US President Donald Trump yesterday visited a US military base at the center of US involvement in the Middle East, having earlier touted a Qatar Airways order for Boeing aircraft inked during his four-day visit to Gulf states.
Trump was to address troops at Qatar’s al-Udeid Air Base, which was a major staging ground during the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and supported a recent US air campaign against Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis.
Trump has held up Gulf nations like Saudi Arabia and Qatar as models for economic development in a region plagued by conflict as he works to entice Iran to come to terms with his administration on a deal to curb its nuclear program.
Photo: Reuters
At a business forum, Trump sat with GE Aerospace chief executive officer Larry Culp and Boeing Co CEO Kelly Ortberg on either side of him.
Both praised Trump for his support for Qatar Airways’ order for Boeing aircraft.
Ortberg called it one of the largest orders Boeing has ever had.
Trump on Wednesday said that Qatar Airways had placed a “record” order for 160 planes from Boeing, as he signed a raft of deals alongside Qatar’s emir.
The order, Boeing’s largest ever for its wide-body jets, deepens ties between the US aerospace giant and the giant Middle East carrier.
Qatar Airways would honor a “[US]$96 billion agreement to acquire up to 210 American-made Boeing 787 Dreamliner and 777X aircraft powered by GE Aerospace engines,” a White House fact sheet showed.
“This is Boeing’s largest-ever widebody order and largest-ever 787 order,” it said.
The order is comprised of 130 Dreamliner planes and 30 Boeing 777-9 jets, which are still being certified by the US Federal Aviation Administration.
There are also options for 50 additional 787 and 777X planes, Boeing said in a statement.
“We are deeply honored that Qatar Airways has placed this record-breaking order with Boeing, one that solidifies their future fleet,” Boeing commercial plane chief Stephanie Pope said.
Ortberg joined Trump for part of Wednesday’s signing ceremony that also included defense agreements and the purchase by Qatar of US-made MQ-9B drones, after about two hours of talks with Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
“It’s over [US]$200 billion, but [US$]160 [billion] in terms of the jets. That’s fantastic. So that’s a record,” Trump said, adding: “It’s the largest order of jets in the history of Boeing. That’s pretty good.”
Speaking yesterday on the situation between Israel and Hamas, Trump said that he wanted the US to “take” Gaza and turn it into a “freedom zone.”
“I have concepts for Gaza that I think are very good, make it a freedom zone, let the United States get involved and make it just a freedom zone,” he said.
“I’d be proud to have the United States have it, take it, make it a freedom zone,” he added.
The president was to travel to the United Arab Emirates, the final leg of his first major foreign trip.
He was to visit the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque and attend a state visit hosted at Abu Dhabi’s Qasr al-Watan palace.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RSS