Passage 1
The Philippines has said it plans to develop islands and reefs in the South China Sea that are the subject of contesting claims from China.
The upgrades to the territorial features will seek to make them liveable for troops, Manila’s military chief Romeo Brawner said on Monday. The announcement came amid simmering tensions between the Philippines and China.
“We’d like to improve all the nine, especially the islands we are occupying,” Brawner said, referring to the nine features, including reefs and islands, it occupies in the South China Sea.
These include the Second Thomas Shoal, locally known as Ayungin, as well as Thitu Island, the biggest and most strategically important in the South China Sea.
Passage 2
Iran said late Monday, January 15, 2024, it had launched strikes against a “spy headquarters and gathering of anti-Iranian terrorist groups” shortly after missiles hit an upscale area near the U.S. consulate in Irbil, the seat of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
The security council of the Kurdish regional government said in a statement that four civilians were killed and six injured in the strikes.
Peshraw Dizayi, a prominent local businessman with a portfolio that included real estate and security services companies, was killed in one of the strikes along with members of his family, according to a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, by former Iraqi member of parliament Mashan al-Jabouri, who said that one of the missiles had fallen on Dizayi’s “palace, next to my house, which is under construction on the road to the Salah al-Din resort.”
