Will Rishi Sunak reintroduce austerity?

Tax rises and public sector funding cuts widely expected as new PM seeks to balance books

Joe Sommerlad

Rishi Sunak has succeeded Liz Truss as the UK’s latest prime minister, entering Downing Street on Tuesday with a grave warning that Britain is in the midst of a “profound economic crisis”.

Speaking outside No 10, he said that there are “difficult decisions to come” in a clear indication that tax rises and public sector spending cuts are on their way in chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s medium-term fiscal plan, which is due to be delivered on Monday 31 October.

Mr Hunt, who was only brought in on 14 October by Ms Truss to replace the unceremoniously sacked Kwasi Kwarteng, needs to find up to £40bn to fill a giant black hole in the national finances created by the Covid-19 pandemic and, in part, by the “mini-Budget” unveiled during the comically short-lived Truss-Kwarteng alliance, which so spooked global markets and has wrought such chaos over the last month.

Mr Sunak made clear in his address that he is ready to impose austerity measures to balance the books, declaring: “The government I lead will not leave the next generation, your children and grandchildren, with a debt to settle that we were too weak to pay ourselves.”

He promised to honour Conservative pledges to deliver “a stronger NHS, better schools, safer streets, control of our borders” and to play an active role in “protecting our environment, supporting our armed forces, levelling up and building an economy that embraces the opportunities of Brexit, where businesses invest, innovate, and create jobs”.

Acknowledging the national uncertainty over the rising cost of living, Mr Sunak said: “I fully appreciate how hard things are. And I understand too that I have work to do to restore trust after all that has happened. All I can say is that I am not daunted.”

The markets have responded warmly to Mr Sunak’s anointing as Britain’s new PM so far but whether the public will trust him to fix an economy that he himself has been in charge of for two-and-a-half as Boris Johnson’s chancellor – admittedly during the exceptional and exceptionally trying circumstances of lockdown – remains to be seen.

Whether a super-rich Brexiteer, an expensively educated former banker and hedge fund manager at that, can truly understand the problems of impoverished people forced to choose between heating and eating this winter is another pointed question he will have to answer, although he has pledged “compassionate” governance.

Righting the economy will clearly need to be Mr Sunak’s top priority in No 10, with many fearing a return to the discredited austerity programme of the George Osborne years.

Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon, for one, has already called out what she fears will be a “horror show” of cuts being imposed on her nation by yet another Conservative leader in London with no mandate from the electorate.

Tony Danker, director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, has likewise warned Mr Sunak he must avoid a “doom loop” of tax rises and austerity cuts to the public sector.

“Let’s remember, the 2010s began with some austerity and were then ensued with very low growth, zero productivity and low investment, right? It wasn’t a successful strategy for growth,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday.

On Mr Hunt’s upcoming Halloween statement, Mr Danker added: “If all there is is tax rises and spending cuts and there’s nothing in there about growth, the country could end up in a similar doom loop where all you have to do is keep coming back every year to find more tax rises and more spending cuts because you’ve got no growth.”

Rishi Sunak
(Simon Walker/10 Downing Street)

Also issuing a stark assessment of what might result was City economist Thomas Pugh of RSM, who cautioned on Monday that the new PM’s fiscal responsibility pledge could only mean more austerity, which, combined with the cost of living crisis, threatened to lead to a longer recession than has already been forecast, even if it does succeed in bringing inflation down from its present 40-year high and reduce the need for further Bank of England action on interest rates.

“For now, financial markets will be watching the new PM very closely and will be wanting to see evidence that he intends to stick to the message of fiscal discipline that he set out in the previous leadership campaign,” Mr Pugh said.

“Any signs of straying off the path of fiscal discipline are likely to spook financial markets and result in another drop in the pound and surge in gilt yields.”

It is too soon to say precisely what steps Mr Sunak will take in office on matters like national insurance or the future of the energy price cap freeze.

But, even after Mr Hunt rolled back almost all of the tax-slashing initiatives in the Truss-Kwarteng mini-Budget, that ominous hole at the heart of Britain’s finances continues to loom large.

