Manila Philippines

Mayor Mel Lopez, stepping up a campaign against child prostitution, has imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew barring Filipinos age 18 or younger from Manila's tourist district. The mayor's directive makes Manila's "red light" district a "children-free zone" from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Children and teen-agers found in the area during the curfew times are to be arrested and detained at the Youth Reception Center.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, seeking the legitimacy that has eluded her since she took over as president three years ago, was narrowly leading challenger Fernando Poe Jr. in early returns today. The voting was marred by violence, as at least 20 people died in election-related incidents Sunday and Monday, authorities said. Most of the deadly disputes occurred as local candidates campaigned.

Rebel soldiers battled loyalist troops in the financial district and at armed forces headquarters today, the third day of the attempt to overthrow Philippine President Corazon Aquino. One group of 150 rebels reportedly surrendered at the army camp. The fighting belied government claims that the latest coup attempt against Aquino had failed. Officials say at least 42 people have been killed and 200 wounded since the rebels launched their attacks early Friday.

The smoldering garbage dump grew so big over the decades that it became known as "Smokey Mountain." The Philippine government finally closed the notorious 11-story mound in 1995, planning to remove the Manila eyesore and the poor scavengers who lived on it.

Bomb blasts ripped through two international hotels in Manila's financial district, wounding four Japanese visitors and four Filipinos. Officials said the attack resembled previous bombings by army rebels. Police said the first blast damaged an unoccupied room at the Nikko Manila Garden Hotel; the second wrecked a room of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.

The captain of a sinking Philippine ferry ordered crew members to jump ship without warning hundreds of passengers that the boat was going down, a survivor said Monday. Princess of the Orient skipper Capt. Esrum Mahilum apparently never told passengers what was happening or what to do as huge waves buffeted the ferry, said Napoleon Sesante, one of 361 survivors of Friday night's disaster. At least 39 of the 454 people on board died; 54 people remain missing.

When the dozens of youngsters gathered for the children's sermon Sunday morning at the Church of the Holy Trinity, they found their mascot, a two-foot-high, stuffed church mouse named Matthew, with a torn-up letter in his lap. "This was Matthew's letter to Santa Claus," explained the parish's Canadian priest, Father Brian Allan, as the children crowded around. "Matthew had asked Santa for a toy gun. "But last week Matthew got bombed. He got shot at. Not with toy guns, but with real ones.

Police have dubbed it Operation Sampaguita after the Philippines' fragrant national flower, which is sold by bunches each night to foreigners doing business with the thousands of women of the evening in Manila's jammed, honky-tonk district of Ermita. The purpose of the two-week-long police operation is to shut down the district forever--flowers, women, bars and all--an unprecedented effort to destroy Manila's international image as the "sin capital" of the Orient.

A powerful earthquake rocked Manila and the main Philippine island of Luzon on Monday, killing at least 108 people, flattening hotels and churches, triggering landslides and destroying roads and bridges north of the capital, relief officials said early today. At least 38 of the dead were high school and college students killed when a six-story building collapsed in Cabanatuan City, 40 miles north of Manila and close to the epicenter of the quake, officials said.

Early explorers named this city after the green may-nilad plants that graced the gently flowing Pasig River, and the country's 19th-Century Spanish rulers naturally built their Malacanang Palace along the Pasig's placid banks. Today, scientists say the Pasig and every other river in Manila are biologically dead. Garbage, raw sewage and industrial waste wash up against Malacanang's white walls and grim squatters' shacks alike. A fetid stench sours the air.

The captain of a sinking Philippine ferry ordered crew members to jump ship without warning hundreds of passengers that the boat was going down, a survivor said Monday. Princess of the Orient skipper Capt. Esrum Mahilum apparently never told passengers what was happening or what to do as huge waves buffeted the ferry, said Napoleon Sesante, one of 361 survivors of Friday night's disaster. At least 39 of the 454 people on board died; 54 people remain missing.

When President Fidel V. Ramos cut the ribbon two weeks ago to open the first part of a new 105-megawatt electric generating plant, he hailed it as the beginning of the end of the Philippines' crippling power crisis. "We can now say we are over the hump," Ramos said with a grin as he switched on the diesel-fired Batangas Power Plant south of Manila. Actually, the $120-million power plant is still undergoing tests and won't produce full commercial power until the end of June.

After weeks of confusion, knowledgeable officials here are convinced that an elite, deadly band of urban Communist guerrillas kidnaped California oil executive Michael Barnes at gunpoint in Manila's financial district Jan. 17 and are holding him for ransom. A reliable source said on Friday that "there's no doubt" that members of the "Alex Boncayao Brigade," feared for its urban "sparrow" assassination squads, studied Barnes' movements for weeks before kidnaping him near his office.

The Philippines' two largest left-of-center parties meet in Manila on Saturday to select their coalition candidate in next May's national elections to succeed President Corazon Aquino, who has rejected a second term. Favored is Jovito Salonga, a Philippine senator who was instrumental in blocking a 10-year extension of the U.S. lease on Subic Bay Naval Base.

Bomb blasts ripped through two international hotels in Manila's financial district, wounding four Japanese visitors and four Filipinos. Officials said the attack resembled previous bombings by army rebels. Police said the first blast damaged an unoccupied room at the Nikko Manila Garden Hotel; the second wrecked a room of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.

A powerful earthquake rocked Manila and the main Philippine island of Luzon on Monday, killing at least 108 people, flattening hotels and churches, triggering landslides and destroying roads and bridges north of the capital, relief officials said early today. At least 38 of the dead were high school and college students killed when a six-story building collapsed in Cabanatuan City, 40 miles north of Manila and close to the epicenter of the quake, officials said.

A recent weather report in one of the dozens of newspapers hawked each day on the street corners of this delightfully bizarre city sounded more like the police blotter than the daily report from the national weather service--which, by the way, is officially called Pagasa, the Filipino word for hope.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, seeking the legitimacy that has eluded her since she took over as president three years ago, was narrowly leading challenger Fernando Poe Jr. in early returns today. The voting was marred by violence, as at least 20 people died in election-related incidents Sunday and Monday, authorities said. Most of the deadly disputes occurred as local candidates campaigned.

Early explorers named this city after the green may-nilad plants that graced the gently flowing Pasig River, and the country's 19th-Century Spanish rulers naturally built their Malacanang Palace along the Pasig's placid banks. Today, scientists say the Pasig and every other river in Manila are biologically dead. Garbage, raw sewage and industrial waste wash up against Malacanang's white walls and grim squatters' shacks alike. A fetid stench sours the air.

When the dozens of youngsters gathered for the children's sermon Sunday morning at the Church of the Holy Trinity, they found their mascot, a two-foot-high, stuffed church mouse named Matthew, with a torn-up letter in his lap. "This was Matthew's letter to Santa Claus," explained the parish's Canadian priest, Father Brian Allan, as the children crowded around. "Matthew had asked Santa for a toy gun. "But last week Matthew got bombed. He got shot at. Not with toy guns, but with real ones.