Eduardo Ermita said the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the rebel group negotiating to end nearly 40 years of rebellion in the south, has also welcomed the appointment of retired Lieutenant-General Rodolfo Garcia.

The government has been talking with Muslim rebels to end a conflict that has killed more than 120,000 people and displaced 2 million in the south of the mainly Roman Catholic country.

Talks over the size and wealth of a proposed homeland for 3 million Muslims have been stalled since September 2006 although backroom discussions continued, resulting in a breakthrough in December when Manila agreed to grant Muslims the right of self-determination.

Some 3.3 billion people will live in cities by 2008, a report by the U.N. population agency report said. By 2030, the number of city dwellers is expected to climb to 5 billion. Without proper planning, cities across the globe face the treat of overwhelming poverty and limited opportunities for youth, said U.N. Population Fund Executive Director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid. "In 2008, half of the world's population will be in urban areas, and we are not ready for them," said Obaid told The Associated Press in London.

A revival in religious interest has been a surprising characteristic of rapid urbanization, according to the report.
Urbanization is often associated with a shift toward secular values. But the growth of new religious movements?such as radical Islam in the Middle East, Pentecostal Christianity in Latin America and the cult of Shivaji in India?has been a primarily urban phenomena, the report said.

When cities fail to meet the needs of growing populations, religious beliefs tend to become extreme, said Obaid, who is also a U.N. undersecretary-general. "Extremism is often a reaction to rapid and sudden change or to a feeling of exclusion and injustice, and the cities can be a basis for that if they are not well managed," Obaid said.

The study by the United Nations University suggests climate change is making desertification "the greatest environmental challenge of our times". If action is not taken, the report warns that some 50 million people could be displaced within the next 10 years. The study was produced by more than 200 experts from 25 countries.

This report does not pull any punches - desertification is an environmental crisis of global proportions, it says, and one third of the Earth's population are potential victims of its creeping effect.

The announcement came just hours after he stood down as UK prime minister and shortly before it was announced he was to quit as a member of parliament.

Mr Blair said a solution to Mid-East problems was possible but it required "huge intensity and work".

He faces an uphill task to address Palestinian misgivings over his ties to Israel and the US, say observers.

During his final prime minister's questions on Wednesday, Mr Blair was asked about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

He told MPs: "The absolute priority is to try to give effect to what is now the consensus across the international community - that the only way of bringing stability and peace to the Middle East is a two-state solution."

Never before has there been a summer's day quite like it - but scientists say that Monday's monsoon-like downpours are the increasingly strange shape of things to come. Rain is only to be expected, naturally, in the weeks of Glastonbury and Wimbledon: our traditional summer would be scarcely be the same without either of these very British events suffering at least one washout. But Monday was something else altogether: the wettest day in what looks like being the wettest June on record.

More rain fell across Britain in just 24 hours than we usually receive during the whole of what is supposed to be "flaming June". The Environment Agency officially describes the deluge as "unprecedented" - and adds that, as a result, flooding went "off the scale".

But this is not simply an act of Nature. This flooding was also a result of systematic, shortsighted failings on part of successive governments. Now questions must be answered:

- Why has half the new housing built since the Second World War been built on flood-prone land?

- Why do we keep concreting over the countryside, destroying the natural drainage process?

- Why are less then 50 per cent of our major flood defence systems up to the job?

-Why have so many of our rivers been straightened in a disastrous attempt to control their flows?

- Why do local authorities and ministers continue to flout official planning guidelines?

Ministers have tightened up planning guidance against building in vulnerable land, but have woefully failed to enforce it. Worse, they have flouted their own rules - planning to build 200,000 houses on flood-prone land in the Thames Gateway.

Monday's floods have now sounded another, even louder alarm. The new prime minister, Gordon Brown must heed it. No-one in the Government better knows the value of money , but he has also shown that he appreciates the value of timely investment. He should now put an end to the irresponsibly short-sighted disregard of the Blair years, and start putting the cash aside for what look like being a frightening number of all-too-rainy days.