Trimming back government expenditure is likely to be a key early emphasis but risks setting up possible running battles with Tory MPs reluctant to face further budget cuts in their departments.

Defence spending could be a target, the former chancellor having appeared to prefer keeping it at 2 per cent of GDP until 2030 as a leadership candidate, rather than raising it to 3 per cent as Ms Truss intended, a move that would save a projected £157bn in the interim.

Jeremy Hunt
(Aaron Chown/PA)

That could ultimately have an adverse impact on Britain’s popular but costly and ongoing commitment to supporting Ukraine, however.

He might also be inclined to scale back major infrastructure projects, although broken promises on hospitals and railway lines – with the NHS under duress and train strikes never far away – are unlikely to yield popular and stable government.

As Mr Danker suggests, reining in spending alone will not be enough to return Britain to rude economic health so Mr Sunak will also be required to echo Ms Truss’s call for “growth, growth, growth” even if he goes about encouraging it in a completely different manner (as he would be well advised to).

This could take the form of backing controversial policies he has previously appeared lukewarm on like fracking (popular with the right of his party), scaling back environmental reforms or relaxing planning rules, regardless of their long-term consequences.

Whatever happens next, The Independent’s Sean O’Grady is surely right to caution that the new PM does not truly represent a break with the past or a meaningful fresh start.

“The cuts Sunak and Jeremy Hunt are about to inflict on the nation didn’t just come from global trends, but from the self-inflicted harm of Brexit,” he argues.

“They also derive from the mistakes made by Tory governments for more than a decade: from Osborne slashing infrastructure spending, to the waste and fraud during Covid (on Sunak’s watch), to the disastrous Truss mini-Budget.”

James Webb Space Telescope captures dazzling 'galaxy merger' 270 million light-years away

Two galaxies plunge into one another in the latest image from the James Webb Space Telescope. (Supplied: ESA, NASA, CSA)

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a pair of entwining galaxies plunging headfirst into one another in a process known as a galaxy merger, in a new picture released by NASA.

Key points:The image captures the collision between two galaxies some 270 million light-years away
Their merger ignites frenzied star formation known as a starburst
NASA says the James Webb telescope will help astronomers to unravel the complex interactions in galactic ecosystems

The interacting galaxy system, formally known as IC 1623, lies about 270 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Cetus.

Its merger ignites a frenzy of star formation known as a starburst, which creates new stars at a rate "more than 20 times that of the Milky Way galaxy", according to NASA.

This ongoing — and extreme — starburst state means the merger is releasing intense infrared emissions.

In fact, NASA says the merging galaxies "may well be in the process of forming a supermassive black hole".

And because this merging galaxy system happens to be particularly bright at infrared wavelengths, it makes it a suitable target for James Webb to capture — and for astronomers to study.

The telescope's trailblazing infrared sensitivity technology — the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), the Near-InfraRed Spectograph (NIRISpec) and the Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) — were used by a team to capture the merging galaxies at an impressive resolution at significant wavelengths.

Prior to the James Webb telescope, a thick band of dust had blocked these valuable insights from view.

The image of the galaxies, captured across the infrared portions of the electromagnetic spectrum, will aid the research greatly, NASA says.

"They [astronomers] provided an abundance of data that will allow the astronomical community at large to fully explore how Webb’s unprecedented capabilities will help to unravel the complex interactions in galactic ecosystems," the space agency said.

"[It will] help the astronomical community fully explore how Webb’s unprecedented capabilities will help to unravel the complex interactions in galactic ecosystems."

Last week, NASA released photos of the spectacular and highly detailed landscape of the iconic Pillars of Creation.

Kurdish struggle critical linchpin of Iran protests, says BBC World Affairs correspondent Jiyar Gol

Protests in Iran are continuing despite a harsh crackdown by security forces. Human rights groups say that at least 201 people have died in the violence that was triggered by the death in custody of a Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini. The 22-year-old was detained by the morality police for supposedly breaking rules on mandatory Islamic-style covering.

BBC World Affairs correspondent Jiyar Gol says much of the violence is concentrated in the Kurdish heavy northwest provinces, where long-running grievances over political repression and poor economic conditions mesh with the regime's suppression of Kurdish identity.

