A fire in a slum provoked riots that left one person dead today after residents vented their anger at the slow response of the emergency services to the blaze.

Muslim rebels and the Philippine government overcame decades of hostilities and took their first step toward ending one of Asia's longest-running insurgencies with the signing of a preliminary peace pact yesterday.

Philippine president Benigno Aquino III said his government has reached a preliminary peace agreement with the country's largest Muslim rebel group in a major breakthrough toward ending a decades-long insurgency.

Relentless rains yesterday submerged half of the capital, Manila, triggering a landslide that killed nine and sent emergency crews scrambling to rescue tens of thousands of residents.

Deadly torrential rains submerged much of the Philippine capital and surrounding areas today, forcing nearly 270,000 people to flee their homes with more flooding expected in the north of the country as a tropical storm passes through the region, officials said.

A veteran Middle Eastern TV reporter who had interviewed Osama bin Laden months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has disappeared with four other people on a restive southern Philippine island where Muslim militants are active, officials said today. 

Officials say a fire that swept through a sprawling squatters' colony on Manila Bay's rim has left two people missing and some 10,000 others homeless.

The Roman Catholic Church and a media watchdog called for justice today after an anchorman of a Catholic-run radio station was killed by motorcycle-riding gunmen in the southern Philippines.

A fire at a clothing store in the southern Philippines has killed 17 employees, most of whom were women who were asleep and trapped on the top floor, officials said.

A grenade explosion has killed two people and wounded at least 30 others outside a crowded bar in the southern Philippines.

A cruise ship with reportedly up to 60 Britons on board was drifting in seas south of the Philippines today after a fire in one of the ship's engine rooms.

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The Philippines government shipped more than 400 coffins today to two flood-stricken cities in the south where the death toll neared 1,000 as President Benigno Aquino III declared a state of national calamity and relief agencies rushed to help.

Former world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali today said he was praying for Joe Frazier following the news of his great rival's battle against cancer.