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Philippines

Italian priest shot dead in Philippines

A Italian Catholic priest was shot dead inside his church compound in the troubled southern Philippines on Monday, police said.
An unknown gunman shot Fausto Tentorio in the remote farming town of Arakan on Mindanao island, police said.
A “suspect suddenly appeared and without provocation shot the victim hitting his body”, regional police spokesman Resty Damasosaid in a report released to the media.
Tentorio was taken [...]

Read More » No commentOctober 17, 2011

Iranian, Filipino take top Asian film awards

An Iranian film that reveals the “heart and soul” of its director has shared the top award with a production from the Philippines at Asia’s largest cinematic event.
Morteza Farshbaf?s “Mourning” was handed one of two US$30,000 prizes given in the New Currents award at the 16th Busan International Film Festival and the first-time director said he hoped his film [...]

Read More » No commentOctober 14, 2011

Filipino captain in NZ sea pollution crisis charged

The Filipino captain of a ship stuck on a New Zealand reef was arrested and charged Wednesday as up to 70 containers fell into rough seas and a black tide of oil washed up on beaches.
Mauro Balomanga appeared in a Tauranga city court amid a heavy police presence charged with operating a vessel in a [...]

Read More » No commentOctober 12, 2011

Philippines says no state honors for Marcos burial

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The Philippine president said Wednesday it would be unjust to allow Ferdinand Marcos to be buried with state honors when thousands of human rights victims during the former dictator’s reign have never received any government apology.
Marcos died over 20 years ago in exile after being ousted in a 1986 “people power” [...]

Read More » No commentOctober 12, 2011

Murky future for giant Philippine crocodiles

Deep inside the Philippines’ largest marshland, tribespeople who once revered crocodiles as mystical creatures say they now feel terrorised by them.
Reports of attacks on people and livestock have become more frequent and tensions reached a peak last month when a three-week hunt netted what is believed to be the world’s biggest crocodile ever captured.
“There used [...]

Read More » No commentOctober 12, 2011

Mao cap-wearing Philippine communist rebel is dead

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A popular Mao cap-wearing Filipino guerrilla, who gave a voice and face to one of Asia’s longest-running Marxist insurgencies as its spokesman with a common-folk touch, has died of a heart attack, his comrades said Sunday. He was 64.
The outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines said [...]

Read More » No commentOctober 10, 2011

2 blasts wound at least 11 in southern Philippines

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Suspected homemade bombs exploded in a budget hotel and at a cockfighting arena in the southern Philippines on Sunday, wounding at least 11 people, officials said.
The nearly simultaneous blasts ripped through a room inside the hotel and at the cockfighting arena at around noon in Zamboanga city, which was celebrating an [...]

Read More » No commentOctober 10, 2011

Filipino militants free US woman, still hold son

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Muslim militants freed a Filipino-American woman after 2 1/2 months of captivity in the jungles of the southern Philippines but are still holding her 14-year-old son and another relative, authorities said Monday.
Gerfa Yeatts Lunsmann was dropped off by boat late Sunday at a wharf and walked to nearby Maluso township on southern Basilan Island, where [...]

Read More » No commentOctober 4, 2011

Floods recede slowly in storm-battered Philippines

CALUMPIT, Philippines (AP) — Floodwaters slowly receded Monday in many parts of the northern Philippines after two typhoons that killed nearly 60 people, amid appeals for more boats to bring food and water to residents refusing to abandon inundated homes.
Mayor James de Jesus of worst-hit Calumpit town north of Manila said that at least 15 villages were still inaccessible and [...]

Read More » No commentOctober 4, 2011

Filipinos still trapped on roofs; typhoons kill 59

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Rescuers scrambled Sunday to deliver food and water to hundreds of villagers stuck on rooftops for days because of flooding in the northern Philippines, where back-to-back typhoons have left at least 59 people dead.
Typhoon Nalgae slammed ashore in northeastern Isabela province Saturday, then barreled across the main island of Luzon’s mountainous north [...]

Read More » No commentOctober 3, 2011