Random News Generator- Wallis and Futuna

Oh, yes, this is how you come back from a week off. Why did I put these guys in the list in the first place?

First off, let's note where Wallis and Futuna is. Wallis and Futuna is a French territory in Polynesia, though it isn't part of French Polynesia or even anywhere particularly near it.

Here's a map of the South Pacific, linked due to size. Go north from New Zealand, find the yellow blotch. That's Fiji. Just north of that is Wallis and Futuna. Go east from there and find the big pink blotch. That's French Polynesia. The total population is about 15,000 as of 2009.

The whole idea behind the Random News Generator is to show that there's stuff going on in the world beyond the generally agreed-upon hotspots. The thing is, though, you do need at least one person in the area saying something about what's going on in town in order to find out these things so they can be spread around to others.

That appears to not be happening, or at least, not to the extent that it can be found online. News out of Wallis and Futuna seems to come at about the rate of one or two tidbits a month, such as the fact that they've elected Vetelino Nau to lead their national assembly, or that they supported Francois Hollande in the recent French presidential election, or the news in January that they couldn't attend the Pacific Arts Festival on the Solomon Islands due to lack of funds, or the comment from a politician in New Caledonia suggesting that they take Wallis and Futuna on as a province because, according to him, France barely cares. Going on Google News and typing 'Wallis and Futuna'- the usual method for finding RNG stories- merely returns a lot of unrelated stories where the name is simply a keyword placed in a long list of other geographic keywords meant to drive up the hit counter.

So on that, and with really nothing better to go on, here's a video on the area from last year celebrating their 50th anniversary of being a French territory.