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The Roman Catholic church on Thursday said it has sufficient support in the Philippine congress to defeat a controversial family planning bill promoting sex education and the use of contraceptives.

“The bishops are confident they have the numbers,” said Maria Fenny Tatad, executive director of the church lobby group Bishops-Legislators Caucus of the Philippines.

Only 99 members of the 238-member House of Representatives have openly said they will support the Reproductive Health Care Act, while the rest are expected to side with the church, Tatad said.

Population control is a highly politicised issue in the Philippines, where more than 80 percent of the 90 million population are Catholics.

The church, which wields considerable public influence, frowns on any artificial form of birth control and has been waging a high-profile campaign to block the passage of the bill, which is now before congress.

International aid agencies and economists have backed the bill saying it is crucial if the Philippines is to curb its annual population growth rate of 2.04 percent, one of Asia’s highest.

The bill seeks to establish a national family planning programme that would include sex education and advice on birth control, which the church considers “immoral.”

Such provisions go against established church doctrine and puts the social fabric of the mainly Catholic Philippines in peril, said Father Melvin Castro, head of the Episcopal Commission on Family and Life.

“We can’t simply follow what the world wants us to do,” he told reporters.

He said the church was now drafting a parallel bill with the support of some senior members of Congress, a majority of whom are Catholics.

The bill is still in its initial phase, but is expected to include provisions on regulating over-the-counter sales of contraceptives without prescription, as well as controlling the sale of condoms.

Dell Inc’s Chief Technology Officer Kevin Kettler plans to leave the company in January after 13 years with the U.S. computer maker, a Dell spokesman said on Wednesday.

“This is something Kevin’s been planning for some time and we’re working to find a successor,” David Frink said.

Kettler has played a lead role in shaping Dell’s technology strategy and pushing across-the-board innovation at the Round Rock, Texas-based company, Frink added.

Kettler will leave the company in mid-January to spend more time with his family and focus on his varied interests, Frink said.

Technology news site CNET earlier reported his departure.

Kettler is a founding member of an Austin-based charity organization and also owns a restaurant in the city.

Casey Jones, a vice president of marketing at Dell, also left the company earlier this month. Frink said his decision was personal and Jones continues to be a consultant to the company.

The two executives’ departure have nothing to do with Dell’s ongoing cost-cutting effort, Frink said.

The No. 2 computer maker, near the end of a program of 8,900 job cuts, is offering voluntary severance packages and has instituted a global hiring freeze.

Just last week, Dell asked employees to consider taking up to five days of unpaid vacation as it struggles to cut costs in the face of weak global demand.

A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled against a man trying to patent a business idea, a decision with far-ranging implications for the financial services and high-tech industries, which have major players on both sides of the issue.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled against Bernard Bilski, who wanted to patent a method for hedging against weather-related effects on businesses. Because his process did not involve a particular machine and did not physically transform anything, the court said, the process was not eligible for a patent.

Relying heavily on 1970s-era U.S. Supreme Court decisions that established the “machine-or-transformation test,” Chief Judge Paul Michel wrote for a nine-judge majority that Bilski’s patent application did not meet this definition of “process” under patent law.

The court affirmed the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s denial of Bilski’s patent, saying the agency’s interpretation of the “process” was correct.

Consulting firm Accenture and banking company Goldman Sachs Group Inc., among others, believed that processes like Bilski’s should be eligible for patents.

Denying the patent “eliminates a whole class of innovations from protection — business methods that rely on humans for execution,” Accenture wrote in a fact sheet arguing for reversal of the patent office’s decision.

But Bank of America Corp., Wachovia Corp. and a host of other companies argued in court briefs that allowing abstract ideas to be patented “hinders rather than promotes innovation.”

Companies that rely on computer-related patents could take heart from the court’s statement that processing data counts as “transformation,” making them patent-eligible. But the court punted on the question of whether mentioning a computer is enough to argue that a process involves a machine.

Two judges filed long dissents, arguing the decision could disrupt industries operating with patents that could be affected by the decision.

American economist Paul Krugman on Monday won the 2008 Nobel prize for economics for work that helps explain why some countries dominate international trade.

Here are some key facts on the winner and the prize:

* The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the prize recognised Krugman’s formulation of a new theory to answer questions such as what is driving worldwide urbanisation.

* Krugman’s work has integrated the previously disparate research fields of international trade and economic geography, the prize committee said.

