Manila

MANILA, Philippines -- Pepsi's advertisements, splashed for weeks all over Philippine newspapers, radio and TV, were hardly subtle: "Today, you could be a millionaire!"From her tin-roofed shack in one of Manila's more squalid slums, Victoria Angelo couldn't resist. The unemployed mother of five and her husband, Juanito, who pedals people in a three-wheeled cab for about $4 a day, began drinking Pepsi with every meal and snack. Each morning, the family prayed for a specially marked bottle cap.And then, a miracle!

An Upper Fells Point bar whose liquor license was suspended for 60 days is appealing the decision, the bar's attorney said Wednesday. Gary Maslan said neighborhood residents have wrongly blamed the Rancho Manila bar for problems that occur outside in the 1700 block of E. Lombard St. "There's crime all over the city of Baltimore," Maslan said. "It's got one of the highest crime rates in the United States. How this little bar is responsible is beyond me. " The Lombard Court Homeowners Association challenged the bar's license before the liquor board, raising concerns about violent crime, prostitution, noise and litter.

MANILA, Philippines -- Weeping and clutching a rosary, flamboyant former Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos returned home to an uncertain welcome today after nearly six years of exile in the United States.Amid tight security and a crush of reporters, the 62-year-old widow of former President Ferdinand E. Marcos was taken into an airport holding room where her one-way entry documents were stamped."It's wonderful to be home," she said as she disembarked from her chartered Boeing 747, back to the country she and her husband fled in disgrace in 1986.

Louis Sachwald, who spent 42 months as a prisoner of war during World War II after the fall of Bataan and Corregidor in the Philippines and managed to survive slave labor camps, enforced marches and "hell" ships, died Feb. 28 of dementia at the Charlotte Hall Veterans Home in Southern Maryland. The former Pikesville resident was 92. Mr. Sachwald was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and moved in 1934 with his family to Lancaster, Pa. After graduating from McCaskey High School in 1937, he earned a bachelor's degree in education in 1940 from Millersville State Teachers College.

For the past 34 years, Erminia Locatelli Rogers has lived quietly on her farm near New Windsor, painting in her studio and teaching art for several years at St. John's Catholic School in Westminster.In her book, "Romualdo Locatelli: Memoirs 1938 to 1946," Mrs. Rogers, 86, recounts a life that has been anything but quiet. The 157-page volume, recently published by an Indonesian publisher, details the author's years living in Southeast Asia with her husband, artist Romualdo Locatelli.When they left Italy in 1938 for Bali and Jakarta, the young couple had no idea that they would end their life together in war-torn Manila, caught in the Philippine capital during the Japanese occupation of World War II.In the preface to her book, Mrs. Rogers writes: "My story resembles a kind of scriptwriter's invention, however, we lived it. I survived, my husband did not."

Kick Connection's tournament and demonstration team will help stage a sequel to the "Thrilla in Manila" this weekend when it represents the United States in the second annual World Eskrima, Kali, Arnis Federation Championships in Vito Cruz, Manila.The Rizal Memorial Coliseum, site of the three-day tournament, is expected to attract more than 300 competitors from 30 countries who will go for the gold in thePhilippines' national martial art of arnis -- better known as "stickfighting."Nine members of the Pasadena-based stick fighting academy enduredthe 20-hour flight to the Philippine island of Luzon earlier this week not only to compete in the international event, but to experience the culture and serve as missionaries to a nation devastated by natural disasters.

MANILA, Philippines - Dodging protesters and invoking history, President Bush paid a festive but condensed state visit to the Philippines yesterday aimed at shoring up President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's support and her efforts to curb terrorism in the former U.S. protectorate. But fears of terrorism overshadowed events, forcing the president to rush through the schedule - a formal arrival ceremony, a wreath-laying at the national monument, an address to a joint session of the Philippine Congress and a state dinner - in a mere eight hours.

Salvador P. Lopez, 82, a former Philippine ambassador to France and the United States and University of the Philippines president, died Tuesday of a heart attack in Manila.

Philippine kidnappers have released Ellicott City native Tracy Rectanus and three others, all unharmed, after eight days of captivity on a remote island."

MANILA, Philippines -- Kept on the move and guarded by Muslim bandits on a remote island in the southern Philippines, Ellicott City native Tracy Rectanus said she was confused but rarely felt in danger during her eight days as a hostage.The missionary teacher was released unharmed with three other hostages March 25 following negotiations brokered by the Muslim separatist Moro National Liberation Front.Ms. Rectanus is a speech therapist at Faith Academy, a missionary school in Manila.Sitting on the porch of a friend's house on the outskirts of Manila yesterday, Ms. Rectanus, 34, spoke of constant confusion and fatigue.

