A look ahead at the key events leading the news agenda next week, from the team at Foresight News. Delivered to your inbox on Fridays.
Leading the week
The Republican primary taking place next Saturday (February 24) in Nikki Haley’s home state of South Carolina looks increasingly like it may end up being decisive if she is to stand a chance of maintaining an even remotely viable challenge to Donald Trump’s nomination as the party’s candidate this November.
After a disappointing result in New Hampshire and her brutal loss to ‘none of these candidates’ in the Nevada primary, Haley is staring down the barrel of another embarrassment in the Palmetto State next week, according to recent polling. Seemingly undeterred by the result in Nevada, she told supporters in California the following day that she would be in the race for the ‘long haul’. A crushing defeat in her home state next week, though, may well test her resolve for staying in what is becoming an increasingly bitter and likely unwinnable contest.
After Haley was heckled last year when she appeared at CPAC, she is skipping this year’s MAGA-centric gathering, which runs Thursday through Saturday (February 22-24). Donald Trump will speak on the Saturday, following addresses at the National Religious Broadcasters’ convention in Tennessee on Thursday (February 22) and the Black Conservative Federation in South Carolina on Friday (February 23). Meanwhile other speakers at CPAC this year include two names being floated as potential vice presidential picks – Elise Stefanik and JD Vance – as well as former British Prime Minister Liz Truss and the current leaders of El Salvador and Argentina, Nayib Bukele and Javier Milei.
Space history will made next week if the IM-1 mission‘s Odysseus lander successfully touches down on the Moon as planned on Thursday (February 22) and becomes the first commercial mission to achieve a soft landing on the lunar surface. The mission, which launched yesterday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, is the second attempt this year by a private company after Astrobotic’s Peregrine mission suffered a propulsion system failure that prevented it from attempting its lunar landing. Assuming all goes to plan, Odysseus will touch down near the Moon’s south pole, an area of particular interest for deposits of water ice that will be important for NASA’s future manned Artemis missions.
Looking abroad
With Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu defiant in the face of growing pressure to rethink a planned military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, now home to around 1.5 million displaced Palestinian civilians, this week saw South Africa file an urgent request as part of its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice asking it to intervene to prevent what South Africa says would be a breach of the ICJ’s ruling last month on South Africa’s request for provisional measures.
While an announcement from the ICJ on whether (and when) it might schedule a hearing on this latest request is possible as soon as next week, the court is already scheduled to begin public hearings in a separate but related case on Monday (February 19). The hearings, which are scheduled to last all week (they conclude on February 26), concern a formal request from the UN General Assembly for an ‘advisory opinion’ from the court on the legality of Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territory.
Over the course of the week, the court will hear presentations from nations that backed the UN resolution seeking the opinion, including South Africa, as well as representatives from nations that voted against it, including the United States on Wednesday (February 21).
The ongoing conflict in Ukraine, meanwhile, is likely to remain in focus in the runup to the two-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion on Saturday (February 24) as President Zelenskyy seeks to counter signs of ‘solidarity fatigue’, notably among House Republicans. The war, and today’s news of the death of Alexei Navalny, will loom large as G20 foreign ministers – including Antony Blinken and Russia’s Sergey Lavrov – gather in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday and Thursday (February 21-22) for their first meeting under Brazil’s leadership of the grouping this year. Back in New York, there are Security Council and General Assembly sessions scheduled on Friday (November 23) on Ukraine ahead of Saturday’s anniversary.