Ludwigshafen, Germany - A takeover bid by BASF, the world's biggest chemicals company, for Ciba Holding of Switzerland has nearly won sufficient acceptance from Ciba shareholders, according to the German company Wednesday.

The 3.8-billion-euro (4.8-billion-dollar) bid expired Tuesday.

BASF said its provisional count showed it had acceptances for 66.665 per cent of free float Ciba stock, just short of the target of 66.67 per cent for the 50-Swiss-francs-per-voting-share bid to become binding.

The quota does not include stock held by Ciba itself or already in BASF ownership.

A Swiss bank, Vontobel, has said that including this additional stock would mean BASF had a grip on 69.382 per cent of Ciba.

Rome - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government won Wednesday final parliamentary approval for controversial education reforms, against which thousands of students are staging protests around the country.

The Italian Senate, the upper house of parliament, approved the decree by 162 votes for to 134 against with three abstentions.

News of the decree's approval was greeted with jeers of "Clowns! Clowns!," by students staging a sit-in outside the Senate's Palazzo Madama building in central Rome.

Protests are expected to culminate in a strike Thursday called by Italy's main labour unions.

Male, Maldives/Colombo - A former political prisoner has been elected as the Maldives' new president, ending Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's record as one of Asia's longest-serving leaders, officials in Male said Wednesday.

Gayoom, 71, was denied a seventh-consecutive term in Tuesday's run-off election and is to be succeeded by Mohamed "Anni" Nasheed, a 41-year-old activist who was once imprisoned by Gayoom's government.

Election Commission officials in Male said Nasheed received 54.21 per cent of the 174,250 votes cast against Gayoom's 45.7 per cent. Turnout was 83 per cent, they said.

Brussels - The European Union said Wednesday it was ready to provide humanitarian help to Pakistan following an earthquake in the south-west of the country that has killed at least 160 people and has left thousands more homeless.

"I was shocked to hear the news about the earthquake which struck south-western Balochistan earlier today," EU external affairs commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said.

"The EU stands ready to assist Pakistan with humanitarian assistance if requested," the commissioner said in a statement.

According to officials in Pakistan, a strong earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale rattled the province of Balochistan during the early hours of the morning, destroying scores of homes.

New Delhi - Floods and landslides caused by heavy rains killed seven people and displaced tens of thousands of villagers in India's north-eastern states since the weekend, officials and reports said Wednesday.

The rains inundated hundreds of villages in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya states forcing thousands of people to take shelter on higher ground, embankments, canals and roofs of buildings.

In Assam, an estimated 150,000 people in 100 villages across the four districts of Lakhimpur, Rangiya, Sonitpur and Baksa were affected by the floods.

Beijing - China on Wednesday admitted for the first time that its emissions of greenhouse gases have caught up with the world's longtime top producer, the United States, and said its reliance on coal would make emissions reductions difficult.

"According to our data, China's current total emissions are almost as the same as that of the United States," Xie Zhenhua, a top government economic planner, told reporters.

"Whether or not we have surpassed the US in emissions is in itself not important," he argued in presenting a key policy paper on climate change to the media. "We should look at the issue fairly and from a historic view."