The widow of a slain Islamist militant leader will be charged for allegedly using social media to recruit Islamic State sympathisers to join a five-month siege of a southern city, Philippine authorities said Friday.Hundreds of local and foreign gunmen who had pledged allegiance to IS rampaged through Marawi, the principal Islamic city in the mainly Catholic Philippines, starting in May -- sparking the nation's longest urban war that claimed more than 1,100 lives.

The Philippines said Friday it had suspended use of a landmark vaccine for the potentially deadly dengue virus after its manufacturer warned it could worsen the disease in some cases.French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi announced Wednesday that its world-first dengue vaccine could lead to more severe symptoms for people who had not previously been infected.The Philippines has vaccinated more than 733,000 children with Dengvaxia since 2016 when it became the first country to start using it on a

The Philippines' main Muslim guerrilla group staged a huge rally Monday at its southern headquarters that attracted Christians and rival rebels, in a joint effort with the government to reignite a stalled peace process.President Rodrigo Duterte was scheduled to speak at the event at the main base of the 10,000-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front on Monday afternoon, with both sides hoping peace will help quell the rising threat of the Islamic State group.Muslims have been waging a rebel

At age 33 and raising six children in a slum named "Paradise Village", Myrna Albos is Exhibit A for the Philippines' serial family planning failures.The plumber's wife already had four children by the time a family planning law was passed in December 2012, but she had two more after opponents blocked it and the government health centre near her shanty ran out of birth control pills."I don't want any more (children). Sending all of them to school is an effort.

On 23 September, the Islamic State (IS) Al-Hayat media wing released a three-minute propaganda video featuring radicalised Singaporean, Megat Shahdan Abdul Samad. In the video, he urged Muslims to wage religious war – or jihad – in East Asia and bring upon “black days” on “crusaders” here.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has cancelled all future peace talks with communist rebels waging one of Asia's longest insurgencies, in a blow to efforts to end the half century-long conflict.In a speech Tuesday night, Duterte criticised the insurgents over deadly attacks against soldiers and police while threatening to categorise them as a "terrorist" group.

The Philippine economy grew more than six percent for a ninth consecutive quarter, cementing its position as one of the fastest-expanding in the world.Key Points Gross domestic product increased 6.9 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, the Philippine Statistics Authority said in Manila Thursday, after expanding a revised 6.7 percent in the previous three months.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has pledged two accused Russian drug traffickers will be detained in a "comfortable house", rather than his nation's badly over-crowded jails.Duterte made the commitment at a meeting late Monday with Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev on the sidelines of a regional summit in Manila."I would just like to say that we have a working functional justice system here and they will get a fair trial and that they will be detained in a comfor

Donald Trump shook hands Monday with a smiling Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, a man who boasts about personally killing people and who is waging a drug war that rights groups say involves mass murder.The US leader is in Manila with leaders of 18 other nations for two days of summits, the final leg of a headline-grabbing Asian tour dominated by the North Korean nuclear crisis.Allegations of Russian meddling in last year's US presidential elections have also hounded the second half

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has said he stabbed a person to death as a teenager, in a defiant speech to promote his drug war ahead of a summit of world leaders in Manila.Speaking to the local Filipino community in the Vietnamese city of Danang on Thursday, Duterte also threatened to slap a UN rights rapporteur if he met her, and used obscene language to hit back at critics of his deadly drugs crackdown."When I was a teenager, I would go in and out of jail.