Filipino superstar Manny Pacquiao swapped his boxing gloves for golf clubs in a charity event that raised funds for storm victims in the country’s south.

PHILIPPINES authorities yesterday began burying the dead from flash floods that have left more than 1,000 dead or missing, as President Benigno Aquino declared a national disaster.

The death toll from storm-triggered flash floods that devastated a wide swathe of the southern Philippines has risen to 521, the Philippine Red Cross said today.

The US is abandoning plans to keep troops in Iraq past an end-of-year withdrawal deadline, it emerged today.