A US airstrike in Syria on Jan. 12 killed a senior al Qaeda facilitator, the Pentagon announced on Jan. 19. Abd al-Jalil al-Muslimi, who was originally trained by the Taliban in the late 1990s and facilitated travel for al Qaeda, was killed in the strike near Saraqib. “He had extensive and long-standing ties to numerous al Qaida external operations planners and terrorists,” Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said in a statement. The strike will help degrade al Qaeda’s access to veteran plotters and help disrupt future plans, the Pentagon said.
The Space Development Agency wants to launch hundreds of satellites into low-Earth orbit over the next few years—and thanks to a new contract, it now has a way to get rid of some when their service life is over.