* His new theory sheds light on why global trade is dominated by countries that not only have similar conditions, but also trade in similar products.

* Krugman has criticised the administration of President George W. Bush for policies that he argues led to the current financial crisis.

* Krugman’s theories have helped explain how self-reinforcing processes of urbanisation and increased large-scale production, as well as higher real wages and a more diverse supply of goods, can combine to divide regions into a high-technology urbanized core and a less developed periphery.

* Krugman was born in New York City in 1953 and received a PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

* He has been professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, New Jersey, since 2000.

* Krugman has written for publications such as the New York Times and Foreign Affairs and is the author of 20 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals.

* He has also taught at Yale, MIT and Stanford University.

* His current work centres on economic and currency crises.

Iraq’s prime minister sought safeguards Sunday for small religious communities in this mainly Muslim country as Christians protested parliament’s decision to stop setting aside seats for minorities on provincial councils.

In Baghdad, a series of explosions struck mostly Shiite areas, killing at least 32 people and wounding nearly 100, police said. The attacks appeared aimed at reviving sectarian tensions that once threatened to plunge the nation into civil war.

Parliament last week approved a new law mandating elections in most of Iraq’s 18 provinces. But the law removed a system that reserved a few legislative seats for Christians and other religious minorities.

Lawmakers cited a lack of census data to determine what the quotas should be. But many Christians saw the move as an effort to marginalize their community.

“I think that some political groups are pushing the remaining Christians to leave Iraq,” worshipper Afram Razzaq-Allah said after services at a Catholic church in Baghdad. “They want us to feel that we are no longer Iraqis.”

In a letter sent to parliament Sunday, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appealed to the legislators and the electoral commission to restore the quota system.

“The minorities should be fairly represented in the provincial councils and their rights should be guaranteed,” al-Maliki wrote.

Hundreds of Christians staged street protests after Sunday church services in and around Mosul, a northern city where many of the country’s Christians live. Some said the removal of the quotas is an attempt to force them to leave Iraq.

“This is an unjust decision and it affects our rights as Christians,” Matti Galia, a local politician, said at a rally in Mosul. “We are original citizens in this country. The politicians’ goal was to divide the Iraqi people and create more struggles. Indirectly, they are telling us to leave Iraq.”

Iraq’s Christians have been targeted by Muslim militants since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, with priests, churches and Christian-owned businesses attacked. The violence has led many Christians to flee the country.

Sectarian violence has receded since U.S. troop reinforcements were sent in last year. However, U.S. commanders have warned that extremist groups such as al-Qaida in Iraq are still trying to rekindle sectarian warfare to undermine the U.S.-backed Iraqi government.

The string of explosions in the capital Sunday began near sundown as Muslims were preparing for Iftar, the meal that breaks the daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan.

The deadliest blasts occurred in the Karradah neighborhood, where a parked car loaded with explosives blew up in a commercial area about 7 p.m., killing 19 people and wounding 72, police and hospital officials said.

Police said that about 90 minutes earlier, two car bombs exploded nearly simultaneously in the Shurta Rabaa and Amil districts of west Baghdad, but the U.S. military said later that the car in Amil blew up due to an electrical fire.

Twelve people were killed and 35 wounded in the Shurta Rabaa blast, and one person died and two were injured in the Amil explosion, police said.

Also Sunday, snipers fired on an Iraqi army checkpoint, killing two soldiers and a civilian in the eastern Zayona neighborhood of Baghdad. A roadside bomb killed an Iraqi soldier on a patrol in Mansour, a mostly Sunni area in the city’s west, police officials said.

Two civilians were killed in an armed attack in the town of Khan Bani Saad by a group believed tied to al-Qaida, a police official in Diyala province said. The town is near the provincial capital of Baqouba.

The same official said two Iraqi soldiers were killed and 10 wounded when a bomb targeted them in Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad late Saturday.

Also Sunday, an Iraqi official said the country signed preliminary deals with General Electric Co. and Siemens AG to upgrade the electricity grid, which has been ravaged by years of war, sanctions and neglect.

Lengthy power outages have been common in Iraq, with some Baghdad areas getting as little as four hours of electricity a day. The problem has been a major cause of discontent during the summer when the heat is punishing.

The coalition of the willing that went to war in Iraq is becoming the coalition of the disappearing.

