She goes around Manila’s parks at night to check on street children who may have missed their oral polio vaccine. In the morning, she sits on sidewalks giving polio vaccines to street dwellers’ children lying on cardboard mats. Carmen Macalalad, Nurse Supervisor of District 5 in the City of Manila, has been regularly sleeping on a thin mattress in her office since the start of the polio outbreak vaccination campaign in October 2019. She rarely goes home to Antipolo, where she lives with her eld

SAN ANTONIO, Philippines (AP) — The Philippine defense chief said Friday he told the U.S. military that plans for joint patrols and naval exercises in the disputed South China Sea have been put on hold, the first concrete break in defense cooperation after months of increasingly strident comments by the country's new president. Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana also said that 107 U.S. troops involved in operating surveillance drones against Muslim militants would be asked to leave the southern

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte warned President Barack Obama on Monday not to question him about extrajudicial killings, or "son of a bitch I will swear at you" when they meet in Laos during a regional summit. Duterte said before flying to Laos that he is a leader of a sovereign country and is answerable only to the Filipino people. He was answering a reporter's question about how he intends to explain the extrajudicial killings to Obama. More than 2,000 suspect

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the national police to rejoin anti-drug operations, the second time he has overturned previous decisions to remove the law enforcers from the brutal crackdown amid growing alarm over the deaths of thousands of suspects. Duterte pulled the national police from the campaign a month before he hosted a November summit of about 20 world leaders including U.S. President Donald Trump. Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said Tuesday that Duterte's new m

MANILA, Philippines -- Three bombs within hours of each other rocked the southern Philippines on Wednesday, killing at least six people and wounding 27 others, officials said, amid warnings that Muslim militants may try to disrupt this weekend's Asian regional summits. Officials insisted security was tight, with police and troops on the highest alert. Philippine National Police Chief Oscar Calderon had warned that militants may try to embarrass the government, a staunch U.S. ally in the war on

In this Nov. 21, 2013 photo, Shylyny Therese Negru, 15, holds her youngest brother, Rainier Aaron Dacuno, 3, as they sit in a relative's home in the town of Burauen, the Philippines. The children are among an unknown number of children in the eastern Philippines who lost their parents to the massive Nov. 8 storm. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder) TACLOBAN, Philippines (AP) — The teenager with unruly hair in a ponytail wipes tears from her eyes as she holds her feverish 3-year-old brother, who clings to her and lets out a sob of his own now and then. They have been inseparable ever since they lost their parents to Typhoon Haiyan's tsunami-like storm surge. "The water was so strong. Also the wind and the rain," 15-year-old Shylyny Therese Negru said. "Our house was cut into two." She and her three surviving brothers, ages 3, 6 and 12, are among an unknown number of children in the eastern Philippines who lost their parents to the massive Nov. 8 storm.

The 14-year-old Jessa's unlikely success is as much a celebration of a unique effort by the Philippines' most famous prima ballerina, Lisa Macuja, to help slum kids of Manila by providing them a scholarship and classical ballet training for six to seven years. In four years since her audition in 2008, Jessa has performed in various productions, including Swan Lake, Pinocchio, Don Quixote and a local version of Cinderella. She rode a plane for the first time in August to compete in the 2012 Asia

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Amnesty International said Friday it has documented violations of humanitarian law, some amounting to war crimes, during the five-month conflict between Philippine government troops and Islamic State-allied militants who laid siege to the southern city of Marawi. The human rights group said the militants committed unlawful killings, hostage-taking, pillage and mistreatment of prisoners. They allegedly used child soldiers and murdered civilians, which is a war crime, w

The gunman in a casino rampage in Manila was seen on security camera footage firing his M4 rifle in the air, setting fires and shooting at security forces in a stairwell during an attack that left at least 38 people dead. Isis has claimed responsibility for the rampage in the Philippine capital early on Friday, but authorities say it looked like a botched robbery by one attacker and that there was no obvious link to terrorism. The victims appeared to have died of smoke inhalation as they hid f

TANAUAN, Philippines — As Typhoon Haiyan tore across the eastern Philippines, coconut plantations older than the fathers of the men who tend them were smashed like matchsticks and call centers that field customer service gripes from around the world fell silent. The storm that killed thousands also wrecked livelihoods in the worst hit region, a blow that will ripple long after the disaster fades from attention. The workload of call and data centers that are soaked in water and choked with debris has easily been diverted to other Philippine cities. Less simple is the choice faced by thousands of workers: uproot and separate from family or stay in Leyte province and wait perhaps a year for the jobs to return. Tenant coconut farmers know they must clear flattened trees and replant. It will be three years before the new trees are mature enough to bear fruit.