Kurdish gains in Iraq and Syria drive Turkish attacks, says researcher Meghan Bodette

With the world's attention focused on Ukraine, Turkey has escalated its campaign against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) across its own borders in Iraq and Syria. Meghan Bodette, director of research at the Kurdish Peace Institute in Washington DC, tells Al-Monitor that Turkey is increasingly targeting activists, politicians and other civilian figures associated with the Kurdish political movement founded by imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. This is because Turkey fears the legitimacy such individuals lend to Kurdish aspirations.

As Iran protests enter sixth week, women take to Afghanistan's streets

Some of the largest protests led by women started after a Sept. 30 suicide attack on an educational center in Kabul in which 53 Hazara girls were killed.

Afghan women hold placards as they take part in a protest in front of the Iranian Embassy in Kabul on Sept. 29, 2022. - WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images

Sabena Siddiqui
@sabena_siddiqi
October 25, 2022

As women-led protests spread across Iran after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody for violating hijab laws, women in neighboring Afghanistan have also been taking to the streets.

Iran's protests quickly turned bloody, with the death toll (including security forces) currently at around 200. Though large protests have happened before, this time the tempo is more sustained and anti-regime demonstrations have spread to religious centers like Qom and Mashhad as well. While the Afghan protests are notably smaller in size and have mostly included Hazara women, they have continued apace for several weeks and university students have gotten involved. The Hazara are an ethnic minority group in Afghanistan who practice Shiite Islam and have faced ongoing discrimination from the Sunni Taliban regime.

In Afghanistan, some of the largest protests led by women started after a Sept. 30 suicide attack on an educational center in Kabul in which 53 Hazara girls were killed. Expanding to universities in Herat, Bamiyan, Daikundi, Balkh and Panjshir, the latest is Kapisa where female students from Al-Biruni University took to the streets.

Heather Barr, associate women’s rights director and former senior Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Al-Monitor that it is very moving to see women’s protests in Afghanistan nowadays. “These are notable for a few reasons. First, we know how brutal the Taliban’s response to women’s protests have been, so these protestors are displaying extraordinary courage — and it is very clear and noticeable that women are the leaders of peaceful opposition to violence and human rights violations in Afghanistan," she noted.

Entering their sixth week, the Iran protests may have been a catalyst and inspired Afghan women to defy a state ban on unsanctioned rallies. Speaking to Arab News, Zarmina Sharifi, a student activist from Nangarhar, said that the protests in Iran are a “symbol of resistance and awakening” for Afghan women.

A European diplomat posted in Islamabad, speaking to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, said “the protest of Iranian women projects a strong symbolism for women throughout the region and therefore, also for Afghan women. These days, Mahsa Amini has become very popular in Afghanistan.”

Ever since the departure of US troops from Afghanistan in 2021, the militant group has seized power and imposed restrictions reminiscent of their last stint in 2001. Barring teenage girls from attending secondary school and instructing many female public sector employees to stay at home, their government remains unrecognized internationally.

Considering that women in both countries live under repressive regimes, what do these struggles for emancipation have in common and what can they hope to achieve?

To start with, both the movements were caused by fundamentalist interpretations of Sharia, implemented in Iran by Muslim clerics and by Taliban militants in Afghanistan.

Barr said, "There are ways in which the protests in Afghanistan and Iran mirror each other, and there is growing solidarity between feminists in the two countries. Women in both countries face a similar foe: misogynistic male rulers who have made denying women and girls their full humanity central to their strategies of social control.”

Ostensibly, the Afghan women’s struggle for empowerment is tougher as they are denied employment and secondary-level education opportunities.

Torek Farhadi, an Afghan regional analyst based in Geneva, told Al-Monitor, “On the surface, from a Western standpoint, both situations might look similar but they are very different. Women in Iran have had access to education over the past 40 years and many work in government at fairly senior levels. Many own and manage businesses as well.”

For two decades, Afghan women had a hiatus from Taliban rule, but now they are back to square one.

