, Sep 04 (IPS) - The 43rd Pacific Islands Forum was held in Rarotonga, Cook Islands, from 28 to 30 August 2012 involved leaders from the 16 member Pacific nations including Australia and New Zealand. This year's theme: “Large Ocean Island States – the Pacific Challenge” with major topics including climate change, trade and fishing.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton along with more than 500 officials from nearly 60 countries including China, and European Union attended as observers and participated in other meetings in the Cook Islands, some 3000 km northeast of New Zealand.

SINGAPORE, Sep 04 (IPS) - How to get Singaporeans to have more babies has become a major part of the debate about this country’s future, and the government is encouraging people to speak out on the issue.

BANGKOK, Sep 04 (IPS) - When Philippines President Benigno Aquino III delivered his annual state of the union address in July, he appealed to the country’s lawmakers to break a  deadlock on progressive birth control laws in this predominantly Catholic nation.

LUANDA, Sep 04 (IPS) - Question marks hang over the legitimacy of Angola’s general election as Africa’s second-longest serving leader Jose Eduardo dos Santos has won a five-year term in office following his party’s landslide victory.

AVARUA, Cook Islands, Sep 04 (IPS) - The world’s largest marine park is due to be launched in the Cook Islands located in the Pacific Ocean about 3,000 km from New Zealand. Covering an area of almost a million square kilometres, the park will be three times the size of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and twice as large as the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean that topped the list of marine protected areas (MPAs) for two years.

GUATEMALA CITY, Sep 03 (IPS) - In a country as vulnerable to natural disasters as Guatemala, a “state of public calamity” is frequently declared – to the joy of contractors, which find a good opportunity to line their pockets.

CARACAS, Sep 03 (IPS) - Up to 80 Yanomami men, women and children in a remote community in the Amazon jungle in southern Venezuela were reportedly killed in early July by wildcat gold miners from Brazil, according to indigenous organisations.

CAIRO, Sep 03 (IPS) - The emergency room of Mansoura International Hospital is closed, a lock and chain securing its entrance. Ambulances carrying stroke and burn victims are ordered to go elsewhere.

BRISBANE, Sep 03 (IPS) - In Papua New Guinea, the largest island nation in Melanesia in the southwest Pacific, where more than 60 percent of major crimes involve guns, a burgeoning illegal arms trade is associated with lack of employment growth and low human security, with vulnerable communities suffering the consequences.