With no clear end in sight, the war with Iran is sending oil prices back to $100 per barrel and stocks sinking worldwide on Thursday.
The S&P 500 fell 1.1% and is returning to big swings following a couple days of relative calm. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 588 points, or 1.2%, as of 10 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.4% lower.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei says that the leverage of closing the Strait of Hormuz should be used and that Iran’s attacks on Gulf Arab neighbors will continue. His first statement since his appointment was read on state television Thursday by a news anchor.
Iranian state television offered no explanation of why Khamenei, 56, did not appear on camera. Israeli intelligence assessments suggest he was wounded in the war, likely in the Feb. 28 Israeli strike that killed his father, the 86-year-old late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, said on X that Lebanese residents should move north of the Zahrani River, which at its midpoint is about 35 miles (56 kilometers) away from the border with Israel.
Over 800,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced over the past 10 days in the latest conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, part of the wider Iran war.
Senegal ‘s parliament has approved a new bill that toughens punishment for homosexuality in the largely Muslim West African nation, the latest African country to impose harsh penalties against the LGBTQ+ community.
The new bill, which was introduced to parliament last month by Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, describes homosexual acts as being “against nature.” It doubles the punishment for those convicted from prison sentences of one to five years to between five and 10 years.
Bridget Schmid can be reached at beschmid@stthomas.edu
