Bougainville votes decisively for independence from Papua New Guinea

People living in an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea voted overwhelmingly in favor of seceding from the Pacific island country and forming their own nation, results of a nonbinding referendum showed Wednesday.The vote, held among residents of Bougainville in the country's easternmost part for two weeks from late November, was the culmination of a peace agreement signed at the end of the 1988-1998 Bougainville Civil War.Asked to choose between "independence" and "greater autonomy" from Papua New Guinea, over 97 percent of the some 180,000 people who took part chose independence, accordi…READ FULL ARTICLE