Farhadi explained, “Women’s rights in Afghanistan have been in free-fall since the end of the communist regime. Afghan civil wars of the 1990s put a dent, but over the past 20 years, the young generation benefited from Western education and Western aid programs.”

He added, “It was expected that Taliban would crush women’s rights. But to close girl’s schools, this has gone too far for even the most conservative families in Afghanistan. Afghan women live with the compulsory scarf in their society but cannot live without education.”

The situation on the ground in Afghanistan is more challenging, the diplomat pointed out. “We must not forget that the social situation in Afghanistan is different from Iran with the new set-up in Kabul. The full emancipation of women can only occur through small but significant steps such as, in the short term, [ensuring] their right to education.”

Notwithstanding the advantage of education, for women in Iran it has been a long-drawn fight for freedom since 1979. The current administration of President Ebrahim Raisi is being blamed for these riots as it has been much harsher than the previous government of Hassan Rouhani.

Nevertheless, the new generation has changed irrevocably and schoolgirls are fearlessly abandoning the hijab.

The diplomat said, “Notably, it was the generational changes in Iranian society leading to the increase in number of educated women that gave power to Iranian society in a way not comparable to the years preceding the 1979 revolution. In this regard, Afghanistan has a long way to go. However, it is undeniable that symbolically, the ongoing events in Iran represent a wake-up call for all women in the region fighting for the full affirmation of their rights.”

One major difference between both movements is that men in Iran are supporting the women in much larger numbers now.

Farhadi noted, “In Iran, men are also coming out in the streets and that is where it is different from Afghanistan. It reflects the fact that Mahsa Amini’s death served as a tipping point, starting from covering hair, but in fact the entire population has had enough of the regime’s governance where the economic trickle-down has not worked and the nation’s vast oil and gas wealth has not been mobilized to the benefit of the people all these 42 years.”

The protests in Afghanistan are getting bigger though. Barr noted, “While many of the protestors are Hazara, there are also protestors from other ethnic backgrounds, and this represents important progress in cross-ethnic support.”

Sadly, both the regimes are prone to violent tactics. To break up an Oct. 2 protest, Taliban fighters fired in the air and the following day they locked female students in dormitories in Balkh University. Likewise, Iranian authorities have ruthlessly cracked down on protestors.

Farhadi explained, “Taliban are looking at Iran protests the same way the Iranian Akhunds do. They think the overblown demonstrations after Mahsa Amini are fomented by outside powers. Taliban have already been quick to curtail the ability of Afghan teenage girls coming out in the streets, often violently firing in the air to disperse them. Taliban and Akhunds see these demonstrations as a risk to their regime.”

Astronomers Discover "Spider Stars" That Tear Apart Other Stars

These cosmic monsters tear their companions to shreds.

Image by NASA/Victor Tangermann

An international team of astronomers have spotted a new type of "spider star" — highly energetic pulsars that tear up their companion stars in binary systems.

These highly energetic celestial objects have long fascinated astronomers because they flicker in the night sky in regular rhythms. But before we go on, let's take a couple of steps back.

When a supergiant star collapses in on itself following a supernova, it leaves behind extremely dense remains in the form of a neutron star or white dwarf. With enough electromagnetic radiation, such a star can start spinning at a dizzying clip, turning itself into a pulsar — almost like a cosmic lighthouse.

Astronomers are able to spot these odd stars by observing their regular cosmic ray outbursts released during each rotation, with periods ranging from several milliseconds to whole seconds. They're so predictable, in fact, that scientists suggest using the location of various pulsars to create a kind of "celestial GPS."

Pulsars completing a rotation every 30 milliseconds or less are often referred to as "spider stars" since they are usually found in binary systems where a closely orbiting companion star is actively being broken down by the pulsar accreting matter from its companion.

Spider stars tend to circle their binary star companions at such close distances, they end up tearing their companion to shreds, as Live Science points out.

That's how a subclass of these violent stars ended up with the nickname of "Black Widow Stars," named after the spider genus in which the female eats the male after mating.

"Redback" stars, on the other hand, have a higher mass companion star, which causes signals to be eclipsed every time the companion star passes between it and the Earth.

