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MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The Philippine president-elect has encouraged the public to help him in his war against crime, urging citizens with guns to shoot and kill drug dealers who resist arrest and fight back in their neighborhoods. In a nationally televised speech late Saturday, Rodrigo Duterte told a huge crowd in the southern city of Davao that Filipinos who help him battle crime will be rewarded.

The outspoken city mayor who is the front-runner in the Philippine presidential race drew the largest crowd Saturday as the candidates held their final rallies, despite efforts by the president to block his election bid over fears he could threaten the country's democracy. After crisscrossing the archipelago nation, the five presidential candidates, led by Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, converged in the vote-rich capital Manila as three months of bruising campaigning came to an end ahead of Monday's election. About 300,000 people turned up at Duterte's rally at a historic grandstand by Manila Bay where presidential inaugurations have been held, according to...

The Philippines has its own version of Donald Trump, and he’s campaigning as hard for the presidency of the Philippines as is Trump in the U.S. He’s shouting out controversial charges and claims about as often as Trump, and he’s about the same age. The difference is that Rodrigo Duterte, the 70-year-old mayor of Davao, the country’s fourth largest city and largest on the strife-torn large southern island of Mindanao, is a long-time politico with a reputation for brutality whereas Trump is a real estate tycoon whose tough talk may or may not translate into deeds. While Trump was building...

A militant Moro party-list group branded as a “prelude to an intensified military intervention” in southern Philippines the arrival in Sulu of 25 American military personnel. “We refused to believe that the US military is surveying Sulu for humanitarian reasons. The US government does not give away anything for free or charity. It gives because it wants to conquer and gain more profit for its war agenda in Mindanao,” said Cosain Naga, spokesperson for the Suara Bangsamoro Party-List. Naga stressed that the arrival of the US military personnel “is part of US plan to establish influence and forces to advance...

MANILA, Philippines, Mar 04, 2003 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- A powerful explosion ripped through the waiting area of an airport in the southern Philippines on Tuesday, authorities said. Authorities said they saw many people injured and killed, but could not provide exact figures. Local civil defense chief Susan Madrid said the explosion occurred at the Davao airport on the southern island of Mindanao. Copyright 2003 Associated Press, All rights reserved