Por Stephanie Yang, CNN

A medida que la guerra con Irán se prolonga, las naciones asiáticas con escasez de energía, incluidos aliados cercanos de Estados Unidos, están recurriendo a medidas cada vez más extremas para mantener a flote sus economías.

El martes, Filipinas se convirtió en el primer país en declarar el estado de emergencia energética nacional.

En Corea del Sur, las autoridades han recomendado a los ciudadanos que se duchen menos tiempo y carguen sus teléfonos durante el día para ahorrar electricidad.

Mientras tanto, Japón comenzará esta semana la mayor liberación de reservas de petróleo de emergencia de su historia y le comunicó a su población que no era necesario acaparar papel higiénico ante el creciente pánico por la posible escasez de productos de consumo.

La creciente inestabilidad es un sombrío presagio de lo que podría suceder en el resto del mundo, ya que la guerra en Irán ha interrumpido una fuente crucial de petróleo crudo y gas natural.

Los países asiáticos dependen en gran medida de las importaciones de Medio Oriente, que representan aproximadamente el 60 % del suministro petrolero de la región.

Tras el ataque de Estados Unidos e Israel contra Irán el mes pasado, Teherán bloqueó de hecho el estrecho de Ormuz, la única conexión marítima entre el golfo Pérsico y el océano Índico, restringiendo así una quinta parte del suministro energético mundial.

La firma de investigación energética Wood Mackenzie predijo que, si la guerra continúa, los precios del petróleo Brent podrían subir hasta los US$ 150 por barril en los próximos meses, y advirtió que un precio promedio de US$ 125 por barril este año desencadenaría una recesión mundial.

“Ante el estancamiento geopolítico, la prolongación de la guerra y la disminución de las reservas fuera del Golfo, los precios de todo el complejo de crudo y productos derivados subirán”, escribieron los analistas la semana pasada.

Si bien el presidente Trump se muestra optimista ante la posibilidad de que la guerra termine pronto, los analistas han dicho que incluso si se declara un alto el fuego, habrá meses, si no años, de dificultades económicas por delante.

El conflicto, que ya lleva cuatro semanas, ha puesto a prueba las reservas de materias primas que los países suelen mantener.

El aumento del precio del combustible ha llevado a las aerolíneas de Asia, incluidas las de Vietnam, Filipinas, Australia y el Pacífico, a suspender o reducir sus vuelos.

Si bien muchos países se esfuerzan por conseguir más materias primas en el mercado mundial, la amenaza de quedarse sin ellas ha suscitado preocupación sobre cómo la escasez podría repercutir en la industria manufacturera de Asia y, en última instancia, hacer que productos como la electrónica, los automóviles y los textiles sean más escasos.

Algunos países, entre ellos China, han restringido los envíos al extranjero de combustible y otros materiales para salvaguardar sus propias reservas nacionales.

Corea del Sur está considerando limitar las exportaciones de nafta, un subproducto del petróleo utilizado en la fabricación de plásticos, según Yang Gi-wook, director de la oficina de seguridad de recursos industriales del país.

La escasez de nafta también está provocando recortes de producción en las empresas petroquímicas de Japón.

Yang afirmó que el Gobierno está buscando otras fuentes de nafta, cuya escasez podría afectar

By Alexandra Skores, CNN

Washington (CNN) — Transportation Security Administration screeners checking passengers and their bags are the most visible layer of security at airports, but now that they have gone without pay for more than a month, some aviation experts are concerned the shutdown is increasing risks.

“The wait times are obviously spiking everywhere, which means it’s more chaotic, which creates a security vulnerability,” said Keith Jeffries, who ran TSA at Los Angeles International Airport and is now a vice president of K2 Security Screening Group.

“How focused are the front line employees on actually finding dangerous or prohibited items, or people with bad intentions, because they haven’t been paid?” he added.

The war with Iran, which started about three weeks ago, adds to the wide-ranging threats TSA must look out for every day. The agency is not just made up of people giving pat-downs and finding bottles of water in carry-ons but has teams assessing threats and vulnerabilities along with intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

“You can’t eliminate risk, but you can mitigate risk,” said John Pistole, who served as the TSA administrator during the Obama administration.

While TSA often notes they rely on many different layers of security, both “seen and unseen” by the traveling public, situations like this lapse in funding bring “heightened awareness to how dependent the system is on men and women at TSA,” Pistole said.

“They’re humans who might be distracted because they were worried about, ‘How am I going to pay the rent this month, buy groceries, child care, all those basics,’” he said. “That’s just human nature, even though they strive to do the best job and be professionals.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were deployed to airports around the country this week but it’s not clear what exactly there role is.

