With attention turning from Europe to the “new” world, worshippers in the Philippines prayed quietly and took to social media on Tuesday in the hope their cardinal might be chosen as the next leader of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino paid a historic visit Monday to Muslim rebel territory in a bid to speed up efforts to end one of Asia's longest and deadliest insurgencies. It was the first peace mission by a president to MILF's powerbase.

Philippine police have shot dead a suspect in the 2009 killings of 57 people, the country's worst political massacre, a senior officer said Saturday.

Philippine lawmakers have approved amendments that expanded the coverage of a law on illegal movement of money as the country sought to escape sanctions from an international watchdog.

Philippine officials say a Filipino crewman has been fatally shot in a pirate attack on a chemical tanker off the coast of Nigeria.

A Muslim rebel group said Monday it attacked Abu Sayyaf gunmen after the al-Qaida-linked militants refused to free hostages, sparking fierce jungle clashes that left up to 22 combatants dead in the southern Philippines.

Abu Sayyaf gunmen have freed two Filipino crewmen of a Jordanian TV journalist who were kidnapped last year but the al-Qaida-linked militants continued to hold the reporter and four other foreigners in a jungle where a fierce clash between the extremists and another Muslim rebel group erupted Sunday, officials said.

A badly damaged minesweeper stranded on a World Heritage-listed coral reef in the Philippines for nearly two weeks will need to be dismantled before it is removed, the U.S. Navy said Wednesday.

A social activist in the Catholic Philippines said Monday he faced up to 13 months in jail after being found guilty of “offending religious beliefs” for speaking out in favor of birth control.

Gunmen hiding in a sugarcane field ambushed a truckload of policemen and village guards who had provided security for a village festival, killing nine and wounding nine others Sunday in the central Philippines, officials said.