A flotilla of small boats rescued all 47 passengers and crew from an Air Niugini flight that crashed into the sea short of the runway at an airport in the tiny South Pacific nation of Micronesia on Friday.

Three men who had been missing for three days were rescued from a deserted Pacific island after a plane spotted a gigantic "help" spelled out with palm leaves.

The players were mostly teenagers, many of them away from their villages in Micronesia for the first time. And as it turned out, on the steepest of learning curves in the Pacific Games soccer tournament.