US-Iran Exchange Strikes; Nepal Races to Find Missing

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

**Karen Moskow** (0:10)
Good morning, I'm Karen Moskow.

**John Tucker** (0:12)
And I'm John Tucker. Here are the stories we're following today.

**Karen Moskow** (0:15)
Well, John, we begin with new developments in the Middle East. The US and Iran have exchanged strikes for the first time in about a month. American forces hit Iranian rocket launchers, and the Islamic Republic responded by firing missiles toward Jordan. We get the latest from Bloomberg's Abir Abu Omar in Dubai.

**Abir Abu Omar** (0:32)
The situation is still very fragile. You're talking about a ceasefire deal that is no longer in place. You're talking about wider negotiations that are no longer happening. And you're really talking about movement in the Strait of Hormuz that has picked up, but is nowhere near where it was pre-war levels. And so the situation is, to use the same word twice, still very fragile and could pick up anytime soon. And the frictions that you saw in the early hours of this morning certainly do provide the case for how things could get upended at any moment. But for the time being, these are not skirmishes that we hadn't seen over the past couple of months or so. We'd seen Iran retaliating by striking countries in the region like Jordan, like Kuwait, like Bahrain. That risk has never really left the room. That risk had always been present, and now we're seeing it ticking up again.

**Karen Moskow** (1:21)
And that's Bomber Zabir Abu Omar, who says the US attack was the first military action against Iran since late July.

**John Tucker** (1:27)
And Karen, the flare-up in fighting boosting oil prices this morning. Right now, Brandt, the international benchmark, $3.0891.18 a barrel, WTI, $289.8629 a barrel. And oil analyst Carly Garner of De Carli says the impact of prices does seem limited.

**Carly Garner** (1:46)
The same headlines earlier in the war would have probably been good for $10, $15, not $2. So you can see that the markets being fatigued were kind of being desensitized to the headlines. And I think that's really what's going on. And I'll also say, I think this knee-jerk reaction higher will probably trigger some buyers' remorse.

**John Tucker** (2:06)
De Carli oil analyst Carly Garner away from the Middle East. Washington moving to take direct control of the more than 65 million barrels of Venezuela's oil reserves. President Trump says the crude would be used to refill America's depleted emergency reserve.

**Karen Moskow** (2:21)
Now John, let's get to the latest on the trade dispute between the US and Canada. Ontario premier Doug Ford is ridiculing President Trump's order changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America. Ford spoke on ABC's This Week, which can be heard Sundays on Bloomberg Radio.

**Doug Ford** (2:38)
It was like something out of Saturday Night Live when he signed documents saying change to Lake America.
No one's going to call it Lake of America. It's been Lake Ontario for hundreds of years. It's going to continue being Lake Ontario. And it's just so disappointing.

**Karen Moskow** (2:56)
Ontario premier Doug Ford expressed optimism that Canada and the US would eventually overcome their differences on trade and tariffs.

**John Tucker** (3:04)
Well, Google Maps is following President Trump's lead and did make a change to Lake Ontario. Bloomberg's Monica Ricks with that story.

**Monica Ricks** (3:11)
Google Maps relabeled Lake Ontario as Lake America for users in the US after President Trump said he'd rename the lake amid a trade spat with Canada. But Alphabet says users in Canada will still see Lake Ontario and the rest of the world will see both. The company said in a statement the updates follow its longstanding policy for bodies of water, which it says vary from country to country. MapQuest, however, has refused to change the name and so far it's still Lake Ontario on Apple Maps, though Apple did change the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America after Trump ordered that change last year.
Monica Ricks, Bloomberg Radio.

**Karen Moskow** (3:48)
All right, Monica, thank you. Now to the latest on a tragic story overseas with rescue workers still searching for the roughly 4,800 people missing in Nepal and China. More than 900 people have died after a glacial collapse unleashed floods and debris across the border region. Representative Raja Krishnamurthy, a Democrat from Illinois, tells Bloomberg this weekend that the US government needs to send more aid to the region.

**Raja Krishnamurthy** (4:14)
This is a just a calamity of enormous magnitude. My office directly has been contacted by numerous families now who've been affected because they were American citizens on pilgrimage in that particular region at the time of this glacial collapse.