Energy

The Trump administration has extended a controversial waiver on sanctions targeting Russian seaborne oil and other petroleum products after letting it expire two days earlier. 

The U.S. Treasury Department on Monday issued an alert urging financial institutions to step up their detection of money laundering, sanctions evasion, and digital-asset transfers tied to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Artificial intelligence is amplifying the cyber threats facing the global financial system and could trigger a system-wide shock unless regulators and banks build stronger defenses, the International Monetary Fund warned Thursday.

The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday imposed sanctions on Iraq’s deputy oil minister, three senior leaders of Iran-aligned militias, and four Iraqi companies, accusing them of diverting Iraqi oil to benefit Iran’s government and its proxy forces.

China’s top financial regulator has quietly told the country’s largest banks to suspend new loans to five Chinese refiners recently sanctioned by the United States over their ties to Iranian oil, even as Beijing publicly orders companies to ignore those same U.S. measures.

The United States is preparing to lift sanctions on Eritrea, according to an internal U.S. government document seen by Reuters, a move analysts told the news agency was driven by the Horn of Africa nation’s strategic position on the Red Sea shipping route.

The United States and its Gulf allies have circulated a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that would threaten Iran with sanctions or other measures unless it halts attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz and stops imposing “illegal tolls.”

China has for the first time invoked a law targeting companies that comply with foreign sanctions Beijing rejects, escalating its pushback against U.S. blacklisting of several oil refineries over purchases of Iranian crude.

President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order authorizing penalties against foreign banks and other companies anywhere in the world that do business with the Cuban government. 

Russia has emerged as Syria’s dominant oil supplier, with shipments rising about 75 percent to roughly 60,000 barrels per day this year despite Damascus’s pivot toward the West and lingering public anger over Moscow’s military backing of ousted leader Bashar al-Assad.