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.

ABU DHABI, Oct 6, 2007 (AFP) - The United Arab Emirates said on Saturday it has issued passports for 1,294 formerly stateless residents and will complete the process of naturalising an unspecified number of people this year.

The group, who are members of 296 families, will receive their passports soon, interior ministry official Brigadier Abdul Aziz al-Sharifi was quoted by state news agency WAM as saying.

HAVANA, Oct 5, 2007 (AFP) - Cuba now has some 2,500 centenarians -- in a population that just tops 11 million, state media reported Friday.

Cuba's life expectancy is 77.

And gerontologist Roberto Dieguez told the Communist Party newspaper Granma the centenarian census had now hit about 2,500.

Most of the super-seniors are women. And there could be genetic, gender and emotional factors in the longevity trends, said another gerontologist Alberto Fernandez.

OTTAWA, Sept 27, 2007 (AFP) - The population of Canada increased by one percent to almost 33 million people over the past year, animated by a booming oil industry and global warming, Statistics Canada said Thursday.

Oil-rich Alberta province led the charge with a 3.1 percent population hike, its strongest gain since 1981-1982, followed by British Columbia and Nunavut in the far north, the government agency said in a statement.

Growth in Ontario, the economic hub of Canada, meanwhile, was slowest in 25 years -- at 0.8 percent.

TOKYO, Sept 23, 2007 (AFP) - Japanese twin sisters on Sunday celebrated their 100th birthdays together, saying that their secrets for living long included eating healthy food and not worrying too much.

Saki Takamiya and Tsuki Takashima, both living in Fukushima north of Tokyo, received bouquets of flowers and other gifts, surrounded by some 100 people including dozens of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

NICE, France, Sept 19, 2007 (AFP) - France's oldest citizen, a former librarian from the Riviera city of Cannes who saw the turn of two centuries and two World Wars, has died aged 113, her family said Wednesday.

'She died peacefully, her heart gave up,' said Simone Capony's nephew Rene.

Partially deaf and blind, and unable to walk following a hip operation 15 years ago, Simone Capony had barely left her home in the hills above Cannes for three decades, but refused to be admitted to a retirement home.

BUCHAREST, Sept 18, 2007 (AFP) - Romanian President Traian Basescu said Tuesday he was worried his country was 'going through a demographic desert' because of a drop in birthrates since 1990.

'In 17 years, Romania has lost 1.4 million people due to emigration and the lower birth rate,' Basescu said during a conference on population in the central town of Sibiu.

'Today, we count only one child per woman. If this birth rate remains as it is, we will only have 16 million residents in Romania in 2050, 11 million in 2075 and 8.5 million in 2100,' he warned.

TOKYO, Sept 18, 2007 (AFP) - The world's oldest man celebrated his 112th birthday Tuesday with a healthy Japanese breakfast of rice, miso soup and seaweed, saying he wanted to live forever.

Tomoji Tanabe, who has been the world's oldest man since January this year, lives with his son and family in Japan's southern prefecture of Miyazaki. He keeps a diary and reads the newspaper every day.

'I want to live indefinitely. I don't want to die,' he said as he marked his birthday, Kyodo News reported.

BEIJING, Sept 14, 2007 (AFP) - Chinese officials and Communist Party members who fail to respect the country's one-child policy will be barred from promotion, state press reported Friday.

'Obeying the family planning policy will be taken as a fundamental standard for the promotion of cadres, the election of deputies to Party congresses, people's congresses and political advisors at all levels,' the Communist Party said in a directive quoted by the Xinhua news agency.

SINGAPORE, Sept 11, 2007 (AFP) - Southeast Asia must start to address the challenges posed by its growing ranks of greying citizens which, if ignored, could have long-term political implications for the region, experts say.

Some Southeast Asian countries such as Singapore are already drawing up plans to tackle the matter but others have yet to fully grasp the seriousness of the issue, they said.

'From my perspective, it is really important,' said Aris Ananta, a senior research fellow with Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

JERUSALEM, Sept 10, 2007 (AFP) - The population of Israel stands at 7.1 million, the nation's central bureau of statistics said in a report released on Monday, days before the start of the Jewish new year.

Seventy-six percent of the country's population is Jewish and 20 percent Arab, the statistics office said. The latter figure includes the estimated 200,000 Palestinians in annexed east Jerusalem, who hold Israeli ID cards, but are not citizens of the Jewish state.

