Shana, the official website of Iran's oil ministry, reported Iran and Russia are close to finalizing a natural gas trade agreement.

Meta Platforms pledged an additional $40 billion to its large data center campus in rural Louisiana, raising announced site investment to $50 billion and expanding planned AI compute capacity to at least 5 GW. Combined with prior commitments (including an earlier $10 billion) and a May report that Meta may invest a further $200 billion mainly for high-cost compute chips across the nearly 4,000-acre campus, the project's expected total would exceed $250 billion, a person familiar with the matter said. Meta has not disclosed any detailed spending beyond the $50 billion.

The State Council Information Office will hold a press briefing at 1500 Beijing time on Wednesday, July 15. PBOC spokesperson and deputy governor Zou Lan will present 1H 2026 monetary policy implementation and financial statistics and take questions.