CL Iran's demand list landed this morning with one line doing all the work: full US withdrawal from the Gulf, delivered while Hormuz stays shut and a UAE tanker sits scorched offshore. Diplomats will call this an opening position. It reads like a closing one. Nobody in the room is negotiating toward anything.-- CL

MB Iran spent the day listing demands while the strait stayed shut, diplomacy's way of saying no through a longer sentence. Taiwan rehearsed evacuating its own president. Hong Kong's regulators pushed tougher sex crime laws while employers warned of mass layoffs over helper wages, two departments legislating the same city without checking what the other was doing.-- MB