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MANILA, Philippines — The United States has an ally in the Philippines, where an overwhelming majority sees it favorably at 92 percent—the highest among surveyed Asian countries.Bruce Stokes, stated in a presentation delivered last weekend and posted online, cited a survey by US-based think tank Pew Research Center and noted that only 6 percent of Filipinos were found to have an "unfavorable" view of the US within the survey period.The survey was conducted from March 17 to June 5 across 44 countries totaling 48,643 respondents through "nationally represented" telephone and face-to-face interviews with adults of 18 years and older.Across...

The Philippines' booming outsourcing industry now employs a million people after growing almost tenfold in just over a decade, the industry association said Wednesday. Widely considered as second only to India, Philippine outsourcing is expected to earn $18 billion this year, said the IT and Business Process Association Philippines.

**SNIP** Yee, D-San Francisco, and Jackson, his former consultant and a former San Francisco school board president, are among 29 defendants charged with racketeering and other crimes after an undercover FBI investigation. Prosecutors have accused Yee, now suspended from his Senate seat, of soliciting tens of thousands of dollars from agents posing as campaign contributors in exchange for political favors. In a filing Aug. 14, Jackson's lawyer asserted that an FBI agent had been removed from the investigation and reprimanded because of financial misconduct. The agent, identified in court records only as UCE 4773, posed as a Georgia businessman and...

IDF forces played a crucial role in helping Irish soldiers rescue UN troops from the clutches of Syrian jihadists in a fierce clash on the border with Israel last week. Senior military sources said that Irish soldiers would have been killed or taken captive if it weren’t for action taken by the IDF on August 30 during a mission to evacuate dozens of Filipino soldiers who were surrounded by a larger force of militants, the Irish Independent reported on Sunday.

Philippine Leader Proposes Autonomous Muslim State To End Rebellion By CAROL J. WILLIAMS Philippine President Benigno Aquino III on Wednesday urged lawmakers to swiftly enact a law granting autonomy to the Muslim region of Mindanao to quell more than 40 years of rebellion that has killed at least 150,000 people. The proposed law is modeled on one that pacified a similar Muslim insurgency in neighboring Indonesia's Aceh province in 2005. Philippines Muslim rebellion Philippine President Benigno Aquino III applauds the presentation Wednesday of a bill to create an autonomous Muslim state within the predominantly Roman Catholic country. (Jay Directo /...

The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture. By Euny Hong. Picador; 288 pages; $16. Simon & Schuster; £14.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk FROM “Gangnam Style” and competitive electronic sports to kimchi-flavoured pot noodles, South Korea’s cultural exports are eagerly consumed around the world. Filipinos are hooked on its dramas. The French love its pop music and its films. Last year South Korea raked in $5 billion from its pop-culture exports. It has set its sights on doubling that by 2017. Much has changed since 1985, when Euny Hong, a Korean-American journalist and...

MANILA, Philippines — The Indian commander of the United Nations' (UN) peacekeeping force broke his silence on the Philippine military's accusations that he misguidedly ordered besieged Filipino troops to surrender their arms to rebels in Golan Heights over the weekend. In an interview with a Noida-based newspaper, UN Disengagement Observer Force Commander Lt. Gen. Iqbal Singh Singha criticized the defiance of the 40 trapped Filipino peacekeepers as "non-professional." Singha, meanwhile, called what the Armed Forces of the Philippines dubbed the "greatest escape" of 40 troops from Position 68 nothing but an "act of cowardice." "The higher UN echelon as well...

They smack her before fleeingA Filipina in her 20s put up a tough fight against three men who tried to abduct her while she was walking back home in Kuwait during the day. The girl managed to foil the kidnap attempt but she paid a heavy price for her resistance, when the angry men gave her a big smack before fleeing. The unnamed girl was walking back home in the capital Kuwait City around noon when the three men intercepted her and tried to take her away to rape her. Residents who saw the battle from their flat windows called...

Under cover of darkness, 40 Filipino peacekeepers made a daring escape after being surrounded and under fire for seven hours by Syrian rebels in the Golan Heights, Philippine officials said Sunday, leaving 44 Fijian troops still in the hands of the al-Qaida-linked insurgents. "We may call it the greatest escape," Philippine military chief Gen. Gregorio Pio Catapang said. The peacekeepers became trapped after Syrian rebels entered the U.N.-patrolled buffer zone between Syria and Israel this week, seizing 44 Fijian soldiers and demanding that their Filipino colleagues surrender with their weapons. The Filipinos in two U.N. encampments refused and clashed with...

Seventy-five UNDOF peacekeepers in the Golan Heights fled Syrian territory for the Israeli-controlled Golan on Saturday after their positions were attacked by rebel forces. An Israeli military spokesman confirmed that a number of UN peacekeepers entered Israel. He spoke on condition of anonymity. Channel 2 said 75 UN troops had crossed the borders, after two UN positions on the Syrian side of the border were targeted by al-Nusra rebel forces. Earlier in the day, the Philippine defense chief said that Filipino peacekeepers in the Golan Heights were attacked by Syrian rebels, who are also holding dozens of Fijian troops hostage....

