logo
Jordan's Airline Dodges Missiles to Keep Flying in War-Torn Zone

Jordan's Airline Dodges Missiles to Keep Flying in War-Torn Zone

Bloomberg5 hours ago

Wedged between the Middle East's most embattled conflict zones, Jordan has long learned to navigate military strife. For the kingdom's national airline, that means studying missile flight paths to redirect its aircraft, sometimes with just moments to respond.
Such experience has allowed Royal Jordanian Airlines to keep its fleet of about two dozen aircraft operating, even as large swaths of air space in the region shut down while Israel and Iran traded missiles in the past two weeks.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Pete Hegseth's news conference made one thing clear – but two questions still need answering
Pete Hegseth's news conference made one thing clear – but two questions still need answering

Yahoo

time38 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Pete Hegseth's news conference made one thing clear – but two questions still need answering

Pete Hegseth's angry news conference, where the US defence secretary roundly abused those media outlets and individuals who didn't agree with him, certainly told us one thing. That when reliable information eventually emerges from the battle damage assessment of the US attack on Iran's Fordow nuclear plant, it won't be accepted by everyone. The whole issue has suddenly become politically toxic in Washington and will doubtless be fed into the spin dryer of vitriolic commentary and assertion that has been the most stand-out feature of this second Trump administration. But what we did find out from the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Dan Caine, was that the GBU-57 bunker buster bombs had been designed in some secrecy with exactly this sort of target in mind. Trump-Iran live: We also learned they all worked as per the test simulations, and that 12 were fired at six separate targets at Fordow and another two at a single target at the Natanz nuclear facility. But over how to characterise the damage done in these attacks is really just a semantic spat. The two key questions are rather different. Firstly, will the Iranians decide to give up their quest for a nuclear weapon as a result of this attack, as the Syrians did in 2007 when the Israelis destroyed their Al Kibar nuclear reactor? Or else will they go hell for leather for a nuclear weapon, as Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein did after the Israelis destroyed his nuclear reactor in 1981? Read more: And secondly, if the Iranians decide to go again for a nuclear weapon, how long will it be before they are back at the nuclear threshold, where they were less than a month ago? Will it be within a year? Or five years? Or longer? When we have an answer to those two questions, then we can put some real perspective on whether the US bombing has really been a success.

What damage could potential Iran retaliation do to your pocketbook
What damage could potential Iran retaliation do to your pocketbook

USA Today

timean hour ago

  • USA Today

What damage could potential Iran retaliation do to your pocketbook

Was Iran's missile attack on the U.S. base in Qatar the only retaliatory measure it will take against the United States following the bombing of its three nuclear sites? And will the ceasefire hold between Israel and Iran? Answers to those questions could determine how much we pay in every U.S. store—not just at the pump, according to a set of new reports. One model even suggests the inflation rate could more than double by the end of the year with a big enough increase in oil prices. Crude oil traders appear cautiously optimistic, though. Futures prices at 12 p.m. ET Thursday for a barrel of oil were above $65.88—lower than they were when Israel first attacked Iran on June 12. They're about $8 lower than when tensions were at their highest. President Donald Trump and others in his administration say they've ended the Israel-Iran war by dropping the huge bunker-busting bombs, but two papers this week from Oxford Economics still call the situation in the Middle East "fluid" and warn about what could happen if Iran decides to disrupt shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei added to the uncertainty Thursday when he warned any future attacks against Iran would come at a great cost. Oil prices tumble from June 20 highs Unable to view our graphics? Click here to see them. Oxford Economics says its unlikely Iran would completely shutdown the Strait of Hormuz because they might not have the capabilities, or U.S. military would likely intervene. Iran also wouldn't likely have an interest in disrupting all oil shipping, considering more than 80% of the crude in the strait is generally bound for Asia. Where is the Strait of Hormuz How Iran could slow shipping through the Strait of Hormuz Iran might decide to make shipping in the Strait of Hormuz riskier and more expensive—largely because of higher insurance costs—by using various methods to harass and slow ships moving through the strait, according to Oxford Economics: ◾ Deploy mines ◾ Attack ships with drones and missiles ◾ Jam GPS signals The effectiveness any of these disruptions would have varying impact on prices in world oil markets. Recent history shows that the larger the rise in oil prices at the start of a conflict, the longer it typically takes for them to return to previous levels. How oil prices changed following in previous incidents How gas prices followed oil prices after Russia invaded Ukraine Not unsurprisingly, higher oil prices drive up fuel prices. It's rarely a one-to-one change, though, because of the additional costs—refining, taxes and distribution among them—by the time gasoline reaches the pump. When Russia invaded Ukraine, already inflated oil prices drove up U.S. gas prices and helped drive higher inflation throughout the economy. How a short-term, oil-price spike might affect inflation in the U.S. Oxford Economics modeled what might happen if Iran were able to slow about 70% of shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz and raise world oil prices by 25%. Their model showed that the annual inflation rate—which was 2.4% in May as measured by the consumer price index—could rise as high as 5.5% by the end of the year. In the same scenario, Oxford Economics projected the unemployment rate to rise from 4.2% in May to 4.5%, which could spur the Federal Reserve to start cutting interest rates to slow job losses—despite the higher prices driven by higher oil prices.

