Philippines

Philippine prisons are better known for rats and vicious gangs than diplomatic niceties, which is why people here are angry that an American Marine convicted of rape is doing his jail time in the dignified U.S. Embassy. Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith was convicted in December 2006 of raping a 22-year-old Filipina a year earlier after they had been drinking in a bar in Subic Bay, a former U.S. naval base north of Manila.

Roel Robles had been on Pagasa Island for less than a week when he found himself wondering, with something like despair: Is it possible for one white-beached, palm-studded place to be both heaven and hell, paradise and prison? "When you first get there, you see this little island resort," said the 30-year-old sergeant in the Philippine National Police. "Then after about five days, something snaps. You begin telling yourself, 'I have to get out of here -- now, today.'

Filipino exchange teacher Ferdinand Nakila landed in Los Angeles expecting "Pretty Woman" scenes of swank Beverly Hills boulevards and glittering celebrities. What he got was Inglewood, where he stayed for two weeks in temporary housing and encountered drunkards, beggars, trash-filled streets and nightly police sirens. It got worse.

Every night without fail, Jim Turner is there at the far corner of the bar, chain-smoking his Marlboros and sipping ice-cold San Miguel from the bottle, watching over the Little Ones. He considers them family, but they're not his children. They're the dwarfs and other little people the 70-year-old Iowa native has rescued from the heartless streets of this capital city to offer them friendship and honest work. For 35 years, the former Peace Corps volunteer has operated the Hobbit House, a bar themed on J.R.R.

The motley caravan of boats, their engines popping in staccato rhythm, headed out to sea sounding like a platoon of sputtering lawn mowers. Painted bright red, turquoise and orange, they carried a dozen men wearing baseball caps and T-shirts fashioned as turbans to block the equatorial sun. Johnny Aralaji perched on the pointed bow of one of the craft, his sun-creased face frowning in concentration. He was born on a boat like this. His family wandered, allowing the currents to lead them.

Restaurant owner Lyra Quitay is blind in one eye. Her arms, chest and legs bear painful black scars and her right hand is so gnarled that it resembles a claw when she signs her name. In October 2001, a terrorist's bomb ripped through the claustrophobic downtown market where Quitay runs a tiny kitchen, instantly killing her security guard and blowing a hole in her life. The guard had gone to investigate an abandoned duck egg cart; when he opened the lid on a pot, it exploded -- ripping off his head and leaving Quitay with injuries so severe that she still wakes up crying at night.

Thousands of protesters demanding the resignation of the Philippine president marched through Manila on Friday, undeterred by heavy security after officials said they had uncovered an assassination plot. An estimated 10,000 people, including left-wing and Roman Catholic Church-backed groups, carried streamers reading "Gloria resign!" at a rally in Makati, the capital's financial district.

Ask Josephine Gonzalez how many children a family should have and the stick-figured 31-year-old mother answers without hesitation. "I only wanted three," she says, trying to soothe the naked baby boy who tugs at her ragged dress. But Gonzalez is, in fact, a mother of six. Her sister Angie Maquiran, two years older, has seven children.

Divers managed to get inside a capsized ferry today but found only bodies and no survivors, three days after the vessel carrying more than 800 people capsized during a powerful typhoon, officials said. Philippine navy spokesman Lt. Col. Edgard Arevalo would not speculate on whether anyone still might be found alive but indicated that the amount of time that had passed since the disaster made it unlikely. He said the ship's interior was too dark to even determine how many bodies were there.

Three bomb blasts rocked the southern Philippines, killing at least seven people and wounding 29, officials said, amid warnings that Muslim militants might try to disrupt twin Asian regional summits this weekend. The first explosion killed six people when it ripped apart a lottery outlet in General Santos city, said its police chief, Senior Supt. Alfredo Toroctocon. The second explosion occurred in Kidapawan city, about 65 miles north of the first blast, police said.