from the wood. The shima uta shochu, meanwhile, was lighter in color and sharper in taste, with a more pronounced sensation of alcohol. The rock shochu, sure enough, was a mid-point between the more distinct characteristics of the reggae and shima uta.

So which of the Sonic Aging Project shochu styles is the best? There’s actually no answer to that, Nishihira says. Just like your favorite musical genre is a matter of personal taste, so too will different people have different rankings for how much they like the different types Sonic Aging Project shochu, and they’ve all got their own unique charms.

Reservations for Nishihira Shuzo tours can be made through their website here, but if you can’t make it all the down to Amami Oshima, they also offer their shochu, including the Sonic Aging series, through their online store here.

Related: Nishihira Shuzo official website
Photos ©SoraNews24
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