A federal judge ruled that the tiny...

A federal judge ruled that the tiny South Pacific island Republic of Palau must pay an international consortium of banks more than $44 million on defaulted loans. The republic, a 200-island archipelago in the south central Pacific Ocean about 600 miles east of the Philippines, borrowed more than $30 million to build an electric power generating station in the early 1980s. The nation, once a U.S. trust territory, in March defaulted on the loans and the consortium that had guaranteed the loans had to pay them off.