The Transportation Security Administration was created to improve and standardize security after the September 11 attacks but has increasingly fallen victim to government fights over funding. TSA agents are among 61,000 Department of Homeland Security employees not getting paid while Democrats and Republicans are locked in legislative gridlock on immigration reform.

Meanwhile, in the airports, hours long lines have wrapped around terminals as travelers wait to get into fewer lanes managed by fewer TSA officers. Some checkpoints have been closed, and the agency has even warned screening could be stopped at some small airports, effectively shutting them down.

“In the past, wait times, excessive wait times, have put pressure on Congress to find a deal. But Congress should be so lucky that it’s just wait times that pressures them to a deal, and not something worse happening, like a security lapse,” said Erik Hansen, senior vice president and head of government relations for the US Travel Association.

In some respects, the long lines are a sign officers are trying to maintain standards. Passengers can’t simply be sped through the lines faster.

“We need not only to be vigilant, but extra vigilant,” Pistole said.

Yet, he worries the massive lines created when the reduced number of screeners follow the essential rules could create additional vulnerabilities.

“From the standpoint of a suicide bomber, or a shooter, (who) wants to go in and just shoot up this area, the airport, where people are in these long queues … it’s a double problem,” he told CNN’s Kate Bolduan.

Now the question remains, how long will Congress take before they act?

“We have thousands of travelers funneled through narrow checkpoi

By Alexandra Skores, CNN

Washington (CNN) — An Air Canada regional jet landing at one of the country’s busiest and most prominent airports slammed into a firetruck at more than 100 miles per hour on Sunday, leaving federal investigators and frightened passengers questioning what could have gone wrong.

The National Transportation Safety Board is combing through wreckage and collecting data to find answers in the first days of an investigation that will take a year or longer.

“We have a lot of data right now, a lot of information, including information on tower staffing, but the NTSB deals in facts,” said Jennifer Homendy, chair of the NTSB at a news conference on Monday. “We don’t speculate. We don’t take one person at their word. We verify that information carefully before we provide it.”

Air Canada Express flight 8646, operated by Jazz Aviation, had 72 passengers and four crew members on board for the flight from Montreal to New York’s LaGuardia. The two pilots died and dozens of passengers and two firefighters were injured.

The first several days of the investigation are going to be focused on data collection, according to Jim Brauchle, an attorney that represents plaintiffs in aviation disasters for the law firm Motley Rice.

“They won’t be doing a lot of analysis the first few days,” Brauchle said. “That’s more facts and data collection and getting witness statements and those kind of things, while it’s still fresh.”

What happened in the tower?

Questions about the people in the control tower, their responsibilities, and if all proper procedures were followed will be answered in the course of the investigation.

Homendy confirmed Tuesday there were two controllers working in the tower cab, the top of the control tower which looks out over the airfield, at the time of collision. The “local controller” manages active runways and the immediate airspace surrounding the airport. The “controller in charge” is a supervisor responsible for the safety of operations, and on the night of the crash, they were also assigned to give pilots departure information.

The NTSB says the staffing was standard operating procedure for LaGuardia at that time of the night, but whether that procedure was adequate will also be investigated.

Another part of the investigation is to determine which of the controllers were responsible for the aircraft and vehicles on the ground.

“It is not clear who was conducting the duties of the ground controller. We have conflicting information,” Homendy said. That person would be tasked with managing all aircraft and vehicle movements on taxiways but typically not active runways.

There is also “conflicting information, including dates and times on the logs,” of who else was elsewhere in the air traffic control facility, she said. The NTSB will have to “rectify some of those inconsistencies,” Homendy continued.

The controllers involved in the crash continued to work for some time after the crash, and the NTSB will also investigate why they were not relieved more rapidly.

Eighteen minutes after the collision, one controller appeared to blame himself for the crash in a conversation with a pilot who saw it happen.

“That wasn’t good to watch,” the pilot said in audio recorded by LiveATC.net.

“Yeah, I know. I tried to reach out to them,” the noticeably distraught controller said. “We were dealing with an emergency earlier. I messed up.”

The pilot responded, “Nah man, you did the best you could.”

Investigators will probe far beyond the comment and investigate every aspect of what happened and always note accidents often have complicated causes.

“Our aviation system is incredibly safe because there are multiple, multiple layers of de

CNN, SOCIAL MEDIA, FNTV, GETTY IMAGES

By Alexandra Skores, CNN

Washington (CNN) — An Air Canada regional jet landing at one of the country’s busiest and most prominent airports slammed into a firetruck at more than 100 miles per hour on Sunday, leaving federal investigators and frightened passengers questioning what could have gone wrong.

