Former Philippine president Corazon Aquino was a reluctant leader despite guiding her nation through a revolution that restored it to democracy.
Twenty-free Philippine sailors abducted more than five months ago by Somali pirates returned home Saturday for an emotional reunion.
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/ 14 February 2008
Philippines security officials said on Thursday they had uncovered a plot by Islamic militants linked to the al-Qaeda network to assassinate President Gloria Arroyo. Her security chief, Brigadier General Romeo Prestoza, said Arroyo had been informed of the threat, which forced her to cancel a scheduled trip on Friday to the northern resort city of Baguio.
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/ 16 February 2007
Ricardo Sibunga works tirelessly under a steady downpour, his sweat and tears mixing as he and 20 men and women race against time to finish a small chapel on a muddy patch that was once a thriving farming village in the central Philippines. They work with manual tools, hauling sand and bricks from a river bed 1km away, a token sacrifice for a monument to honour over 1 000 of their friends.
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/ 6 December 2006
Workers shifted tonnes of sand and volcanic rock on Wednesday to open up vital lifelines to isolated eastern Philippines hamlets days after mudslides left more than 1 200 dead and missing. Restoring roads and electricity networks to bring help to desperate survivors is now the priority after the worst-affected Bicol peninsula in the Luzon region recovered and buried its dead from Typhoon Durian.
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/ 5 December 2006
The first foreign aid flights of food and medicines arrived on Tuesday in the eastern Philippines, where officials said devastating mudslides have left more than 1 080 people dead or missing. The devastating torrents of mud and volcanic ash triggered by typhoon rains swallowed entire villages near Mount Mayon volcano last Thursday.
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/ 30 October 2006
Typhoon Cimaron whipped a deadly trail on Monday across the northern Philippines, blowing away houses and triggering landslides and floods that killed at least four people. Hundreds of families were forced to evacuate their homes as Cimaron, one of the strongest typhoons to strike the Philippines in recent years, pounded the northern part of Luzon Island.
To the coffee connoisseur, apparently, it is the ultimate brew — right to the very last dropping. Civet coffee, made from beans excreted by the weasel-like animal, is said to be the most valuable coffee in the world. Twenty-five grams can sell for more than and despite the price coffee lovers cannot get enough.
The United Nations children’s agency and Nordic truce monitors on Tuesday rejected Sri Lankan claims that dozens of children killed in an air force bombing raid were child soldiers. A team from the UN children’s fund visited the bombed site and said they had found no evidence to support claims the rebels had been using the facility as a military training centre.
East Timor Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, blamed by opponents for violence that gripped the tiny nation last month, huddled with senior members of his party as his fate hung in the balance on Thursday. President Xanana Gusmao has told Alkatiri to step down or be sacked after seeing a documentary that purported to show evidence of the prime minister’s involvement in arming men tasked with killing his rivals.