United Nations: Four UN peacekeepers, all from the Philippines, were abducted on the Golan Heights on Tuesday by an armed group believed to be the same one to have abducted 21 Filipino peacekeepers two months ago, the United Nations said. The abduction took place "near Position 86", a UN spokeswoman told Xinhua. "Efforts to secure their release are underway."
This is the second abduction of UN peacekeepers on the Golan Heights over the past two months. In March, 21 Filipino peacekeepers from the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) were abducted but later released. UNDOF, deployed in the Golan Heights since 1974, has about 1, 000 troops and civilian staff, who are from such countries as Austria, India, the Philippines, Morocco and Moldova.
"We can confirm that four peacekeepers from the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) were detained today by an unidentified armed group while they were patrolling in the area of separation close to Position 86, near Al Jamla," UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said later at a daily news briefing here.
"The four are from the Philippine battalion. Efforts are underway to secure their release." UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "strongly condemns the detention" and calls for their immediate release, Nesirky said....
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04:56 AM, May 08, 2013
New Delhi: India's attractiveness among the expat professionals as a potential workplace has taken a major hit in the wake of recent cases of rape incidents and attacks on foreigners, a survey says. The survey, conducted among 2,200 expat professionals, found that 72 per cent of the respondents who were keen to work in India in the first half of 2012 are now shifting their attention to countries like Philippines,...
04:30 PM, Apr 28, 2013
Renaldo Balkman has been banned from the professional basketball league in the Philippines for grabbing a team-mate around the neck during a game. ...
09:09 PM, Mar 11, 2013
The world's largest saltwater crocodile in captivity died Sunday, sending villagers to tears in a backwater southern Philippine town that shot to international prominence and started to draw tourists, revenue and development because of the immense reptile. ...
02:58 AM, Feb 11, 2013
The solitary islands in the East China Sea used to be the fancy of poets and fishermen. But today, these rocky outposts, once shrouded in anonymity, are at the heart of a tug of war churning the waters between Asia's two biggest economies. ...
11:11 AM, Feb 01, 2013
India was the top recipient of migrant remittances in 2012, according to a new report released by the World Bank. According to the report, India received $70 billion as migrant remittances in one year, followed by China with $66 million. ...
01:46 PM, Jan 08, 2013
Amid a row over South China Sea with its maritime neighbours, China today said it is leading a plan to set up a tsunami and other natural disaster warning systems in the area. "Tsunamis don't occur frequently, but they always result in significant damage. In the South China Sea, occurrence of earthquakes and tsunamis in the Manila Trench near the Philippines is highly possible," Zhang Zhanhai, head of the State...
06:53 PM, Dec 27, 2012
A typhoon that had left the Philippines after killing nearly 600 people and leaving hundreds missing in the south has made a U-turn and is now threatening the country's northwest, officials said on Saturday. ...
12:54 AM, Dec 09, 2012
Stunned parents searching for missing children examined a row of mud-stained bodies covered with banana leaves while survivors dried their soaked belongings on roadsides on Wednesday, a day after a powerful typhoon killed nearly 300 people in the southern Philippines. ...
07:32 AM, Dec 06, 2012
Mud-stained bodies covered with banana leaves were laid out in a row and survivors dried their soiled belongings on the roadside under a bright sun Wednesday, a day after a typhoon killed more than 270 people in the southern Philippines. ...
02:09 PM, Dec 05, 2012
Vijayawada: Even as the kin of the Indian student who went missing in Philippines are anxiously waiting here for information about his whereabouts, his father has been trying unsuccessfully for the past two days to get a visa to reach the country. Sangasetti Jayakiran, an MBBS third year student of the University of Northern Philippines, Vigan city, went missing on September 11. His father Ravi Kumar, a hotelier in Vijayawada,...
12:58 PM, Sep 19, 2012
Manila: A 7.6-magnitude quake struck off the eastern coast of the Philippines late on Friday, killing at least one person in a house collapse, knocking out power in several towns and generating negligible tsunami surges. A tsunami alert originally was issued for several countries in the region including Indonesia and Japan and for Pacific islands as far away as the Northern Marianas, but they all were later lifted, the Pacific...
09:31 PM, Aug 31, 2012
Manila: An earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter Scale rocked the coast of Philippines on Friday. Following the earthquake, tsunami warnings were issued for Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan and Japan. Tsunami alerts were also issued for Papua New Guinea and other islands in the Pacific, including the US state of Hawaii. The NOAA Tsunami Center later lifted a warning for Japan, Taiwan and several other Pacific islands. "Strong earthquake here in...
06:52 PM, Aug 31, 2012
Calicut: A week after managing to escape from militant's captivity in Philippines, it was an emotional reunion for Kerala's Biju K. Biju was abducted in the Philippines by a militant group with alleged links to the al Qaeda. Fourteen months in captivity in an unknown land Biju K met his worst nightmares in the Philippines after being abducted by militants. But all that is in the past now as he...
08:38 AM, Aug 20, 2012
New Delhi: An Indian escaped from the captivity of an al Qaeda linked terror group after being held captive in the southern Philippines for nearly 14 months. Biju Kolara Veetil from Calicut was abducted in the Philippines, while visiting his in-laws. In July 2012, he miraculously escaped and is now is now safe in police custody, and is in touch with Indian officials, MEA spokesman Syed Akbaruddin tweeted. Veetil also...
06:54 AM, Aug 11, 2012
Manila: May Day moved beyond its roots as an international workers' holiday to a day of international protest Tuesday, with rallies throughout Asia demanding wage increases and marches planned across Europe over government-imposed austerity measures. Europeans will take to the streets to protest against the measures that are being blamed for a big increase in the number of unemployed, particularly in Spain where one in four people is out of...
02:47 PM, May 01, 2012
Pyongyang: Impoverished North Korea rejected international protests over its planned long-range rocket launch and said on Wednesday that it was injecting fuel "as we speak", meaning it could blast off as early as Thursday. If all goes to plan, the launch, which North Korea's neighbors and the West say is a disguised ballistic missile test, will take a three-stage rocket over a sea separating the Korean peninsula from China before...
01:51 PM, Apr 11, 2012
Manila: A Philippine Catholic school is witholding the diplomas of six high school boys who uploaded Facebook photos that appear to show them kissing each other, an education official said Friday. A day earlier, a Philippine court rejected another Catholic school's decision to bar five girls from graduation ceremonies because they had posed in bikinis for photos posted on Facebook. The cases test the limits of privacy in a conservative...
11:49 AM, Mar 30, 2012
Mumbai: Employees in India are likely to get a salary increase of 11.9 per cent this year, says a survey conducted by global human resources consulting and outsourcing firm Aon Hewitt. This is well ahead of competitors China and Philippines, the highest in the Asia-Pacific region. Sandeep Chaudhary, practice leader - compensation consulting told CNBC-TV18 that pharmaceutica sector is expected to top the charts in terms of salary hikes. "Pharmaceutical...
07:46 AM, Feb 22, 2012
New Delhi: India has once again emerged as the most optimistic market, driven by its buoyant domestic consumption levels, but slowing growth and inflationary concerns could put pressure on consumer confidence for the year ahead, says a survey. According to the latest global consumer confidence findings from Nielsen, a provider of information and insights into what consumers watch and buy, India remained the world's most optimistic market for the eighth...
11:50 AM, Feb 13, 2012