President Bush and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani formally thanked the diminishing band of allies at a meeting Tuesday night on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. The low-key, low-profile gathering stood in stark contrast to the early days of Bush’s administration, when hot debates over the war formed the centerpiece of the annual global forum.

“It’s a pleasure to be with nations that have helped your democracy grow,” Bush told Talabani in a room packed with representatives of more than two dozen countries that have contributed in Iraq. “A lot of people around the world have made sacrifices along with the Iraqi people to enable a country to emerge from the shadows of tyranny — become a hopeful example for nations around the world.”

At its height, the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq included 50,000 troops from more than three dozen countries other than the United States. But by the next 90 days or so, that global coalition will shrink to just a handful of nations, according to White House advisers.

The White House says that isn’t because international support is dwindling, but because security gains and the increased capability of Iraqi forces allow outside forces to do more with less.

“Many of the troops of the countries represented here have returned home, but they have done so on success,” Bush said at the reception.

Iraq is drafting bilateral agreements with the U.S. and other countries to replace a U.N. mandate that authorizes their presence now but which expires at year’s end. The White House has not disclosed the names of countries likely to remain in Iraq after the expiration of the U.N. mandate, saying it’s up to the Iraqi government to seal each agreement on its own.

The president was careful not to imply that all is well in Iraq.

Bush’s military buildup last year — along with several key local factors as well — did help to quell violence. But security gains were meant to provide breathing room for political reconciliation, and progress there has been spotty.

On Wednesday, Iraq’s parliament overwhelmingly approved a provincial elections law, setting the stage for local elections believed to be an essential step to building a long-term peace among the country’s rival religious and ethnic communities. Lasting power-sharing agreements have been elusive in Iraq so far. The law still needs approval by the country’s three-member presidential panel

“Mr. President, we’ve still got work to do,” Bush told Talabani. “But there is no doubt that the situation in Iraq has changed substantially.”

According to a list provided by the White House, representatives of the following nations were recognized at the meeting for past or ongoing contributions: Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Tonga, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

“I’m here on behalf of the Iraqi people to express my deepest appreciation for all countries who participated in the breaking Iraq from worst kind of dictatorship,” Talabani said. “I want to express my deepest condolences for your brave soldiers and civilians who have lost their lives while standing up for our shared values of freedom and democracy.”

In the fall of 2002, Bush went to the United Nations and got a strong U.N. Security Council resolution demanding that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein give up all unconventional weapons and open his country to new arms inspections. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s congressional testimony in early 2003 documenting Saddam’s weapons programs was based, as it turned out later, on faulty U.S. intelligence.

But when Bush went to war in Iraq in spring 2003, he did so without U.N. backing — amassing the coalition on his own instead, with often tiny contributions from other countries. The United States has always contributed the vast majority of troops — 250,000 out of 300,000 at its height.

Bush ends his three-day stay in New York on Wednesday with a meeting on free trade with leaders of nations in the Western Hemisphere. The United States has signed free trade agreements with 12 nations in the hemisphere that represent two-thirds of the region’s gross domestic product and one-third of the U.S. global bilateral trade.

The president is pushing Congress to approve free trade deals with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.

“It’s important for the American people to understand that exports benefit workers,” he said Wednesday, standing next to Mexican President Felipe Calderon at the Council of the Americas in New York. “Half of our growth last year is the result of trade. Therefore, it’s in our interest to continue to open up markets, particularly in our own neighborhood.”

Sept 23: Four people have been killed and rescuers are searching for 13 miners trapped in a flooded shaft after Typhoon Hagupit hit the northern Philippines, officials said on Tuesday.

The miners failed to return home yesterday from the gold mine in the mountain town of Itogon, provincial governor Nestor Fongwan said as he ordered a search and rescue operation.

They were last reported at a depth of 700 feet (213 metres) below ground, and Fongwan said it was unclear whether they were alive or have drowned.

“We have not recovered any of the 13 miners,” provincial police chief Eugene Martin said.

“These are small-scale miners working for a private enterprise.”

Landslides in the nearby mountain resort of Baguio killed a 76-year-old woman, her son, and another woman, civil defence officials there said today.

Hagupit was poised to slam into China’s south coast later today packing winds of 195 kilometres per hour.

The typhoon had earlier killed one other person in the Philippines and left two missing, while 2,000 people were displaced

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu Limited (ELCOT) to undertake research in the areas including open source software and e-governance.

