Lintang Bedol arrives in Comelec

Philippine President Benigno Aquino promised police commandos better extra resources on Wednesday, weeks after 44 commandos were killed in a clash with Muslim rebels, but declined to answer questions about the botched raid, a senior officer said. On Jan. 25, police commandos sneaked into a southern rebel area to "neutralise" Zulkifli bin Hir, alias Marwan, an al Qaeda-linked bomb maker with a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head. The mission went disastrously wrong for the government when …

In this photo by Bullit Marquez, a boy sits on pavement while his family retrieves items from their burned home Tuesday following an overnight fire that destroyed a slum-dwellers community in Manila, Philippines. No casualties were reported in the 9-hour fire that burned more than a thousand homes and left at least 3,000 families homeless. The Bureau of Fire and Protection was still investigating the cause of the fire. But in Manila's poorest neighborhoods, fires often are caused by poor wiring …

Around 200 holiday skiers in the Italian Dolomites were winched to safety on Thursday after getting stranded in cable car cabins buffeted by 80 mile (130 km) an hour winds. The Ciampinoi cable car in the popular Val Gardena resort ground to a halt after a huge tree was blown over onto the cable, local officials said. The drama came as stormy weather caused havoc across much of northern Italy, claiming at least two lives and causing the partial collapse of a much-admired 17th-century church …

Leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), led by President Mahmoud Abbas, decided on Thursday to stop all forms of security coordination with Israel, Palestinian officials said. Three members of the Palestinian Central Council (PCC), the second highest Palestinian decision-making body, told Reuters the decision was taken during the two-day meeting that ended on Thursday. Decisions by the PLO are usually binding on the Palestinian Authority. …

WASHINGTON (AP) — Iran's growing influence in Iraq is setting off alarm bells, and nowhere is the problem starker than in the high-stakes battle for Tikrit. It marks a crucial fight in the bigger war to expel the Islamic State group from Iraq, and yet Iran and the Shiite militias it empowers — not the U.S. — are leading the charge. …

Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon hold dominant positions in the tech sector and have been among the biggest engines driving the Nasdaq above the 5,000 mark this week for the first time since 2000. The tech world moves so quickly that in 2000 Google wasn't yet public and Facebook didn't exist. Apple had yet to introduce the iPod, let alone the iPhone. "In other sectors there's a greater sense of permanence in the leadership, but tech is always changing," said Scott Kessler, head of …

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress may have fled town ahead of a snowstorm, but the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee didn't let that sabotage a scheduled hearing on — drum roll, please — the Arctic. …

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — A new report from the U.N. secretary-general says nearly half a million people were displaced in Darfur last year, the highest number in a decade for the chaotic region of western Sudan. …