Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens to derail Iran nuclear talks – Newstrends
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens to derail Iran nuclear talks

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Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, right, welcomes Rafael Mariano Grossi, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Tehran on March 5.

VIENNA — Fears mounted Monday that the Iran nuclear deal may become collateral damage in the Ukraine war as Russia pressed its demand to be exempted from U.S. sanctions in any future business dealings with Iran.

Negotiators had hoped to finalize an agreement to revive the 2015 nuclear deal imminently and have already allowed several presumed deadlines to slip after 11 months of talks on ways to bring the deal back to life.

The talks have been focused on how to bring both the United States and Iran back into compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA as the deal is known, by rolling back sanctions imposed by the United States after it pulled out of the agreement in 2018 and the advances later made by Iran in its nuclear program in response to the U.S. sanctions.

The eruption of war in Ukraine has thrown up additional complications by overturning Russia’s relations with the Western nations involved in the negotiations, including the United States, Britain, France and Germany, along with Iran and China. Because the United States withdrew from the agreement, the talks at the Palais Coburg Hotel in Vienna have been taking place among the remaining parties, with negotiators shuttling between the talks and the U.S. delegation at a different hotel.

In a phone call with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated that Russia wants the revival of the nuclear deal to be accompanied by U.S. guarantees that sanctions imposed by the West in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine won’t apply to Russian trade or investment with Iran.

Lavrov told Amirabdollahian that the deal’s resuscitation “should ensure that all its participants have equal rights regarding the unhindered development of cooperation in all areas,” the Russian Embassy in Iran said on Twitter.

The demand, first raised by Lavrov at a news conference in Moscow on Saturday, has rocked the negotiations underway in Vienna.

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This was the first time Russia had given any indication that its position might have shifted, and diplomats are now scrambling to assess what the new demands mean and how they might affect the chances of getting a revived deal. Iran seemed as stunned as any of the other countries, with Iranian officials complaining to Iranian media that they only learned of the Russian demand from news reports.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken indicated in an interview Sunday that the United States would not be prepared to bargain over the sanctions imposed on Russia for the sake of the nuclear deal, saying the issues are unrelated.

“The sanctions that are being put in place and that have been put in place on Russia have nothing to do with the Iran nuclear deal and the prospects of getting back into that agreement,” he told CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “These things are totally different and are — just are not in any way linked together.”

Iran is still pushing for further concessions from the United States on issues related to economic guarantees and removing Iranian entities from the U.S. list of designated terrorists before agreeing to resume adherence to the deal, diplomats say. It is still possible the negotiations could collapse regardless of any shift in Russia’s position, a Western negotiator said.

But diplomats now have to contend with the possibility that Russia may try to upend the deal altogether or to use the talks as a bargaining chip to exact concessions from the West on sanctions related to Ukraine.

“There’s a real tension between Russia’s long-standing interest in containing the Iran nuclear program and this new Russia that seems willing to bring its relations with the West crashing down,” said Henry Rome, an analyst with the Eurasia Group.

Russia may also now have no interest in remaining in a revived deal that would benefit the United States and its Western allies but would potentially damage Russian interests by bringing oil prices down, said Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Iran would be able to sell its oil on the open market again, which could ease tight global supplies and bring prices down by as much as 10 percent.

“Considering the magnitude of the global pressure against Russia, it’s understandable why they might try and hold the Iran nuclear deal hostage to secure their own interests,” he said. “Russia wants the world to feel the economic pain of an embargo against Russian oil. Helping to get Iranian oil back on the market would soften the global financial blow.”

Russia’s participation in the agreement isn’t essential, but the original JCPOA assigns Russia an important role in shipping out and storing Iran’s excess stocks of enriched uranium. The original deal is also backed by a U.N. Security Council resolution, which Russia could veto if it chooses to oppose the revived deal.

Those are issues that could be worked around, but that would be likely to put a further brake on a resolution of the talks, diplomats say. In the meantime, Iran is continuing to enrich uranium and inching closer to what is known as breakout point, meaning that it would have enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear weapon should it choose to do so. “Time is of the essence,” a senior Western diplomat said.

The Washington Post

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Google blocks 5.5 billion adverts, suspends 12.7 million accounts

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Google blocks 5.5 billion adverts, suspends 12.7 million accounts

Google says it has blocked over 5.5 billion adverts and suspended 12.7 million others for violating its policies.

The search engine giant also said in a statement on Wednesday that it had removed adverts from over 2.1 billion pages.

“Billions of people around the world rely on Google products to provide relevant and trustworthy information, including ads. That’s why we have thousands of people working around the clock to safeguard the digital advertising ecosystem.

“Today, we are releasing our annual Ads Safety Report to share the progress we’ve made in enforcing our advertiser and publisher policies and to hold ourselves accountable in our work of maintaining a healthy ad-supported internet,” it said.

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In 2023, it said scams and fraud across all online platforms were on the rise.

It added, “Bad actors are constantly evolving their tactics to manipulate digital advertising in order to scam people and legitimate businesses alike. To counter these ever-shifting threats, we quickly updated policies, deployed rapid-response enforcement teams and sharpened our detection techniques.”

