Officials say more than 400 people, half of them from China, were arrested by Philippine authorities in a raid on a suspected online gambling and scam hub in a busy commercial district in Manila

Philippine defence minister Gilberto Teodoro said he would discuss China's attempts to change the international order during a bilateral meeting with his Japanese counterpart in Manila on Monday. (Reporting by Mikhail Flores;

France, Australia, Japan, Canada, New Zealand—following Washington’s lead—have each staged war games or concluded alliances with Manila targeting China.

Japan and the Philippines agreed on Monday to further deepen defence ties in the face of an "increasingly severe" security environment in the Indo-Pacific region, Japanese defence minister Gen Nakatani said on Monday.

Both Tokyo and Manila are longtime allies of the United States, which has been strengthening an arc of alliances to deter China's claims in the Pacific.

Manila is shoring up military partnerships with other nations as it seeks to counter Beijing in a South China Sea dispute.

The Philippine defense chief's warmongering rhetoric shows that he clearly does not know which way the wind is blowing today. The new US administration under Donald Trump has sent an unmistakable message to allies and partners that they should take security in their own hands, and that US security protection is no longer a free lunch.

Japan and the Philippines have agreed to strengthen their defence ties in response to China's growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific, as reported by Indo-Pacific Defense Forum.In a meeting in Manila,

Teodoro casts China’s actions in the South China Sea as a sinister plot to “restrict freedom of flights” and navigation. This is a textbook case of swapping the label on the bottle. Western narratives love to conflate China’s lawful activities in its own territories with “bullying” or “restricting freedom.

PRESIDENT Marcos and his Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro should suspend their diatribes against the opposition senatorial candidates, that they have been silent about "Chinese aggression" in the South China Sea.

NATIONALIST organizations have strongly condemned China's claim that Palawan is historically part of its territory, saying it is 'an insult to the knowledge of the Filipino people about their own history and culture.