MANILA, Philippines—The floods came first. In Bulacan, Pampanga, and parts of Metro Manila, residents waded through chest-deep water, salvaging what they could from submerged homes. In other provinces, swollen rivers tore through farmland and roads that had supposedly been reinforced years earlier. These scenes were not new, but by 2025, what followed was unprecedented: a national reckoning driven not by speeches, but by numbers. By mid-year, the administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was forced to confront a staggering paper trail behind the country’s flood-control program—one that showed how public money meant to shield communities from disaster had instead pooled in […]... Keep on reading: 2025 Recap: The numbers that staggered a nation