The National Transportation Safety Board is combing through wreckage and collecting data to find answers in the first days of an investigation that will take a year or longer.

“We have a lot of data right now, a lot of information, including information on tower staffing, but the NTSB deals in facts,” said Jennifer Homendy, chair of the NTSB at a news conference on Monday. “We don’t speculate. We don’t take one person at their word. We verify that information carefully before we provide it.”

Air Canada Express flight 8646, operated by Jazz Aviation, had 72 passengers and four crew members on board for the flight from Montreal to New York’s LaGuardia. The two pilots died and dozens of passengers and two firefighters were injured.

The first several days of the investigation are going to be focused on data collection, according to Jim Brauchle, an attorney that represents plaintiffs in aviation disasters for the law firm Motley Rice.

“They won’t be doing a lot of analysis the first few days,” Brauchle said. “That’s more facts and data collection and getting witness statements and those kind of things, while it’s still fresh.”

What happened in the tower?

Questions about the people in the control tower, their responsibilities, and if all proper procedures were followed will be answered in the course of the investigation.

Homendy confirmed Tuesday there were two controllers working in the tower cab, the top of the control tower which looks out over the airfield, at the time of collision. The “local controller” manages active runways and the immediate airspace surrounding the airport. The “controller in charge” is a supervisor responsible for the safety of operations, and on the night of the crash, they were also assigned to give pilots departure information.

The NTSB says the staffing was standard operating procedure for LaGuardia at that time of the night, but whether that procedure was adequate will also be investigated.

Another part of the investigation is to determine which of the controllers were responsible for the aircraft and vehicles on the ground.

“It is not clear who was conducting the duties of the ground controller. We have conflicting information,” Homendy said. That person would be tasked with managing all aircraft and vehicle movements on taxiways but typically not active runways.

There is also “conflicting information, including dates and times on the logs,” of who else was elsewhere in the air traffic control facility, she said. The NTSB will have to “rectify some of those inconsistencies,” Homendy continued.

The controllers involved in the crash continu

By Stephanie Yang, CNN

(CNN) — As the war with Iran drags on, energy-starved nations in Asia –– including close US allies –– are resorting to increasingly extreme measures to keep their economies afloat.

On Tuesday, the Philippines became the first country to declare a state of national energy emergency. South Koreans have been advised to take shorter showers and charge their phones during the day to conserve electricity. While Japan will begin its biggest-ever release of emergency oil reserves this week, and told citizens there was no need to hoard toilet paper amid growing panic over potential shortages of consumer goods.

The intensifying upheaval is a grim indication of what may come for the rest of the world, as the war in Iran has choked off a critical source of crude oil and natural gas. Asian countries are heavily reliant on imports from the Middle East, which accounts for about 60% of the region’s oil supply.

After the US and Israel attacked Iran last month, Tehran effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, the only sea connection between the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, restricting one-fifth of the world’s energy supply.

Energy research firm Wood Mackenzie predicted if the war continues, Brent oil prices could climb as high as $150 a barrel in the coming months, and warned an average price of $125 a barrel this year would trigger a global recession.

“With a geopolitical stalemate, a war drifting on and inventory outside the Gulf dwindling, prices across the entire crude and product complex will push up,” analysts wrote last week.

While President Trump is touting optimism the war may end soon, analysts have said even if a ceasefire came into effect, there will be months, if not years of economic pain ahead.

The conflict, now in its fourth week, has strained the commodity stockpiles that nations usually keep in reserve. The rising fuel prices have led airlines in Asia, including from Vietnam, the Philippines, Australia and the Pacific to suspend or curb flights.

While many countries are scrambling to secure more raw materials from the global market, the threat of running out has raised concerns about how shortages could trickle down through Asia’s manufacturing industry and ultimately make goods like electronics, cars and textiles more scarce.

‘Everything requires machinery’

Some nations including China have restricted overseas shipments of fuel and other materials to safeguard their own domestic inventory.

South Korea is considering limiting exports of naphtha, a petroleum by-product used in plastics manufacturing, according to Yang Gi-wook, the country’s director of the industrial resource security office. A naphtha shortfall is also prompting production cuts at petrochemical companies in Japan.

Yang said the government is currently seeking other sources of naphtha, a shortage of which could affect the manufacturing of large home appliances like washing machines.

“If the situation is prolonged, we are also preparing stronger measures,” he said Tuesday.

Even if the war ends, halts in production and destruction to energy infrastructure will continue to weigh on oil and gas supply.

Last week the International Energy Agency said the historic release of 400 million barrels of crude stockpiles would not be enough to fix the energy crisis, and issued recommendations for curtailing demand such as