Manila - Josie Dequito looks decades older than her actual age. With no teeth, sunken eyes and hollowed cheeks, the 40-year-old mother could easily be mistaken for a 60-year-old.

"Life is really difficult," she said as she prepared assorted goods that she will sell door-to-door all day around San Andres Bukid, a slum village in Manila City. "I have to earn extra because of my big family."

"Sometimes, I get home really, really tired but I still have to take care of my children," she said. "They are still young. My husband helps a lot, but he also has no job right now."

Dequito has 11 children - the eldest, a 19-year-old daughter, the youngest a two-year-old son.

Manila - Injuries caused by rowdy New Year's Eve revelries in the Philippines declined 25 per cent due to intermittent rains and the global economic crunch, the health chief said Thursday.

Health Secretary Francisco Duque said hospitals recorded only 346 cases of New Year's Eve injuries, a sharp decline from 417 cases in the previous year.

Duque said intermittent rains overnight contributed to a decline in the use of fireworks.

General Santos City, Philippines  - Twenty-five people were wounded when a hand grenade exploded at a New Year's Eve party in a southern Philippine city, a regional police chief said Thursday.

Cotabato City, Philippines  - Philippine police on Wednesday defused two homemade bombs found inside a passenger bus in the country's troubled south, officials said.

The bombs, made from 81-millimetre and 60-millimetre mortar shells, were hidden in abandoned baggage inside the bus in Isulan town, Sultan Kudarat province, 930 kilometres south of Mnaila.

Police Superintendent Suharto Teng Tucao said bomb experts removed the explosives from bus and safely defused them.

"Passengers immediately got off the bus after they discovered the baggage containing explosives," he said. "We are thankful the explosives were recovered before they exploded."

Cotabato City, Philippines - A suspected bomb courier was killed and a police officer was wounded when a homemade bomb exploded near a police outpost in the southern Philippines, the military said Wednesday.

The bomb, planted in a tricycle loaded with charcoal, exploded as police officers inspected the vehicle at a checkpoint in Esperanza town in Sultan Kudarat province, 930 kilometres south of Manila, on Tuesday evening.

Manila - A member of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's cabinet was in hot water on Monday after a businessman accused him and his two sons of beating him and his teenage son in a brawl at a golf course.

Arroyo ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate the accusations of businessman Delfin Dela Paz against Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman.

Press Secretary Jesus Dureza said Arroyo also directed the DOJ to file appropriate charges "against those responsible for any violation of law."