Asia, Philippines | featured news

The Philippine foreign secretary says he is recommending to President Benigno Aquino III to pull out all Filipino U.N. peacekeepers from the Golan Heights following the abduction of four by Syrian rebels.

Malaysian security forces killed 31 Filipino gunmen on the island of Borneo, officials said Thursday, and the government rejected calls by the United Nations for an end to the fighting.

Malaysian security forces found 13 bodies of suspected Philippine militants as they expanded their hunt for an elusive armed group on the island of Borneo on Wednesday, a day after an assault with fighter jets, mortars and hundreds of troops.

Typhoon Bopha killed more than 900 people and left almost 80,000 others homeless in the Philippines, the government said Thursday, a week and a half after the storm devastated large parts of the southeast Asian island nation.

The strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines this year pounded the southern island of Mindanao on Tuesday and about 40 people were dead or missing, media said, after the storm destroyed homes and brought down power and communication lines.

The Philippines and Vietnam condemned Chinese passports containing a map of China's disputed maritime claims on Thursday, branding the new design a violation of their sovereignty.

President Barack Obama urged Asian leaders on Tuesday to rein in tensions in the South China Sea and other disputed territory, but stopped short of firmly backing allies Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam in their disputes with China.

The Philippine government has reached a framework peace agreement with the country's largest Muslim rebel group, President Benigno Aquino says. The deal follows long negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) to end a 40-year conflict that has cost more than 120,000 lives.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino is squaring off against his country's powerful Catholic church in a bid to give people free access to the means to limit the size of their families. The predominately Catholic country has one of Asia's fastest-growing populations together with significant levels of chronic poverty. While neighbors have accelerated towards prosperity, the Philippines has lagged.

Tens of thousands of people on a central Philippine island returned home on Saturday after a tsunami alert was lifted following a 7.6 magnitude undersea quake, as local authorities began work to repair damages to public infrastructure.