In a new yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper uploaded to the preprints server arXiv, an international team of astronomers outline their discovery of eight binary millisecond pulsars (MSPs) using the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the same one that collapsed unexpectedly in December.

Among these eight stars, three of them are newly identified black widows and one is a redback — as well as a pulsar that defies classification, as the researchers write in their paper. This odd-one-out star has a companion star that would be too massive to be classified as a black widow, but not massive enough for a typical redback.

"This system may represent a rare middle-ground case between these two observational classes," the astronomers wrote in their paper.

READ MORE: Now-dead radio telescope finds bizarre venomous-spider star [Live Science]

More on pulsars: New Technique Uses Entire Milky Way as a Giant Observatory

SCIENTISTS DISCOVER THAT CATS SIMPLY DO NOT GIVE A CRAP

YES, YOUR CAT KNOWS YOU'RE TALKING TO IT — IT JUST DOESN'T CARE.

Meow Mix

Every cat person has suspected that their cats are ignoring them — and now, new research seems to support that hunch.

As a new study published in the journal Animal Cognition details, feline researchers have demonstrated that cats do appear to know when their owners are talking to them, but that sometimes, they choose to ignore it.

The researchers sat with 16 cat-people pairs who lived in studio apartments, and playing them recordings of the pair interacting, followed by recordings of the humans saying the same words they use when baby-talking their cats, but in a voice register similar to that which they'd use to speak to other humans. The researchers also played them recordings of other humans speaking to them as well, which the cats didn't respond much to at all.

To the shock of no one who's ever tried repeatedly to get their cat's attention, the felines seemed to be able to differentiate between the tone of voice used when their humans were speaking to them versus that which humans use to speak to each other. In other words, cats seem to know who's talking to them and if they're being spoken to — even if they act like they don't.

I Cat Even

The most interesting — and funniest — finding in the study, which was conducted by researchers at the Paris Nanterre University, was that some of the cats only indicated that they'd heard their person speaking to them in the baby-talk register by twitching their ears and otherwise seeming completely disinterested in the recordings.

In other instances, some of the cats would look towards the sound of their owner's kitten-babble and meow, pause its activities, or otherwise respond.

"Our results highlight the importance of one-to-one relationships for indoor companion cats," the researchers wrote in the paper, "who do not seem to generalize the communication developed with one human to all human interlocutors."

Translation: cats seem to know when their own people are talking to them — but that doesn't mean they care.


More on cats: Can Cats Infect You With a Psychosis-Inducing Brain Parasite? The Answer Is Complicated

Astronomers Puzzled by Extremely Peculiar Object in Deep Space

It's made of... what?

Image by Getty Images

Astronomers have discovered a mysterious neutron star that's far lighter than previously thought possible, undermining our understanding of the physics and evolution of stars. And fascinatingly, it may be composed largely of quarks.

As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy this week, the neutron star has a radius of just 6.2 miles and only the mass of 77 percent of the Sun.

That makes it much lighter than other previously studied neutron stars, which usually have a mass of 1.4 times the mass of the Sun at the same radius.

The team of astronomers, led by Victor Doroshenko of Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen in Germany, therefore suggest it could be an entirely new type of star.


"Our mass estimate makes the central compact object in HESS J1731-347 the lightest neutron star known to date, and potentially a more exotic object — that is, a 'strange star' candidate," the paper reads.

Neutron stars, which are some of the densest objects in the known universe, are typically formed after supergiant stars go supernova.

The star's core can then implode, compressing all of that mass into an extremely dense object. According to scientists' calculations, a single teaspoon of neutron star would have a mass of 2.2 trillion pounds.

But this newly discovered object defies our known definitions and boundaries.

Doroshenko and his team found that the star is actually much closer to us than we thought using data obtained by the European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft, which allowed them to recalculate the mysterious star's mass.

The resulting mass and radius, though, simply don't fit into our current definition of a neutron star, which makes this new discovery a possible "strange star" candidate, according to the team.

Strange stars are hypothetical celestial objects thought to be made up of largely "strange quark" matter, allowing them to have lower temperatures and masses of other neutron stars.

