🇨🇳❌🇺🇸 - China instructs its companies to defy the US sanction targeting refiners over import of Iranian crude oil.

Chinese firms have always enjoyed the government's tacit approval busting US sanction against Chinese allies such as Russia and Iran. Small and medium firms operating within the Chinese banking systems are largely out of reach of the US Treasury. Beijing, however, has stopped short of banning it's companies from complying with the US sanction.

The unprecedented move came as Beijing felt the need to forcefully respond against what it perceived as increasingly expansive and severe economic warfare from Washington, involving secondary sanction, export bans and tariff...

It is still unclear what specific measures China would take to support it's companies against the US sanction, but China is widely expected to retaliate if the US enforce secondary sanction on Chinese companies for noncompliance.

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🇲🇽 — A Mexican Naval Aviation Mi-17 helicopter crashed shortly after takeoff due to an engine failure at the Fourth Naval Base, Mazatlán, Sinaloa.

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❗️🇮🇳 - Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party BJP extends its post-2024 win streak in the 2026 state level election.

The BJP and its coalition partners gained seats in all 4 of the states up for election this year. West Bengal, long an opposition stronghold, delivered a stunning victory. BJP, which never won the state, scored at least 201 out of 294 seats in the state legislature.

The BJP's core ideology is Hindu nationalism and it tends to do poorly in states with large population of Muslims, Christians or non-Hindi speakers.

Edit: The victory in West Bengal is shrouded in controversy. Nine million voters, most of whom Muslim, were allegedly disenfranchised. The government claimed it was a crackdown against illegal votes by Bangladeshi immigrants.

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❗️🇺🇸💊 - The US force carried out another strike on suspected drug trafficking boat in the Caribbean, killing two 'narco-terrorists'.

The extrajudicial killings, once eliciting international outcry, has become another routine for the Trump administration.

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🇮🇷🤝🇨🇳- Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, is traveling to Beijing today, to engage in high level talks with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi. During the meetings, Araghchi and Wang Yi are expected to discuss the strengthening of bilateral ties, as well as regional and international developments.

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