Indian Ocean

All that and more coming up on Space Time.

[upbeat music] The European Space Agency's Near Earth Objects Coordination Center has reported a meteor impact in the Indian Ocean off the coast of northwestern Australia.

The impact, cataloged as 2026 RW1 and originally identified as CERN Q52, was first detected six hours prior to impact by the European Space Agency's Meerkat automated warning system.

The agency estimates the meteor would have been between zero point six and one point three meters across.

So nothing, nothing happened, but what it did do was get Diego Garcia in the news, and it brought a lot of attention to a place that most people, it was largely unknown to most people.

It's out there in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and it's just, it's this anomalous place.

There's not much land mass there.

There's a lot of weird testimonies.

Suddenly Iran fires two missiles at it, and then we have a whole centerfold in Newsweek magazine about Diego Garcia.

And they're calling it, "An island at the s- center of the new world order.

How the little-known atoll of Diego Garcia is becoming another flashpoint in the global contest of power between US, and the US and China." And one of the quotes from the article, "If we don't control Diego, what this means is there is no way the West will be allowed guaranteed access to the Indian Ocean and eastwards." And another quote from the article, "Whoever controls Diego controls the Indian Ocean trade routes." Why that's interesting ...

Oh, this is another quote, um, really quick.

Now for today's deeper dive, it is worth understanding exactly why a strip of water barely 20 miles wide has become as consequential to this war as the Strait of Hormuz itself.

Bab al-Mandeb, Arabic for the Gate of Tears, sits at the southern mouth of the Red Sea, separating the Arabian Peninsula from the Hoar of Africa and connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and, beyond that, to the Indian Ocean.

Roughly 8% of the world's oil transits the Strait in ordinary times, and it has long served as one of the two great maritime choke points alongside Hormuz that determine how easily Gulf energy reaches the rest of the world.

Parim Island, also known as Mayun, sits almost exactly in the Strait's narrowest channel, a position so strategically valuable that competing powers have contested it for more than a century.

The family enjoys it together.

Um, we've got a, a beach house on the Indian Ocean, so you incorporate all those different aspects into the safari to make it into a great experience.

That's cool.

That warms my heart a lot.

A pale vanilla flower opened in the morning light.

It grew on a green vine on Reunion Island, far out in the Indian Ocean.

The flower looked ready.

The vine was healthy, the leaves were green, the air was warm after rain.

You will hear clear, natural English through one interesting story.

Today's story begins on Réunion Island.

Réunion is a small island in the Indian Ocean.

It lies east of Madagascar and far from mainland Africa.

He's had command of a Liverpool ship, the Samaria, some years ago.

He lost her in the Indian Ocean and had his certificate suspended for a year.

Ever since then he's not been able to get another command.

He's been knocking about in the Western Ocean trade lately.

He had had enough of the dock.

I understood his impatience.

He had steeled himself against any possible worry the voyage might bring, though it is clear enough now that he was not prepared for the extraordinary experience that was awaiting him already, and in no other part of the world than the Indian Ocean itself, the very part of the world where the poor fellow had lost his ship and had broken his luck, as it seemed for good and all at the same time.

As to his remorse in regard to a certain secret action of his life, well...

Satellite photos show heavy damage to a key pumping station on the pipeline, and oil traders are warning 4% of the world's oil supply could be at risk, driving prices higher.

Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthis have been carrying out attacks on Saudi Arabia and have exerted some control over a passage that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.

The Saudis have given no official report about the damage and how long the pipeline might be out of commission.

And the Federal Reserve due to announce its decision on interest rates this week.

Michael Kasner with more

Satellite photos show heavy damage to a key pumping station on the pipeline, and oil traders are warning 4% of the world's oil supply could be at risk, driving prices higher.

Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthis have been carrying out attacks on Saudi Arabia and have exerted some control over a passage that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.

The Saudis have given no official report about the damage and how long the pipeline might be out of commission

Satellite photos show heavy damage to a key pumping station on the pipeline, and oil traders are warning 4% of the world's oil supply could be at risk, driving prices higher.

Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthis have been carrying out attacks on Saudi Arabia and have exerted some control over a passage that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.

The Saudis have given no official report about the damage and how long the pipeline might be out of commission.

Fashion designer to the stars Bob Mackie has passed away at the age of 87.

The two thousand and four trip is the one that deserves its own story, or maybe its own film.

It started with a tsunami, the Indian Ocean disaster December twenty-sixth, unfolding on front pages as we landed in London, the death toll climbing each morning.

Then Boxing Day, which I'd never heard of, shutting down the city.

Then Chunnel tickets, three times what they should have been because I'd waited to buy them in person.