Last week, China's coast guard mounted what the Philippines called an "unusual" show of force at Second Thomas Shoal, a hotly disputed submerged reef in the Spratly Islands where Manila maintains a small outpost in the form of the rusting warship BRP Sierra Madre, grounded there in 1999 to anchor its territorial claim.

We're going to have a lot of magnets in a pretty short period of time. In fact, we'll have so many we won't know what to do with them,' US president says - Anadolu Ajansı

Artificial islands housing munitions and aircraft created in an attempt to lay claim to disputed islands vital for shipping