Astronomers have also suggested that strange stars could be behind fast radio bursts, mysterious and powerful bursts of radio pulses that have yet to be explained.

In short, it's a highly unusual object that could rewrite our understanding of the universe.

"Such a light neutron star, regardless of the assumed internal composition, appears to be a very intriguing object from an astrophysical perspective," Doroshenko and his team wrote in a statement.

READ MORE: Mysterious Object May Be a 'Strange Star' Made Out of Quarks, Scientists Say [Science Alert]

More on neutron stars: Scientists Spotted Something That Appeared to Be Moving 7 Times the Speed of Light

US embassies started sharing real-time air quality data. Then, pollution started going down

Turns out, just sharing real-time data can help make a difference.

 by Fermin Koop
October 25, 2022

In 2008, the United States embassy in Beijing set up an air quality monitor and started tweeting readings every hour. By 2020, over 50 US embassies in 37 developing countries were doing the same, creating a large, international data set. Sharing this real-time air quality information resulted in lower levels of air pollution, according to a new study.

Image credit: Unsplash.

Air pollution is one of the leading environmental and health problems of our time. Small particulate matter has been associated with dementia and cognitive decline in adults and children, even influencing the sex of babies. However, this is a problem people are rarely aware of. Over 85% of the people that live in cities are exposed to air pollution levels that exceed the suggested guidelines but in many cases, this receives little to no attention.

A team led by Akshaya Jha, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, analyzed satellite data on air pollution in 466 cities in 136 low and middle-income countries, including 50 cities where the US embassies had installed the monitors. They focused on PM2.5 pollution particles, known to have harmful effects.

They found that the cities where the embassies had tweeted air pollution data saw the levels of PM2.5 drop by an average of two to four micrograms per cubic meter compared with those that didn’t. While it might not seem a lot, this would have reduced the number of premature deaths each year by a median of 303 in each city.

“The monetized benefits of reductions in pollution as a result of these monitors were large for both embassy staff and the local population,” Akshaya Jha said in a media statement. “Our findings point to the benefits of improving the availability and awareness of air-quality information in low- and middle-income countries.”

Understanding the data

The researchers believe that making the data accessible made people more aware of the low air quality and increase public pressure to address it via policy change. They registered a significant increase in the number of Google searches on air pollution in the cities where the monitors were installed and pollution levels afterward dropped.

Policy initiatives could have improved air quality, they argued, such as limiting the use of cars or reallocating industries from densely populated cities. The data from the monitors could have given local and national governments the evidence they need to lobby for greener policies while giving journalists relevant findings for media coverage.

“By providing credible, high-quality, information, the US government has drawn attention to high levels of pollution in cities in low- and middle-income countries across the world,” co-author Andrea La Nauze said in a statement. “The resulting reductions in air pollution levels had large health benefits for residents in these cities.”

The study was published in the journal PNAS.


Fermin Koop is a reporter from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He holds an MSc from Reading University (UK) on Environment and Development and is specialized in environment and climate change news.

International Space Station dodges debris from Russian anti-satellite test

By Brett Tingley 

published about 13 hours ago

A cargo ship attached to the station performed a five-minute engine burn on Monday night (Oct. 24) to get the ISS out of harm's way.

The International Space Station took evasive action to avoid a piece of space junk on Oct. 24, 2022. (Image credit: NASA)

The International Space Station (ISS) just took evasive action to dodge a fragment of a satellite destroyed in a November 2021 Russian anti-satellite test.

On Monday (Oct. 24) at 8:25 p.m. EDT (0025 GMT on Oct. 25), the ISS team fired the thrusters on Progress 81, a Russian cargo ship attached to the station, for a total of five minutes and five seconds to avoid the debris fragment, according to a NASA statement(opens in new tab).

This "Pre-Determined Debris Avoidance Maneuver" (PDAM) was performed in order to "provide the complex an extra measure of distance away from the predicted track" of the debris fragment, agency officials said.

The maneuver raised the ISS's altitude by 0.2 miles (0.32 kilometers) at apogee (its farthest point from Earth) and 0.8 miles (1.3 km) at perigee (its closest point to Earth), according to NASA. The thruster firing did not affect normal space station operations.

