Iran's IRGC hits two oil tankers in Strait of Hormuz

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran said Friday that it hit and stopped two oil tankers that disregarded its warnings and attempted to travel through the Strait of Hormuz via an undeclared route under the air escort of the U.S. army.

In a statement, the IRGC said it also forced four other oil tankers to turn back.

The IRGC Navy has once again warned that illegal interventions, orders and prohibitions of the U.S. army to vessels in the region will not go unanswered, said the statement.

Chinese stocks closed higher on Friday, due to stimulation from the newly-released US technology earnings, said China Global Television Network (CGTN) analyst Timothy Pope.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index up 0.72 percent to 3,832.26 points.

The Shenzhen Component Index closed 2.21 percent higher at 13,578.93 points.

The ChiNext Index, tracking China's Nasdaq-style board of growth enterprises, gained 3.06 percent to close at 3,343.96 points.

"The latest U.S. technology earnings have made Chinese AI stocks whipsaw over the past couple of sessions. Before we get into that, as far as the dust is settling, the Shanghai Composite added 0.7 percent today, the Shenzhen Component rose 2.2 percent and the ChiNext gained 3 percent. And those numbers just screamed technology rebound," Pope said.

"Yesterday's sell-off was absolutely brutal after we saw the results from Meta and other U.S. technology companies reviving concerns about the hyperscalers' enormous AI spending. The worry is that they may be investing too much, too quickly, without generating returns fast enough to justify that. That punished both ends of the market: it hit the U.S. technology giants because of the scale of their spending, and it hit their suppliers in China because it cast doubt on future demand. But then we got results from Azure -- Microsoft's cloud-computing division -- and the market grabbed at those like a lifebelt. Azure's revenue grew faster than expected, demand is still exceeding Microsoft's available computing capacity, and the company says its spending will continue. That is fantastic news for Chinese optical-transceiver companies, data equipment makers, semiconductor firms and memory-chip producers-basically the entire AI supply chain. And it is those shares currently underpinning gains on the Chinese mainland market," he said.