{"id":1161,"date":"2008-10-24T07:40:48","date_gmt":"2008-10-24T06:40:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=1161"},"modified":"2008-10-24T07:40:48","modified_gmt":"2008-10-24T06:40:48","slug":"forgotten-world-150-palau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=1161","title":{"rendered":"Forgotten World (150): Palau"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The tiny northern Pacific nation of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Palau\">Palau<\/a> &#8211; which only became independent of United States administration in 1994 &#8211; consists of more than 200 volcanic and coral islands, many of them surrounded by a single barrier reef, and its tropical waters are home to an abundance of marine life, making the pace a paradise for divers.<br \/>\nThe population of just 20,000 relies on financial aid from the USA, provided under a Compact of Free Association which gives the US responsibility for Palau&#8217;s defence and the right to maintain military bases there. Direct aid is set to end in 2009.<br \/>\nTourism is low key, though growing in economic importance. Many visitors come from Taiwan, with which Palau has diplomatic ties. Taiwanese aid boosts the economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The tiny northern Pacific nation of Palau &#8211; which only became independent of United States administration in 1994 &#8211; consists of more than 200 volcanic and coral islands, many of them surrounded by a single barrier reef, and its tropical waters are home to an abundance of marine life, making the pace a paradise for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}