Blue Gene/P is three times more potent than the current fastest machine, BlueGene/L, also built by IBM. The latest number cruncher is capable of operating at so called "petaflop" speeds - the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.

Approximately 100,000 times more powerful than a PC, the first machine has been bought by the US government. "Blue Gene/P marks the evolution of the most powerful supercomputing platform the world has ever known," said Dave Turek, vice president of deep computing, IBM. The world's biggest computer-services company has built almost half of the 500 fastest supercomputers.

It is also currently building a bespoke supercomputer for the DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico. Codenamed Roadrunner, it will be able to crunch through 1.6 thousand trillion calculations per second.
The computer will contain 16,000 standard processors working alongside 16,000 "cell" processors, designed for the PlayStation 3 (PS3).

Each cell chip consists of eight processors controlled by a master unit that can assign tasks to each member of the processing team. Each cell is capable of 256 billion calculations per second. The power of the cell chip means Roadrunner needs far fewer processors than its predecessors.

The fallout from mortgage woes in the United States continued yesterday as the country's biggest housebuilder reported an unexpected loss and made a gloomy forecast in the face of mounting evidence that the housing crisis will ricochet across the economy. Lennar reported a dramatic swing in its fortunes, as it announced a $244.2 million (£122 million) loss for the second quarter, down from a $324.7 million profit the year before.

The group heaped further disappointment on its investors, revealing that its average house price fell by 7.5 per cent to $298,000 for the period. Stuart Miller, the chief executive of Lennar, said: "As we look to our third quarter and the remainder of 2007, we continue to see weak, and perhaps deteriorating, market conditions. We currently expect to be in a loss position in our third quarter."

House prices have suffered as a jump in defaults among high-risk sub-prime borrowers has combined with Federal Reserve interest-rate increases to push the average rate for a 30-year mortgage up to 6.60 per cent, reducing demand for properties.

- The near-collapse last week of two Bear Stearns hedge funds with significant exposure to sub-prime mortgages has heightened fears that fallout could be widespread

- Bear Stearns has agreed to inject $3.2 billion (£1.6 billion) into one of the funds, in the biggest hedge fund bailout since Long Term Capital Management collapsed in 1998

- Guy Moszkowski, the Merrill Lynch analyst, said Bear Stearns had not faced a "situation of this magnitude" in two decades as a public company

- The housing slide is hitting consumer confidence. The Conference Board index of sentiment for June fell to a ten-month low. Economists fear rising mortgage costs and falling house prices will restrict consumer spending

"Excess liquidity in the global system will be slashed," it said. "Banks' capital is about to be decimated, which will require calling in a swathe of loans. THIS IS GOING TO AGGRAVATE THE US HARD LANDING."

US property writer Paul Muolo described the Bearn Stearns crisis as the "subprime Chernobyl", saying the bank had created a "cone of silence". Abandoned by fellow banks, Bear Stearns has now put up $3.2bn of its own money to rescue one of the funds, a quarter of its capital. This is the biggest bail-out since the Long-Term Capital Management crisis in 1998, which Bear Stearns refused to join at the time. Bear Stearns is now alone, a case of rough justice being served.

The Mortgage Lender Implode-Meter that tracks the US housing markets claims that 86 major lenders have gone bankrupt or shut their doors since the crash began. The latest are Aegis Lending, Oak Street Mortgage and The Mortgage Warehouse. "THERE ISN'T A RECOVERY ABOUT TO HAPPEN," SAID ARA HOVANIAN, HEAD OF THE BUILDING GROUP HOVANIAN ENTERPRISE.

The worst of the US property crisis has yet to hit since there is an overhang of $2,000bn of mortgages with adjustable rates which have yet to be reset. MANY BORROWERS COULD SEE PAYMENTS JUMP BY HALF, OR EVEN DOUBLE. "WITH DEFAULTS AT THEIR HIGHEST IN THE 37 YEARS THAT RECORDS HAVE BEEN KEPT, IT COULD BE A LONG HOT SUMMER," said Mr Dumas.