BEIJING, Sept 7, 2007 (AFP) - Chinese police have busted a baby trafficking ring that has seen dozens of people accused of buying and selling at least 40 infants, state press reported Friday.

So far 47 baby trafficking gang members in southwestern China's Yunnan province and 10 others in Shandong to the east have been arrested for their involvement in the trade, the Beijing News said.

The gang was accused of gathering the babies in Gejiu area of Yunnan and trafficking them to areas around Shandong's Tancheng city, both rural regions, it said.

LONGYEARBYEN, Norway, Aug 30, 2007 (AFP) - With its harsh and frozen landscape, the Svalbard archipelago, the last outpost before the North Pole, is a surprising haven for people from all walks of life, some as far away as Thailand.

A cluster of islands belonging to Norway in the increasingly strategic Arctic region, Svalbard is home to an odd mix of Russian and Norwegian miners, rejected asylum seekers and international researchers, including scientists watching for damage from global warming.

BEIJING, Aug 25, 2007 (AFP) - Fearing the approach of a ticking 'bachelor bomb,' China is planning tougher laws against sex-selective abortions that have boosted the number of boys in recent years, state media said Saturday.

The State Council, or cabinet, is drafting special regulations that specify punishments for parents and doctors who abort foetuses after discovering they are female, the Xinhua news agency reported.

BEIJING, Aug 24, 2007 (AFP) - Chinese police on Friday stopped the wife of a blind activist who exposed government abuses of the one-child policy from going to the Philippines to receive an award, colleagues said.

Yuan Weijing had been going to pick up a human rights prize for her blind husband Chen Guangcheng, 35, imprisoned for unmasking abuses such as forced sterilisations and women being made to have abortions eight months into term.

BEIJING, Aug 24, 2007 (AFP) - Chinese police on Friday stopped the wife of a blind activist who exposed government abuses of the one-child policy from going to the Philippines to receive an award for her husband, colleagues said.

Yuan Weijing had been going to pick up a human rights prize for her blind husband Chen Guangcheng, 35, imprisoned for unmasking abuses such as forced sterilisations and women being made to have abortions eight months into term.

NEW DELHI, Aug 15, 2007 (AFP) - Eighteen-year-old Rahul Banerjee left his home in poverty-struck eastern India dreaming of a job at a fast-food eatery in Delhi -- but in today's booming times, employers want a high-school diploma.

With just a primary school certificate, Banerjee, one of a growing army of young workers that Indian policy-makers hail as the country's 'demographic dividend,' fears all he will find is employment as a servant.

NEW DELHI, Aug 15, 2007 (AFP) - Eighteen-year-old Rahul Banerjee left his home in poverty-struck eastern India dreaming of a job at a fast-food eatery in Delhi -- but in today's booming times, employers want a high-school diploma.

With just a primary school certificate, Banerjee, one of a growing army of young workers that Indian policy-makers hail as the country's 'demographic dividend,' fears all he will find is employment as a servant.

BEIJING, Aug 5, 2007 (AFP) - Chinese officials have been told to ditch the hardline propaganda behind the nation's one-child policy in favour of a softer touch to ease public opposition, state media reported Sunday.

Menacing slogans on posters daubed on walls advocating forced abortions and telling parents to have only one child or face harsh retribution have damaged the image of the policy, introduced in 1979, the Xinhua news agency said.

TOKYO, Aug 2, 2007 (AFP) - Japan's population dropped for the second straight year in the 12 months to March despite a slight rebound in the country's low birthrate, the government said Thursday.

The government report said births went up for the first time in eight years but that it was offset by the number of Japanese who moved overseas.

The Japanese population in the fiscal year to March dropped to 127,053,471, down 1,554 from the previous year, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

DUBAI, Aug 1, 2007 (AFP) - The United Arab Emirates got its own, first-ever comic book superhero in July. His mission is to promote national identity in a state overrun by foreigners where natives could become negligible in 20 years.

A cultural melting pot, the seven-member oil-rich Gulf federation stands out as an oasis of prosperity in the troubled Middle East, and Dubai as the jewel in the crown.

But for native Emiratis, this glory has come at a price.

DUBLIN, July 31, 2007 (AFP) - Ireland's population grew at the fastest rate for 25 years last year with more than twice as many births as deaths adding to an immigration surge, official figures showed Tuesday.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) said 64,237 babies were born during the year with 27,479 deaths recorded, the highest natural increase in population since 1982.