Adrian Olivier,

Sunday 11 February – Sunday 18 February:

On Tuesday, The United States Senate passed a $95bn bill with aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The vote saw 22 Republicans voting with Democrats to pass the package 70-29. The legislation will now head to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, where its chances of becoming law are slim. Several right-wing Republicans in the House already saying they will block it. They insist that the $61bn for Ukraine should be spent instead on domestic issues, such as border security. The death of opposition figure Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison has triggered outrage in Western capitals.

Early on Wednesday morning, Israeli operatives sabotaged two gas pipelines within Iran, disrupting the flow of heat and cooking gas to provinces with millions of people. The sabotage targeted several points along two main gas pipelines in the provinces of Fars and Chahar Mahal Bakhtiari on Wednesday. The pipelines carry gas from the south to major cities like Tehran and Isfahan. One of the pipelines runs to Astara, a city near Iran’s northern border with Azerbaijan. Energy experts estimated that the attacks on the pipelines, which each run for about 1,200 kilometres and carry 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day, knocked out about 15 percent of Iran’s daily natural gas production, making them particularly sweeping assaults on the country’s critical infrastructure. In response, authorities in Lorestan, Zanjan, and North Khorasan provinces announced cuts to gas supplies for offices and industries to prevent residential shortages. “The enemy’s plan was to completely disrupt the flow of gas in winter to several main cities and provinces in our country,” Iran’s oil minister, Javad Owji, told Iranian media on Friday. Mr. Owji, who had previously referred to the blasts as “sabotage and terrorist attacks,” stopped short of publicly blaming Israel or any other culprit. But he said that the goal of the attack was to damage Iran’s energy infrastructure and stir domestic discontent. Israel also caused a separate blast on Thursday inside a chemical factory on the outskirts of Tehran that rattled a neighbourhood and sent plumes of smoke and fire into the air. But local officials said the factory explosion, which took place on Thursday, stemmed from an accident in the factory’s fuel tank.

On Wednesday, news broke that the United States had intelligence about the development of a new Russian space-based anti-satellite weapon. Russia is trying to develop a nuclear space weapon that would destroy satellites by creating a massive energy wave when detonated, potentially crippling a vast swath of the commercial and government satellites that enable global communication. Biden administration officials have emphasized publicly that the weapon is still under development and is not yet in orbit. Experts say this kind of weapon could have the potential to wipe out mega-constellations of small satellites, like SpaceX’s Starlink, which has been successfully used by Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia. This would almost certainly be “a last-ditch weapon” for Russia, according to U.S. officials – because it would do the same damage to whatever Russian satellites were also in the area.

Coincidentally on Wednesday, the Pentagon launched a new missile-tracking satellite system, called Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensors (H.B.T.S.S) into orbit as part of a new effort to bolster its military presence in space. The system put into orbit on Wednesday was a prototype developed to test a new plan, named Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, that aims to blanket low-Earth orbit with hundreds of smaller, cheaper satellites. The approach is like a version of the Starlink internet communications system that Elon Musk’s SpaceX already has in orbit, with more than 5,000 satellites. The idea is that even if enemies of the United States could knock out some of its satellites — or even more than a dozen of them — the system could keep operating by shifting to other units in the orbiting web. The Pentagon’s Space Development Agency is budgeting nearly $14 billion in the coming five years to build out the new system. Right now, the Pentagon, like NASA, is relying heavily on Mr. Musk and SpaceX to put these new satellites in space. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off on Wednesday evening from Cape Canaveral in Florida carrying the two prototype Pentagon satellites that will be tested over the next two years. By the end of the decade, the Pentagon will likely have 1,000 new satellites in low-earth orbit.

On Thursday, the U.S. military said it had recently carried out a cyberattack against an Iranian military vessel which had been gathering intelligence on merchant ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. It has been relaying the information it gathered to Houthi fighters. The cyberattack is part of the American response to three of its soldiers being killed in Jordan earlier this month. For weeks, the U.S. has suspected the ship, the MV Behshad, operating in the Bab al-Mandab strait between Djibouti and Yemen, had been passing on information about nearby ships to Houthi rebels. The cyberattack was intended to disrupt the Iranian ship’s ability to share that information with the Houthis, according to the U.S. military, who did not elaborate on the clandestine mission.

On Thursday, a Falcon 9 rocket flown by SpaceX lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, launching a moon lander built by the Houston, Texas-based company Intuitive Machines. NASA is the main sponsor of the moon lander, paying Intuitive Machines $118 million to get its latest set of experiments to the moon in an attempt to jumpstart the lunar economy ahead of its crewed moon missions under Project Artemis. If all goes according to plan, the lander will touch down on the lunar surface on February 22, having travelled 370,000 kilometres from Earth. It hopes to operate near the moon’s south pole where Intuitive Machines is aiming for its 14-foot (4.3-m) tall, six-legged lander to touch down – a region full of treacherous craters and cliffs, yet potentially rich with frozen water. This area is where NASA plans to land astronauts later this decade. The space agency said its six navigation and tech experiments on the lander can help smooth the way.

On Friday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine made a whirlwind trip through Berlin and Paris in a bid to shore up European backing at a critical moment in his country’s fight against Russia, with support from the United States wavering and Ukraine desperately in need of more arms. Arriving in Berlin on Friday morning, Mr. Zelensky signed a security agreement with Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany that pledged to “strive for a just and lasting peace in Ukraine.” The Ukrainian leader then travelled to Paris later Friday to sign a similar accord with President Emmanuel Macron of France, before an appearance at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday. Mr. Scholz said that Germany would send an additional military aid package of $1.2 billion, and Mr. Macron said that France’s military assistance to Ukraine in 2024 would total up to $3.2 billion.

On Friday, a New York judge handed Donald J. Trump a crushing defeat in his civil fraud case, finding the former president liable for conspiring to manipulate his net worth and ordering him to pay a penalty of nearly $355 million plus interest that could wipe out his entire stockpile of cash. Justice Engoron barred Trump for three years from serving in top roles at any New York company, including portions of his own Trump Organization. He also imposed a two-year ban on the former president’s adult sons and ordered that they pay more than $4 million each. One of them, Eric Trump, is the company’s de facto chief executive, and the ruling throws into doubt whether any member of the family can run the business in the near term. Mr. Trump will appeal the financial penalty but will have to either come up with the money or secure a bond within 30 days.

On Saturday, the U.S. conducted strikes against Houthi anti-ship cruise missiles and vessels, including an attack on the first unmanned underwater vessel the Iranian-backed rebel group has used since the attacks in the Red Sea began. U.S. Central Command said it conducted five strikes against three anti-ship cruise missiles, one unmanned underwater vessel and one unmanned surface vessel between 15:00 and 20:00 local time. “CENTCOM identified the anti-ship cruise missiles, unmanned underwater vessel, and the unmanned surface vessel in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and determined they presented an imminent threat to U.S. Navy ships and merchant vessels in the region,” Central Command said in a statement on Sunday.

On Saturday, the Ukrainian fortress city of Avdiivka fell to Russian forces after nearly two years of fighting, following a Ukrainian retreat from the city. Russian forces had nearly surrounded the city and Ukrainian forces fell back to avoid encirclement. The Russian flag now flies throughout the city. Ukraine’s control of Avdiivka had prevented Russia from using nearby Donetsk and its resources as a communications hub and prevented Russian breakthroughs on this axis.

SOURCE:The World That Was – Africa Unauthorised