A floating Chinese platform at Scarborough Shoal has revived fears in the Philippines that Beijing could be taking another incremental step towards turning one of the South China Sea’s most sensitive disputed features into a permanent outpost. The Armed Forces of the Philippines said on Tuesday it would not allow any structure to be built at the shoal, nearly three weeks after satellite images first showed a possible floating platform there. “We are not allowing that to happen. We’re not...

The defacement of the National Bureau of Investigation’s website over the weekend marked an escalation in a wave of attacks on Philippine government pages, with the country’s main investigative agency becoming the third major state body in less than a week to have its site compromised. The incident followed similar attacks on the Senate’s website on Wednesday and the House of Representatives’ page on Saturday, raising questions about the government’s ability to protect even its own law...