Google blocks 5.5 billion adverts, suspends 12.7 million accounts

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Mother kills daughters, commits suicide amid in-laws’ torture for not bearing son

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Sangita Yadav

Mother kills daughters, commits suicide amid in-laws’ torture for not bearing son

Two minor girls lost their lives after their mother killed them and hanged herself to death on Tuesday, as her her in-laws tortured her mentally due to her inability to bear a son in Bhopal. Tragically, the woman and two of her daughters have succumbed to the ordeal, while her three-year-old daughter fights for her life in the hospital.

The woman, identified as Sangita Yadav, was 28 years old, her daughters Aradhya was 5 years old, and Shristi was 2. The incident occurred in Roadiya village, located 35 kilometers from Bhopal in the Gunaga police station area. The matter came to light on Tuesday afternoon. The bodies of the victims were taken to Hamidia Hospital. According to Gunaga police station in-charge Arun Sharma, initial investigations suggest that the woman committed suicide and murdered her three daughters. However, further investigation is underway to confirm the circumstances.

According to Dainik Bhaskar, the deceased woman’s brother, Neeraj Yadav, has accused the in-laws of harassing his sister. Neeraj revealed that Sangita had sent distressing messages to him at night. In one of the messages, she stated that she was feeling unwell. She mentioned that she was taking poison as nobody would survive, and everyone would die.

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“Neeraj said, “After that, I tried calling her on her mobile phone, but I didn’t get any response. I also called Sangita’s brother-in-law, but he didn’t pick up the phone twice. When he finally answered the third time, I asked him if everything was fine at home. He said yes, everything was fine. I didn’t trust him.” Then, he asked his relatives, who stayed nearby, to go and check once. Thet reached and confirmed, that the bodies of all three kept inside.

Neeraj revealed that his sister was troubled by her in-laws. Whenever she visited her maternal home, Sangita’s husband, Rajat Yadav, would threaten her, saying, ‘If you don’t come back, I will die in an accident. I will electrocute myself.’ On March 4th, there was a wedding in the family, where they drank alcohol and created a ruckus. They took his sister back with them that night. After the wedding, everyone collectively harassed her, which left her distraught, leading her to hang herself along with her daughters.

The authenticity of the suicide note is questionable. Relatives alleged that when Sangita was found hanging, there was a letter stuck to her back, presumed to be a suicide note. In it, she purportedly wrote about a lump in her stomach preventing her from bearing more children and not being able to give birth to a son for her family. However, some family members directly denied the existence of any such letter. Nevertheless, according to the present police officers, a letter has been recovered from the scene.”

Mother kills daughters, commits suicide amid in-laws’ torture for not bearing son

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‘Fake pastor’ with at least 10 wives jailed for marrying two at same time

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Orlando Coleman

‘Fake pastor’ with at least 10 wives jailed for marrying two at same time

A fake pastor who had at least 10 wives has been thrown in jail after marrying two women.

Orlando Coleman trawled black churches across the US under the guise of a travelling bishop, collecting spouses as he went. The 51-year-old would introduce himself to new congregations as a member of the clergy, and was able to dupe at least 10 different women into exchanging vows with him.

Coleman from Houston had presented himself as the founder of several churches as well as a Pentecostal preacher on social media. Despite pleading guilty to bigamy in July 2023 and being placed on probation for marrying two women simultaneously, he wedded another woman two months later.

Now, he has been put behind bars for three years for marrying multiple women since 2019.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said: “At the heart of this repeat offender’s schemes was a plan to defraud women and take advantage of them for financial gain.

“This man used the church to camouflage his scams and hide from any accountability or responsibility.”

Coleman’s web of deceit started to unravel in 2021 when he married a woman in Houston, but his new wife saw he was receiving money from another woman in Virginia.

When his then current wife contacted the woman from Virginia it was revealed that she too was married to Coleman.

Coleman’s Houston wife then contacted the Harris County Sheriff’s Office with the revelation, who in turn launched an investigation and filed bigamy charges.

In July 2023, Coleman pleaded guilty to bigamy in exchange for three years of deferred adjudication probation.

However, just two months later, while still married to the woman in Virginia, Coleman tied the knot again with another woman in Kentucky, committing another offense of bigamy.

Upon learning about Coleman’s new marriage, prosecutors from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office moved to revoke his probation. In a hearing on March 11, a judge sentenced Coleman to three years in prison.

Prosecutors say Coleman married the women for housing and financial security.

After introducing himself as a Protestant pastor or bishop, Coleman would propose marriage.

If a woman accepted, he would move in with her and allow her to foot the cost of his housing and food.

“That’s the only thing he had to offer and to validate his word – the proposal to marry – that was something big,” Assistant District Attorney Vanessa Goussen told The New York Times.

“Getting proposed to was a big gesture for these women, and that corroborated his guise that he’s a godly person.”

Some of the women filed for divorce after Coleman fled to another state.

Coleman is currently being held at the Harris County Jail.

‘Fake pastor’ with at least 10 wives jailed for marrying two at same time

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