Talk:Nauru

Some things that might be interesting to put somewhere in here:

The diet of Nauru(ians?) under highest standards of living were mainly canned foods, leading to high obesity rate.

They've been moving into off-shore banking, a lot of Russian mob money and other types of questionable cash has been sent there. As well as off-shore corporations.

~ender

There's a lot of information in the German Wikipedia, see de:Portal Nauru. -- CdaMVvWgS 18:52, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The only country in the world with no official capital?

I think neither the Vatican City has any official capital. Jakro64 22:14, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Most reference books seem to list the capital of the Vatican City as (wait for it) the Vatican City. Matthewmayer 15:54, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Smallest population?

It is the world's smallest independent republic both in terms of population and land area. Exactly the same is said about Tuvalu. Which is correct? The Singing Badger 21:59, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

According to the Tuvalu entry, "Tuvalu is a constitutional monarchy". http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/tv.html : "constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary democracy; began debating republic status in 1992" Apokrif 08:37, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Money laundering

This text was recently added by an IP user (only contribution to date):

"Nauru is currently battling the United States in Australian court over an underground agreement gone sour. Nauru claims that agents representing the United States government offered billions of dollars worth of economic recovery to the island in exchange for new legislation limiting the efficacy of overseas money laundering and tax evasion as well as the establishment of a Nauruan "stooge" embassy in China to function under United States control as a means of secretly ushering defecting North Korean scientists and officials across the border, including Kyong Won-ha, the scientest supposedly responsible for much of Pyongyang's nuclear program. This initiative was termed, "Operation Weasel". When news of this agreement came to light after Nauru faithfully followed through with the necessary legislation and the preliminaries of the embassy (which rightfully drew suspicion from China as it was staffed entirely by westerners), the United States responded that the agents who made the deal with Nauru never had the authority to make such a contract, and Nauru has not yet received the promised aid. Nauru's case against the United States is currently still pending, but preliminary judgements favor the island nation over the superpower."

Can anyone shed any light on the truth of this?

Matthewmayer 14:11, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The topic is real, there were a number of Australian newspaper articles about "Operation Weasel", the entirety of which is way more convoluted than the above paragraph implies, as the goal of "Operation Weasel" was to create a safe way for North Korean officials to defect, and the above-mentioned aid was supposedly part of the US's incentive for Nauru's assistance. Oy. Cleaning up the money laundering was secondary, and the US was applying all sorts of diplomatic pressure on that front. This needs cleanup. Perhaps I'll have to research a page on Operation Weasel. For now, here are some random links of varying legitimacy: [1] (http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9396360), [2] (http://www.ljonn.com/4_03_4.html), [3] (http://www.solport.com/roundtable/archives/000068.php) . -- Kaszeta 21:33, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)