Related: Russian anti-satellite missile test draws condemnation from space companies and countries

The debris fragment that prompted the avoidance maneuver was created by a Russian test of a direct ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) missile conducted on Nov. 15, 2021. The missile, launched from the ground, destroyed a defunct Soviet satellite known as Cosmos 1408 that had been out of commission since the 1980s.

"There's really no reason they should have used such a big target," astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, told Space.com at the time. "They could have used a smaller target and generated less debris."

The test has since drawn widespread condemnation from space agencies and space policy experts worldwide and prompted astronauts aboard the ISS to take shelter.

RELATED STORIES:

— The worst space debris events of all time

— Kessler Syndrome and the space debris problem

— The most dangerous space weapons ever

This is not the first time the International Space Station has had to avoid debris left over from the Russian ASAT test. In June 2022, the space station made a similar maneuver to avoid a fragment of Cosmos 1408.

In the wake of the Russian ASAT test conducted on Cosmos 1408, several nations have made commitments not to perform destructive ASAT tests to help prevent the proliferation of space debris in orbit. These include the Republic of Korea, Germany, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Starlink Terminals Smuggled Into Iran – Report
Tom Jowitt, October 25, 2022, 


Amid Internet shutdowns and ongoing protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, Starlink terminals are reportedly being smuggled into Iran

Iranian authorities are facing another challenge, after weeks of violent protests in the country following the death last month of 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini in police custody.

Iranians activists are smuggling SpaceX Starlink broadband satellite terminals into the nation, as Tehran restricts internet access amid the ongoing protests.

Earlier this week Iran’s Nuclear Power Production and Development company was hacked, and an Iranian hacking group, Black Reward, claimed responsibility. It released the hacked nuclear data as an act of support for ongoing protesters in Iran.

Image credit: SpaceX

Starlink in Iran

The protests centre on Mahsa Amini, who died last month whilst in the custody of Iran’s morality police.

Eyewitnesses said that Amini had been severely beaten, which Iranian officials denied. They allege she died of a heart attack.

Amini’s death triggered a wave of protests across Iran, with some female demonstrators removing their hijab or publicly cutting their hair as acts of protest. It is reported that 201 people have been killed by Iranian security forces.

Amnesty International alleged that Iranian security forces were, in some cases, firing into groups with live ammunition, and in other cases were killing protesters by beating them with batons.

Now Iranian political activist Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, tweeted how for more than a month, activists have sent dozens of Starlink terminals into Iran.

Read also : Hackers Breach Iranian Atomic Energy Network

Sadjadpour also noted “Iranian popular demand for unfettered Internet access is enormous,” but iPhones, satellite dishes and alcohol are all prohibited. Indeed the latter two are said to be criminal offences.

Sadjadpour said in his thread that Elon Musk has been gracious with his support.

In September Sadjadpour had tweeted that he had spoken with Elon Musk who revealed that Starlink had been activated in Iran.

Ukraine situation

This development comes after CNN reported last week that senior US officials in the Biden administration were in talks with Elon Musk about providing Starlink’s broadband service, in order to support activists in Iran.

This was part of a White House effort to push more connectivity into the isolated nation.

It should be remembered that in early March as Russia invaded Ukraine, Musk activated SpaceX’s Starlink satellites for the country, to help Ukraine continue communicating, as Russian forces sought to cut electricity, water, and Internet in the sovereign nation.

Musk also donated 25,000 Starlink stations and terminals to Ukraine, and offered with advice to reduce the risk of the terminals being targetted by Russian missiles.



But Musk has also courted controversy recently over Ukraine, after he was heavily criticised for suggesting that Ukraine could “de-escalate” the conflict by ceding Crimea to Russia and allow Russia to carry out referendums in partially occupied areas in order to annex those territories.

Musk then suggested he was prepared to pull the plug on Starlink in Ukraine, saying Starlink’s Ukrainian project was losing $20 million (£18m) a month.

A day later he backtracked, and said he would continue funding Starlink satellite broadband in Ukraine.