The Economist.

Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist.

I'm Rosie Bloor.

And I'm Jason Palmer.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Thank you. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. A decade ago, an array of fake meat products appeared on our supermarket shelves.

They were apparently all set to eat into the profits of the real meat market.

The stakes were high, and the carnivores may have won.

And the PDF file has always had its detractors, but you can't deny their popularity.

There's something like 2.5 trillion of them floating around. The problem is AI has trouble

reading them, and that may at last be the file formats undoing.

First up, though.

America said last night that it had used bunker-busting bombs to target missile sites on the

Iranian coast, trying to un-gum the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, Iran continued its assaults on the Gulf

states. Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, all said that they had intercepted inbound missiles.

We've talked endlessly about how this conflict has affected the oil industry, but there's far more turmoil going on,

from fertilizer to critical minerals no longer passing by sea to another industry disrupted in the air.

The events in the Middle East are a reminder that the region is not only crucial for global

supplies of oil and gas coming through the straits of Hormuz, but it's a vital conduit for the

world's airline passengers.

Simon Wright is our industry editor.

Pictures of stranded passengers in the tens of thousands in recent weeks

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