Thursday, November 22, 2007 (Philippines)

The owner of this moviehouse on Colon St., Cebu City says he wanted to send a message of peace and national unity, in a Nativity scene that features President Arroyo as the Virgin Mary and disgraced president Joseph Estrada as, well, St. Joseph.(Sun.star photo/Allan Defensor) A 43-year-old father held his two-day-old son hostage for more than an hour early morning yesterday and threatened to drop him from the first floor of the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC). Edito Patiño, a fisherman from Barangay Cotcot in the northern town of Liloan, Cebu, reportedly resorted to taking his son hostage out of desperation. He didn’t know where to find money to pay for his wife’s hospital bills. Patiño only yielded after the arrival of an ABS-CBN TV crew and gave his son to Police Inspector Bonifacio Garciano, who dressed up as a member of the hospital staff. [full story]