The Philippines plans to vaccinate seven million dogs within two years to end its status as one of the world's most rabies-prone nations, the health department said Monday.

By making at least 70 percent of the country's 10 million dogs resistant to the rabies virus, the department hopes to remove the disease as a cause of human death by 2016, four years earlier than originally targeted, health officials said.

The Philippines is to upgrade a navy base facing disputed South China Sea waters to serve the extra ships being acquired to protect its territory, the military said Thursday.

Navy spokesman Lieutenant-Commander Gregory Fabic said the military would build a 500-million-peso ($11.2 million) port at Ulugan Bay, the Philippine military base nearest to the Spratly Islands.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino demanded an explanation from China Tuesday over a report its coast guard had fired water cannon at Filipino fishermen at a disputed shoal.

Aquino said the foreign department had been asked to file a "diplomatic message", a day after the Philippines' military chief told reporters of the incident at Scarborough Shoal -- the subject of a bitter territorial row in the South China Sea.

The Philippines' military chief on Monday accused China's coast guard of firing water cannon at Filipino fishermen for the first time to drive them away from a disputed sea shoal.

General Emmanuel Bautista said Chinese vessels fired cannon on January 27 near Scarborough Shoal -- the subject of a bitter territorial row in the strategically important South China Sea.

The Philippines is working with the Norwegian government on the possibility of reopening peace talks with communist insurgents, barely a year after negotiations collapsed, officials said Friday.

The administration has been engaged in on-and-off peace negotiations with the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) since the 1980s but the talks have repeatedly stalled due to what the government says are conditions imposed by the rebels.

Two Filipina documentary film-makers, kidnapped by al-Qaida-linked Muslim extremists in the strife-torn southern Philippines, were recovered by authorities on Thursday after eight months in captivity, a military statement said.

Despite her ordeal, Nadjoua Bansil said she and her younger sister Linda would return to making movies about marginalized communities.

Seven people were shot dead on Friday in a massive operation against illegal drug dens by police in the southern Philippines, law-enforcement officials said.

Thirty-six people including a South Korean national were arrested in the raid on 26 houses believed to be selling the banned drug methamphetamine hydrochloride, popularly known as "ice" or "shabu", said Emerson Rosales, the regional chief of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency.

The United Nations warned on Saturday that millions of survivors of the Philippines' deadliest typhoon were still without adequate shelter 100 days after the disaster.

"The authorities, U.N. agencies and non-governmental organisations, and the Filipino people should be commended for the pace of progress.... But we can not afford to be complacent," U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator for the Philippines Luiza Carvalho said.

Rescuers are deploying in the Philippines' Manila Bay to help distracted lovers aboard boats who could fall into the water while on Valentine's Day cruise dates, the coastguard said Friday.

The authorities expect the bay, with its spectacular views of the sunset, to throb with activity by sundown as couples hop onto yachts and cruise ships for deck-side, candle-lit dinners accompanied by romantic music from live bands.

The United States will "help" the Philippines in the event that China occupies disputed islands in the South China Sea, the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations said Thursday.

Admiral Jonathan Greenert also stressed that the U.S. would honor its mutual defense treaty with the Philippines amid a seething territorial conflict with China over the resource-rich waters.