Elon Musk is the wealthiest individual ever recorded, worth an estimated $839 billion, Forbes said on Tuesday, as a record 3,428 billionaires worldwide saw their combined fortunes surge to an all-time high of $20.1 trillion.

Musk topped the Forbes World’s Billionaires list for the second consecutive year after his fortune swelled by roughly $500 billion over the past twelve months, driven by rising valuations at Tesla and SpaceX, which is targeting a public offering in 2026.

He is the first person ever to surpass the $800 billion mark and is on course to become the world’s first trillionaire.

“It’s the year of the billionaire,” said Chase Peterson-Withorn, Forbes Senior Editor, Wealth. “The planet added more than one billionaire per day over the past twelve months as the AI-powered stock market boom boosted fortunes to previously unimaginable heights.”

The billionaire’s list showed that Larry Page, co-founder of Google, follows far behind Musk, standing at second place with an estimated net worth of $257 billion, followed by his co-founder Sergey Brin at number three with a net wealth of $237 billion.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos was spotted at number four with $224 billion, and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, holding $222 billion, rounds out the top 5.

Forbes noted that US President Donald Trump’s fortune increased by 27%, to an estimated $6.5 billion, thanks largely to crypto dealings and his New York fraud penalty being thrown out. He ranks number 645 worldwide.

TEHRAN: While Iran hits back against US and Israeli attacks with missiles and drones, it is also fighting a propaganda war with a Lego-style animation video complete with toy renditions of Donald Trump, bombs and warplanes.

Iran’s state-run Revayat-e Fath institute released its video on state television following the February 28 US-Israeli attacks that martyred supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and triggered the Middle East war.

The two-minute video has since been shared on Meta-owned platforms and on X, garnering tens of thousands of likes and shares.

With no dialogue, it appears designed to have international reach in a war that has rattled energy and stock markets, and divided world public opinion.

The video kicks off with Lego-type depictions of US President Trump flanked by Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu and the devil himself, looking at an album titled the “Epstein file” (sic).

Enraged, Trump hits a red button to kick off the war, and sends a missile through the clouds that hits what looks like a classroom, with toys representing girls wearing pink headscarves as they listen to their smiling teacher.

After the teacher writes on the board the words “My homeland is my life”, the screen goes dark. The next scene shows a pink backpack and a pair of pink shoes in the rubble of a strike.

An Iranian officer, also in Lego-inspired form, picks up the bag and weeps, before his sadness turns to rage.

Iran has accused the United States and Israel of conducting a deadly strike on a school in Minab in the south on the first day of the war.

AFP has neither been able to access the site in order to verify the incident nor obtain independent confirmation of the toll.

With a nationalist score playing, the video later shows Iranian Revolutionary Guards retaliating by attacking US interests and Israel across the region.

The video ends with a message saying it was made in remembrance of students killed in the strike, “who were martyred at the hands of Zionist and American terrorists”.

Australia’s Qantas Airways, Scandinavia’s SAS and Air New Zealand announced airfare hikes on Tuesday, blaming an abrupt spike in the cost of fuel caused by the Middle East conflict.

Jet fuel prices, which were around $85 to $90 per barrel before US-Israeli strikes on Iran, have soared to between $150 and $200 per barrel in recent days, New Zealand’s flag carrier said as it suspended its financial outlook for 2026 due to uncertainty over the conflict.

The war, which disrupted shipping via the world’s most vital oil export route, has sent oil prices surging, upending global travel, pushing airline tickets on some routes sky-high, and sparking fears of a deep travel slump that could lead to widespread grounding of planes.

“Increases of this magnitude make it necessary to react in order to maintain stable and reliable operations,” an SAS spokesperson said in a statement to Reuters, adding it had implemented a “temporary price adjustment”.

The largest Scandinavian airline said last year it had temporarily adjusted its fuel hedging policy due to uncertain market conditions and that it had no fuel consumption hedged for the following 12 months.

While several Asian and European airlines, including Lufthansa and Ryanair, have oil hedging in place, securing a part of their fuel supplies at fixed prices, Finnair warned that even the availability of fuel could be at risk if the conflict dragged on. Kuwait, a major jet fuel exporter to north-west Europe, has faced output cuts.

“A prolonged crisis could affect not only the price of fuel but also its availability, at least temporarily,” a Finnair spokesperson said, adding that it had not seen this happening yet. It had hedged over 80% of its first-quarter fuel purchases.

Airspace chaos in the Middle East

Highlighting the airspace chaos in the Middle East, planes arriving in Dubai were briefly placed in a holding pattern on Tuesday due to a potential missile attack, flight tracking service Flightradar24 said on X. The planes eventually landed.

Qantas said in addition to increasing international fares, it was exploring options to redeploy capacity to Europe as airlines and passengers seek to evade disruptions in the Middle East, where drone and missile fire have curtailed flights.

Airfares have soared on Asia-Europe routes due to airspace closures and capacity constraints, and Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways said on Tuesday it was adding extra flights to London and Zurich in March.

Air New Zealand said it had raised one-way economy fares by NZ$10 ($6) on domestic routes, NZ$20 on short-haul international services and NZ$90 on long-haul, with more adjustments to prices and schedules possible if jet fuel costs remain elevated.

Hong Kong Airlines said on its website it would raise its fuel surcharges by up to 35.2% from Thursday, with the sharpest increase on flights between Hong Kong and the Maldives, Bangladesh and Nepal.

Airline shares stabilise after sell off

Some airline stocks rose and oil prices fell to around $90 a barrel on Tuesday from a high of $119 on Monday after US President Donald Trump said on Monday the war could be over soon.

When markets opened in Europe, airline shares were up between 4% and 7%. In Asia, airline shares showed signs of stabilising, with Qantas closing up 0.5%, Korean Air Lines rising 3% and Cathay Pacific up 3.6%. All had recorded sharp declines on Monday.

Fuel is the second-largest expense for air carriers after labour, typically accounting for a fifth to a quarter of operating expenses.

Conflicts shrinking available airspace

In addition to high fuel costs, tightening airspace also threatens to derail the global travel industry, as pilots reroute to avoid the Middle East conflict and capacity on popular routes fills up.

Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad typically jointly account for about one-third of the passenger traffic between Europe and Asia and fly more than half of all passengers from Europe to Australia, New Zealand and nearby Pacific Islands, according to Cirium.

European airlines have already struggled with the shortage of available airspace created by the war in Ukraine, with many avoiding Russian airspace and flying longer international routes. Now, with even less available airspace, they say their business has become even more challenging.