The MoU was exchanged here Friday between M.R. Rajagopalan, director of C-DAC, Chennai and Santosh Babu, managing director, ELCOT in the presence of union Minister for Communications and Information Technology A. Raja.

The alliance is for deploying C-DAC developed Bharat Operating System Solutions (BOSS) Linux across the state in all government departments.

It is for their productivity application and e-governance applications, large-scale promotional activities in the areas of open source software, e-governance and setting up of BOSS Linux support centre within ELCOT campus.

A U.N. inquiry into intelligence allegations of secret atom bomb research in Iran has reached a standstill because of Iranian failure to cooperate, an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report said on Monday.Iran said the IAEA bore the blame for lack of progress. A senior Iranian official, who asked not to be named, said it must change its approach and work in a “legal and logical” manner.

A confidential IAEA report said Iran had raised the number of centrifuges enriching uranium to 3,820, compared with 3,300 in May, with over 2,000 more being installed.

“We have arrived at a gridlock,” said a senior U.N. official familiar with the latest report, which urged Iran to take the intelligence allegations seriously to defuse suspicions its nuclear work is not entirely peaceful.

But Iran seemed some way from refining enough uranium to build a nuclear weapon, if it chose, the report indicated.

Iran had stockpiled 480 kg (1,050 pounds) of low-enriched uranium so far. It would need 1,700 kg (3,740 pounds) to convert into high-enriched uranium for fuelling an atom bomb, said U.N. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“That would be a significant quantity, one unit of HEU, and would take on the order of two years,” said one official.

On the day the report emerged, Iran announced air defence exercises in half of the Islamic Republic’s 30 provinces.

“(Air defence commander Brigadier General Ahmad Mighani) emphasised that the enemies would receive a serious response for any aggression and we would surprise them and make them regretful,” the ISNA agency in Tehran reported.

Washington says it wants a diplomatic solution to the nuclear standoff, but has not ruled out military action if that fails. Iran, the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter, says its nuclear programme is a peaceful drive to generate electricity.

FULL DISCLOSURE

In its last report in May, the IAEA said Iran appeared to be withholding information needed to explain intelligence that it had linked projects to process uranium, test high explosives and modify a missile cone in a way suitable for a nuclear warhead.

IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei called on Iran then for “full disclosure” — namely, going beyond flat denials without providing access to sites, documentation or relevant officials for interviews to substantiate their stance.

Monday’s report said Iran had done nothing to that end.

“Regrettably the agency has not been able to make any substantial progress on the alleged (weaponisation) studies and other associated key remaining issues which remain of serious concern,” the report said.

It said IAEA investigators had stressed to Iran that the intelligence documentation was detailed and consistent enough “that it needs to be taken seriously (by Iran), particularly in light of the fact that, as acknowledged by Iran, some of the information contained in it was factually accurate,” it said.

“Unless Iran provides such transparency, and implements the (IAEA’s) Additional Protocol (allowing wider-ranging, snap U.N. inspections), the agency will not be able to provide credible assurances about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran,” said the report.

It also reaffirmed that in continued defiance of the U.N. Security Council, Iran had not suspended enrichment-related work, continued to expand centrifuge capacity and was testing a advanced machines, able to refine uranium 2-3 times faster.

A serious fire on a freight lorry Thursday shut down the Channel Tunnel link between Britain and France, leaving thousands of travellers stranded but injuring no one, operators Eurotunnel said.Eurotunnel officials in France said 32 lorry drivers had been evacuated from the freight shuttle link following a fire on a lorry some 10 km from the French entrance to the tunnel at Calais.

‘All the train drivers are safe. No one is at risk, no customers are at risk,’ a spokeswoman for Eurotunnel said.

Services are expected to be closed for several days.

As a knock-on effect, thousands of rail passengers on the Eurostar train network linking London to Paris and Brussels were stranded Thursday.

A Eurostar spokesman said there were no passengers trains in the tunnel at the time of the incident, and the trains were returning to their nearest station.

Each Eurostar train carries more than 700 passengers. The passenger trains travel on the same track.

The fire on the freight lorry broke out at around 1400 GMT Thursday on a freight lorry travelling from Folkestone, in Britain, to Calais.

Both French and British fire crews were dispatched to the incident.

Safety procedures in the tunnel, which was inaugurated in 1994, were reviewed after a serious fire on a freight train in November, 1996.