Statistics show 23.5 per cent of all babies were born by caesarean section in 2005/6, up from 22.9 per cent the year before. Charities have said that they were concerned at the relentless increase which has seen the proportion of babies born by c-sections more than double since 1989. Midwives blamed staff shortages and ward closures brought on by Health Service deficits for the decline in natural births. Experts say a caesarean birth can increase a baby's chance of breathing difficulties, and mothers may find it harder to bond with a child while recovering.

The World Health Organisation has said there is "no justification" for any country having a higher caesarean rate than 10 to 15 per cent. Britain's rate far exceeds this and is higher than much of Europe, although it is lower than Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.S. It is believed to be partly due to the fact that mothers are getting older. Recent figures showed women over 40 were more than twice as likely to have a caesarean section than those under 20.

Experts have pointed to rising rates of obesity - fatter women are more likely to need a caesarean than those of normal weight - and the escalating number of women having multiple births, largely through IVF. The compensation culture may also be to blame. A recent survey indicated that many doctors carry out more caesareans than in the past because of fear of litigation if a natural birth goes wrong.

Fewer than half of all deliveries - 46.7 per cent - were described as "normal", meaning that there was no surgical intervention, use of instruments, induction or anaesthetic. Mary Newburn of the National Childbirth Trust said: "We are concerned to see that the normal birth rate has decreased, despite the Government's 2004 national service framework for children.

It revealed more than 900,000 Britons buy cocaine, which means the country has overtaken Spain as the biggest user in the continent. In addition, Britain's 350,000 heroin users are the largest number in any country in Europe.

The annual survey from the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime said that across most of the world drug abuse is holding steady or is in decline because of successful law and order campaigns to prevent their distribution, sale and consumption. But the falling tide in many countries is leaving Britain exposed as a thriving drugs market where millions remain addicted to or repeat users of illegal substances.

The report found cocaine use had gone up in Britain and added: "In absolute numbers estimates suggest that the UK's cocaine market, some 910,000 people, is even marginally larger than the market in Spain, some 890,000 people." It added "cocaine is now the second most widely used illegal drug in the UK after cannabis".

Families evacuated from these homes in the South Yorkshire village of Catcliffe were wondering last night how on earth their estate was allowed to be built beside land that would normally act as a flood plain. With thousands still cut off in the aftermath of this week's heavy rains, concerns were also growing over the failure to strengthen flood defences across the country.

Meanwhile, a desperate race against time continued last night to shore up a crumbling dam and save three villages from being swamped by 150 million gallons of water. As a massive clean-up operation was underway across much of Britain after severe flooding, one fireman at the scene in South Yorkshire said: "It's very serious, there's a 75 per cent chance it could burst."

The drama unfolded as many parts of the country were mopping up after some regions received a staggering four inches of rain in less than 24 hours - the wettest June day on record. This month is also on course to be the wettest June since ever.

Early rainy season storms in South Asia have killed nearly 400 people since late last week and more bad weather for at least parts of the region was on the way, weather officials said. Up to 60,000 people in the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan were affected by a cyclone that hit on Tuesday, killing at least 10 people. Thirty-five villages were inundated and thousands of people stranded, provincial officials said.

"The situation is out of our hands, it's out of control. The entire town has been inundated and people have taken refuge in tall buildings and trees," Rauf Rind, the mayor of the town of Kach, told Reuters by telephone.

Tropical cyclone Yemyin hit Baluchistan three days after another storm struck Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city, killing about 230 people, many when fierce wind brought down slum houses.

"This is the worst day since the heat wave started with 46 degrees (Celsius; 114.8 Fahrenheit) in two towns," Nikos Kanteres of the Greek meteorological service, said. Seven large brush fires broke out on Monday and today in Greece and hundreds of people were evacuated from threatened homes near the southern city of Pyrgos, 200 miles south-west of Athens.