Syrian rebel groups strengthened their hold over the Syrian side of the Quneitra Crossing — located on the frontier between Syrian and Israeli controlled parts of the Golan Heights – over the weekend and managed to repel attacks by Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar Assad. The rebels kidnapped dozens of Fiji soldiers, members of the UN observer force stationed in the Golan Heights and are maintaining a siege on a second UN stronghold manned by Philippine soldiers. ... Nusra Front forces took over a stronghold manned by a Fiji UN force and kidnapped the soldiers stationed there at gunpoint,...

SunTrust Banks Inc. is shuttering its fraud-response call center group in Orlando and shedding more than 100 jobs, the bank confirmed Wednesday. Atlanta-based SunTrust, the largest bank in Central Florida, handed out pink slips to 105 employees on Tuesday. The effective layoff date is Oct. 31, according to documents filed with the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity. "Difficult decisions must be made to increase operational efficiencies and decrease expenses to better position the company for the future," SunTrust told employees in the layoff notice. The bank posted a $400 million profit on revenue of $2.2 billion in the second quarter,...

Despite how unsavory and barbaric Islamic groups and persons around the world have been acting—whether Nigeria’s Boko Haram, Mesopotamia’s Islamic State, Somalia’s Shabaab—perhaps few things are as disgusting and cowardly as the Muslim rape of nuns: defenseless Christian women who sacrifice much of their lives to help sick and needy Muslims.The latest such attack comes from Bangladesh, which is over 90% Muslim in population. In early July, dozens of men armed with machetes, knives and iron rods attacked the convent of PIME (Pontifical Institute of Foreign Missions nuns in Boldipuku), a village mission in north Bangladesh. In the words of...

Already scrambling to confront multiple simultaneous international crises, the Obama administration stepped up efforts Saturday to avert another, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called on China and its smaller neighbors to take new steps to ease tensions over maritime disputes in Asian waters that many fear could spark conflict....

With the largest Ebola epidemic ever recorded raging across West Africa and as two Americans who were infected in Liberia have entered the U.S. for treatment, the question has been raised: will Ebola happen in the U.S? Actually, an Ebola outbreak has happened in the U.S. before -- not just once, but at least three times. In 1989, Ebola entered into the U.S. through infected monkeys, which were shipped from the Philippines for experimentation. At the time, Hazleton Laboratories (now Covance, Inc.) owned a facility in Reston, Virginia. After one shipment, monkeys were falling rapidly ill and dying. The Reston...

The ISIS ideology is spreading fast on social media, ' the new machine to recruit militants.' The Islamic State (IS), formerly known as ISIS or the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq or ISIS, is expanding its recruitment on social media in the Philippines. On July 23, a video of senior Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon along with masked men was posted on YouTube. Hapilon carries a reward of up to $5 million from the US Rewards for Justice Program. He was indicted in the District of Columbia for “terrorist acts against United States nationals and other foreign nationals.” The...

What’s really important in today’s troubled world? One might think the answers are obvious: the disturbing war between Hamas and Israel that threatens to spread into something much larger, out-of-control spread of Ebola in Africa, corporate and sovereign defaults in Portugal and Argentina, Chinese military aggression in South Asia and whatever else we may have left out. But to Democrats, the focus is on Operation Change The Subject 2014, as partisans shift blame for presidential inaction away from Obama just as he heads to Martha’s Vineyard for yet another extended holiday.

Navi Pillay said Tel Aviv's two-week onslaught on Gaza - which has cost more than 650 Palestinians lives - would be thoroughly investigated. Ms Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the attacks have destroyed houses and hospitals and killed civilians. "These are just a few examples where there seems to be a strong possibility that international humanitarian law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes. "Every one of these incidents must be properly and independently investigated." According to Gaza officials, 475 houses have been destroyed and 2,644 damaged, while 46 schools, 56 mosques...

GENEVA, July 23 (Reuters) - The United Nations on Wednesday launched an international inquiry into human rights violations and crimes that may have been committed by Israel during its military offensive in the Gaza Strip. The U.N. Human Rights Council condemned the Israeli assault which it said had involved "disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks", including aerial bombing of civilian areas, collective punishment, and the killing of more than 650 Palestinians. At the end of an emergency session, the 47-member forum adopted a resolution presented by Palestinians by a vote of 29 states in favor, 1 against (the United States) with 17...

China's southern regions are bracing for a powerful typhoon that has ripped through the Philippines, killing dozens and forcing more than 400,000 people to flee their homes. The official death toll from Typhoon Rammasun has climbed to 38, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said on Thursday. Ten people have been injured and eight are missing. Typhoon Rammasun made landfall in the Philippines on Tuesday, just eight months after Super Typhoon Haiyan devastated parts of the country in November 2013. The eye of Typhoon Rammasun passed south of Manila after cutting a path across the main island of...