Bigger turnout in 2024 would have benefitted Trump, new survey finds
Bigger turnout in 2024 would have benefitted Trump, new survey finds

Politico

timean hour ago

  • Politico

Bigger turnout in 2024 would have benefitted Trump, new survey finds

President Donald Trump benefited from high voter turnout in the 2024 presidential election more than former Vice President Kamala Harris did, a Pew Research Center survey published Thursday found. Trump won a larger percentage of voters who cast ballots last November after skipping the 2020 election, and the poll found roughly equal support between Trump and Harris among eligible voters who stayed home in 2024. That finding bucks a trend in the presidential electorate dating back decades. Historical analysis of presidential elections has indicated Democrats generally have been more popular among nonvoters. In 2020, nonvoters preferred former President Joe Biden over Trump by 11 points. The survey suggests that 'if all Americans eligible to vote in 2024 had cast ballots, the overall margin in the popular vote likely would not have been much different,' the authors wrote. Trump won 52 percent of 2024 voters who either stayed home in 2020 or weren't eligible to vote, compared to 45 percent for Harris. That marks an increase for Trump, who lost voters in 2020 who skipped the 2016 election by eight points. The analysis from Pew — its 'validated voters' survey, which matches survey respondents to commercially available voter files to make sure respondents who said they voted actually did vote — has been conducted for every federal election since 2016 and is considered a gold standard piece of election data. Sixty-four percent of the electorate voted in the 2024 election, the second-highest figure since 1960, trailing only the 2020 election. The Trump campaign aggressively targeted voters who had skipped previous elections, focusing specifically on young men. Trump won 55 percent of voters who skipped both the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 midterms, compared to 41 percent who backed Harris. The survey found that 12 percent of the 2024 electorate was made up of voters who skipped the previous midterm and presidential election. The survey found that 44 percent of nonvoters said they would have voted for Trump had they voted, while 40 percent said they would have supported Harris. The finding complicates the initial picture of the electorate in the days after last November's election, when Democrats scrambled to explain how traditionally blue areas of the country shifted towards Trump. Some Democrats argued that the progressive movement to withhold support for Harris over the Biden administration's handling of the Israel-Hamas war suppressed turnout among traditionally Democratic voters. The survey also found Trump's coalition of voters in 2024 to be more racially diverse than the voters who backed him in the 2020 and 2016 elections. Trump won 48 percent support from Hispanic voters in 2024, roughly equal to the 51 percent support Harris received. Trump also won 15 percent of Black voters, a seven-point increase from 2020. Among voters who immigrated to the U.S. and became naturalized citizens, Trump received 47 percent of the vote, splitting the group about evenly with Harris, who received 51 percent support. The Pew Research Center surveyed 8,942 U.S. citizens ages 18 and older who are members of the Center's American Trends Panel and verified their turnout using commercial voter files that collect public state turnout records. The survey ran Nov. 12-17, 2024, and has a sampling error of plus-or-minus 1.4 percentage points for the entire survey.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store