Fire Chief Andreas Kois said all fires were contained. "We have very high temperatures and this has made conditions difficult ? The good thing is that the winds are not strong." Sicily's capital, Palermo, had reached 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 Fahrenheit) on Monday, but was down to 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 Fahrenheit) on Tuesday morning, the weather service said.

Albania, Romania and Serbia have also been hard hit by the heat. Nineteen people in Romania and seven in Serbia were reported to have died of heat-related causes in this first severe heat-wave of the season. The heat has been blamed for five deaths in Greece. In southern Romania, temperatures reached 40 Degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) on Tuesday. But they were much higher at street level in the capital, Bucharest, due to the overheated asphalt.

A victory for Harry Potter means a victory for Wicca, A RELIGION THAT PRACTICES VARIOUS FORMS OF WITCHCRAFT.

And the acclaimed DVD program, "Harry Potter: Witchcraft Repackaged", dramatically documents Potter references to evolution, reincarnation, sorcery, divination, spells, curses and other occult factors. Wohlberg's new book "Exposing Harry Potter and Witchcraft: The Menace Beneath the Magic," asserts that "HARRY POTTER" PURCHASES ARE OFTEN ACCOMPANIED AT THE SALES COUNTER WITH MATERIALS ON WICCA. Increasing numbers of young readers also frequent Wicca websites, cast "Love and Money Spells," and practice "white magic."

Why the "magical" upswing? One obvious source is right between the lines of Rowling's pages, says Wohlberg. "In the midst of fun and fantasy, J.K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter' novels make witchcraft look 'cool' and exciting," he told WND. "It doesn't matter that these novels are only 'fictitious stories.' Stories are powerful."

"There's a big difference," said Wohlberg, between Harry Potter and other children's fantasy fare. "J.K. ROWLING HAS PUBLICLY ADMITTED THAT AT LEAST 30 PERCENT OF HER NOVELS IS BASED ON REAL OCCULTISM. The 'Harry Potter' novels are a unique blend of fantasy and reality." "They refer to real places, real occultists (Aldabert Waffling and Nicholas Flamel), real practices (astrology, palmistry, fortune-telling, divination), and real occult philosophy. Based on my research, the extent of real occultism embedded into 'children's literature' is unprecedented," he continued.

But while children may be Potter's targets, they're not the only takers. One highly visible adult internet witchcraft school credits Rowling as a promoter of Wicca in a press release, stating, "HARRY POTTER HAS REKINDLED INTEREST IN BELIEFS THAT WERE ALREADY GROWING IN THE UNITED KINGDOM AND UNITED STATES FOR MORE THAN FIFTY YEARS, AND THAT BELIEF IS A FAITH CALLED WICCA."

Mr Blair will see the Queen and leave office after his final prime minister's questions session in the Commons and saying farewell to Downing St staff. Mr Brown is then expected to travel to meet the Queen, who will formally offer him the role in the early afternoon. Mr Brown is expected to begin his Cabinet reshuffle by naming the next chancellor and home secretary.

He has also admitted that Iraq is "a divisive issue for our party and our country" and pledged to "learn lessons that need to be learned". The parents of soldiers who have died in Iraq will protest in Downing Street as Mr Blair leaves No 10. Members of Military Families Against the War say they are determined the outgoing PM "will not be allowed to forget the suffering he has caused".

The mechanics of leaving office, means Mr Blair is expected to have his final prime minister's questions in the Commons, then travel to Downing Street to say farewell to staff before heading to Buckingham Palace to see the Queen and resign. Mr Brown will then be asked to the Palace where in a meeting with the Queen he will formally become prime minister.

Once he leaves office, Mr Blair is expected to travel north to attend a meeting in his Sedgefield constituency, in the north east of England, on Wednesday evening to announce he is standing down as an MP after 24 years.
It is thought the decision to step down as a Member of Parliament after 24 years depends on him being confirmed by the Middle East "quartet" of the US, Russia, the UN and the EU as an envoy to the region.