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Swiss escapes from Abu Sayyaf captors • Hostage hacks bandit as military pounds lair of terror group in Sulu MANILA, Philippines — A Swiss hostage escaped on Saturday from Abu Sayyaf extremists after hacking a militant commander and getting shot as he dashed to freedom, ending more than two years of jungle captivity in Sulu province, according to military officials. Lorenzo Vinciguerra, 49, made his daring escape after government forces fired artillery rounds in the jungle camp where he was being held near the mountainous Patikul town in Sulu. He hacked an Abu Sayyaf commander and ran away but was...

MANILA, Philippines – Pope Francis, the Argentine pope known for espousing a simpler Church, also wants the same treatment for his upcoming visit to the Philippines next year. At a press briefing on Thursday, November 20, papal visit media relations sub-committee chair Fr Anton Pascual said the Vatican would prefer a simple papal visit with minimal expenditures. The Vatican also urged for more resources to be spent on helping the victims of Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) and the earthquake in Bohol in 2013, according to an article on the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) news site. The Pope will...

The number of people killed by terrorists worldwide in 2013 rose by 60 percent compared to the previous year – from 11,133 to 17,958 – with four Sunni Muslim extremist groups responsible for two-thirds of all fatalities, according to a comprehensive annual study. Eighty-two percent of fatalities occurred in just five countries – Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria, although the number of countries that experienced more than 50 terror-related deaths also rose – to 24, compared with 15 the previous year. ... Four Sunni groups were responsible for 66 percent of all terror fatalities in 2013. In order of...

There was China's president, Xi Jinping, Russia's president Vladimir Putin to his right, next to Philippine president Aquino and the uberwealthy Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah. And then there is Barack Obama, right in the middle of the "wives club"...

American information technology and business process management (IT-BPM) companies should take a serious look at the Philippines, which continues to be an “ideal location for customer service and technical support outsourcing,” the Philippine ambassador to the US advised. Ambassador Jose L. Cuisia, Jr. made this pitch to business executives and decision makers from Wall Street and Fortune 500 firms who attended a networking event hosted recently by the Philippine Consulate General in New York and the Seven Seven Corporate Group. “The IT-BPM industry has been the fastest growing industry in the Philippines in the last 10 years,” Cuisia said as...

The Philippines on Thursday urged hundreds of its citizens to leave Ebola-hit west African nations, as it announced anyone who returned would be placed under a 21-day quarantine. Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario said the government had made a "voluntary repatriation" call to about 900 workers in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. He told a local television network that President Benigno Aquino III had also ordered those who did return would have to be isolated in a government facility. "The president has asked us to come down with a ruling, anyone coming from those countries, they must undergo a...

They took a bucket of muddy, bacteria-laden water. Added a bit of white powder. Stirred. And within minutes, standing amid 100 refugees in war-torn Liberia, researchers from Johns Hopkins University had produced what seemed like a magic trick: Clear, drinkable water. "I couldn't believe it when I saw it," Hopkins researcher Shannon Doocy said of her work last year. "The people in Liberia couldn't believe it." The powder, developed by Procter & Gamble Co. with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is now headed for its biggest test yet: the tsunami zone. Relief agencies, led by AmeriCares of...

MANILA, Philippines (AP) -- The U.S. military turned over a Marine suspect in the gruesome killing of a transgender Filipino to the Philippine military's main camp in the capital Wednesday, easing a looming irritant over his custody, officials said. Marine Pfc. Joseph Scott Pemberton had been detained on board the USS Peleliu at the Subic Bay Freeport, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Manila, after he was implicated in the death of 26-year-old Jennifer Laude, whose former name was Jeffrey....

MANILA, Philipp‎ines—The US Marine tagged in the killing of a Filipino transgender has been identified by the authorities and will be charged with murder on Tuesday. Private First Class Joseph Scott Pemberton, a US Marine Corps 2nd Battalion 9th Marines assigned at West Pace Express, was positively identified by a witness in the killing of 26-year-old Jeffrey “Jennifer” Laude in Olongapo City on Saturday. Reading the Olongapo City Police director’s report, Senior Superintendent Wilben Mayor, Philippine National Police (PNP) spokesperson, said the witness identified Pemberton through a photo line-up process provided by the US Naval Crime Investigation Service (NCIS). The...

MANILA, Philippines–The government has begun requiring a 21-day screening for Filipinos in Ebola-hit countries in West Africa before they would be allowed to travel to the Philippines, Health Secretary Enrique Ona said on Monday. Once cleared, returning Filipinos will be covered by a “no regrets” policy requiring observation for another 21 days in the Philippines to make sure they had not contracted the deadly virus, he said. During the second phase, Ona said Filipinos coming from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone would be asked to inform local health authorities by cell phone of possible Ebola virus symptoms such as fever,...

BERLIN: Germany said today it would not withdraw support for US action against jihadists in Iraq and Syria following a reported ultimatum from Philippine Islamist militants reportedly threatening to kill a German hostage. A foreign ministry spokeswoman said the German government had “heard about the report” but stressed that “threats are not an appropriate way to influence our policy in Syria and Iraq”. “There will be no change to our Syria and Iraq policy,” she added. A terrorism monitoring group reported yesterday that the extremists said they would kill one of two German hostages unless a 250 million pesos (US$5.62...

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...