Every morning, it is somebody's job to scatter freshly plucked flowers across the surface of the stone basins appearing at random throughout Sonya's Garden. Pie-sized, pale pink blossoms float in one urn, cradling smaller, purple blooms. A velvety storm of fuchsia and yellow flowers drifts in another vessel, itself nestled in an abundant bed of impatiens. The flowers, as well as the tinkling of chimes and outdoor futons shrouded in netting, lure visitors to Sonya's Garden, a lush retreat 45 miles south of Manila, into untold languorous reveries.

DURING HIS eight-hour visit to Manila on Saturday, President Bush drew a striking connection between Iraq and the Philippines in a speech before the Philippine Congress. The current U.S. occupation of Iraq, he held, should be modeled on the earlier U.S. occupation of the Philippines, which lasted from 1898 to 1946. "Some say the culture of the Middle East will not sustain the institutions of democracy," he stated. "The same doubts were once expressed about the culture of Asia. Those doubts were proven wrong nearly six decades ago."

MANILA, Philippines - Dodging protesters and invoking history, President Bush paid a festive but condensed state visit to the Philippines yesterday aimed at shoring up President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's support and her efforts to curb terrorism in the former U.S. protectorate. But fears of terrorism overshadowed events, forcing the president to rush through the schedule - a formal arrival ceremony, a wreath-laying at the national monument, an address to a joint session of the Philippine Congress and a state dinner - in a mere eight hours.

MANILA, Philippines - A notorious Islamic militant arrested in May has confessed to police that he plotted to attack the Philippine presidential palace using Arab suicide bombers, according to a confidential police report of his interrogation. Mukhlis Yunos, a suspect with links to Jemaah Islamiah, a Southeast Asia terror network, said he was on his way to Manila to prepare for the attacks when he was arrested with a co-conspirator, an Egyptian businessman, according to a copy of the report obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Zenaida Evangelista, a medical laboratory manager, died of complications from cancer Saturday at her Cockeysville home. She was 60. Born in Manila, the Philippines, she earned a medical technology degree at the University of St. Tomas there before moving to the United States in 1964. She earned a master's degree from Michigan State University. She was a technical laboratory supervisor for the old North Charles Hospital, which was then affiliated with Wyman Park Medical Center. After running an independent medical laboratory in Lutherville, she became a lab manager at Georgetown University in Washington in 1992.

MANILA, Philippines - The Bush administration is all set to bring its "war on terrorism" to the Philippines. Hundreds of Green Berets, Navy SEALS and Marines are preparing to land on Jolo island and hunt down the Abu Sayyaf, a ruthless gang of kidnappers who style themselves Islamic militants. There's just one snag. The Philippine government, after apparently agreeing to let U.S. troops engage in combat, is balking now that the deal has become public. Yesterday, Philippine Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes flew to the United States, where he is to meet this week in Washington with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other officials.

MANILA, Philippines - A notorious Islamic militant arrested in May has confessed to police that he plotted to attack the Philippine presidential palace using Arab suicide bombers, according to a confidential police report of his interrogation. Mukhlis Yunos, a suspect with links to Jemaah Islamiah, a Southeast Asia terror network, said he was on his way to Manila to prepare for the attacks when he was arrested with a co-conspirator, an Egyptian businessman, according to a copy of the report obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Zenaida Evangelista, a medical laboratory manager, died of complications from cancer Saturday at her Cockeysville home. She was 60. Born in Manila, the Philippines, she earned a medical technology degree at the University of St. Tomas there before moving to the United States in 1964. She earned a master's degree from Michigan State University. She was a technical laboratory supervisor for the old North Charles Hospital, which was then affiliated with Wyman Park Medical Center. After running an independent medical laboratory in Lutherville, she became a lab manager at Georgetown University in Washington in 1992.

WASHINGTON - The United States will send nearly 2,000 troops to the Philippines in the next few weeks to fight Muslim extremists in the southern part of the country, opening a new front in the fight against terrorism, Pentagon officials said yesterday. A six-month training mission last year in the Philippines limited 1,300 U.S. troops - including 160 Special Forces soldiers - to an advisory role and permitted them to fire only in self-defense in the rare cases when they accompanied Philippine soldiers.

MANILA, Philippines - They come to Quiapo Church to pray to the black Nazarene, a dark wooden statue of Jesus believed to have special powers. Desperate for a miracle, supplicants often roll up their clothing and crawl on bare knees from the back of the cathedral to the altar some 100 feet away. For some, there is a less painful path. For a few pesos, they can hire one of the church's dozen or so "prayer ladies" to smooth the bumps on the hard road to salvation. "God does not care who the prayer is coming from, as long as the person who paid for the prayer is sincere," says Nanette Rosales, 63, a widow who for more than two decades has been praying on behalf of others for a fee. Since colonial Spain brought Roman Catholicism to this sprawling Southeast Asian archipelago four centuries ago, Filipinos have customized their religion with local interpretations.