Iran on Tuesday strongly condemned new sanctions imposed by the European Union and Britain and said it would retaliate, after the West stepped up pressure on Iran over its crackdown on protests.

“The Islamic Republic will soon announce the list of new sanctions against the human rights violators of EU and England,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said in a statement.

The European Union imposed sanctions on more than 30 Iranian officials and organisations, including units of the powerful Revolutionary Guards, blaming them for a “brutal” crackdown on unrest and other human rights abuses.

The United States and Britain also issued new sanctions against Iran, reflecting a deterioration in the West’s already dire relations with Tehran.

The sanctions are the latest response to Iran’s deadly clampdown on unrest after the death of young Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in morality police custody in September.

Oil major BP plans to build a vast carbon capture project beneath the North Sea that would be crucial to Britain hitting its emissions targets. Power giant Orsted aims to build a huge offshore windfarm to help the country meet renewable goals.

The problem is, the seabed’s double-booked, and something has to give.

Britain granted preliminary licences for both proposed projects more than a decade ago, when an overlap of about 110 sq km on the sea floor wasn’t seen as posing an insurmountable obstacle to either technology, according to planning documents reviewed by Reuters, the companies involved and UK authorities.

Now, though, a dispute is unfolding between BP and Orsted over primacy in this “Overlap Zone” shared by the Hornsea Four windfarm and Endurance carbon capture and storage (CCS) sites off the English county of Yorkshire.

The standoff has been fuelled by studies that highlighted the risk of boats used to monitor carbon leaks colliding with wind turbines fixed to the sea floor. Last year the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), which regulates offshore energy activity, concluded that large crossovers between such ventures were unfeasible with current technology.

“At the time these rights were granted, it was unclear how the emergent technologies would develop,” England’s Crown Estate licensing agency told Reuters, referring to the windfarm and CCS licences the government awarded in 2010 and 2011, respectively.

BP is unwilling to switch to a costlier boat-free monitoring system and Orsted to cede territory, with both saying such concessions would hit their commercial prospects.

This largely unreported clash risks undermining Britain’s drive to meet its climate goals, according to the companies involved and a North Sea green transition expert. Endurance’s capacity alone could account for at least half of the 20-30 million tonnes of CO2 the nation aims to capture a year by 2030.

“Resolution of the conflict between the renewable technologies, and having a due process that determines whether a windfarm, carbon store or other source of energy has primacy in an area of overlap, is crucial if the UK is going to achieve its net-zero targets,” said John Underhill, geoscientist and director for Aberdeen University’s Centre of Energy Transition.

The BP-Orsted showdown could also presage similar disputes elsewhere in an increasingly crowded North Sea, the experts told Reuters.

Britain’s eastern seaboard, which boasts the favourable geological formations for carbon storage and the shallow waters for fixed-bottom offshore windfarms, is shaping up to be a key battleground for the competing green technologies in coming years, they said.

“Offshore wind has obviously come forward quite quickly since 2015, this has resulted in an increased pressure for sea floor space,” said Chris Gent, policy manager at the European carbon capture trade association CCSA, adding that this presented a real challenge for licensing authorities.

Britain’s BP and Danish renewables company Orsted say they are committed to finding a solution to their dispute, which is coming to a head in the coming months; British authorities are due to decide whether to give Hornsea Four the final go-ahead on Feb. 22, while BP and its partners plan to make a final investment decision on Endurance this year.

It’s not just climate targets that are at stake, there’s also a lot of money riding on the projects, which would together cover about 500 sq km of the seabed. BP didn’t give a cost estimate for Endurance, while Orsted pegged its windfarm at up to 8 billion pounds ($9.9 billion).

The British government acknowledged the problem.

When asked about how two such projects can end up in the same area, the Department for Business, Energy and Industry told Reuters the government had set ambitious targets for deploying offshore CCS and windfarms, which were both key to its efforts to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

“We are aware that in some cases there may be technical challenges to the coexistence,” it added.

In an effort to resolve conflicts and avoid future ones, UK authorities set up an offshore wind and CCS forum of regulators and industry figures in 2021 to develop better coordination.

BP, Orsted and Crown Estate told Reuters they had been discussing solutions to coexistence for several years, though they didn’t comment on how their views had evolved over the past decade on the overlap risks associated with the technologies.

An Orsted planning document published by UK authorities on Jan. 17 included a report by a group representing BP and its Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP) project partners, in which the CCS scheme ruled out sharing the territory.

“It was originally anticipated that it could be possible for Hornsea Project Four and the NEP Project to co-exist in the Overlap Zone,” said the report by Net Zero Teesside, dated July 2022. “However, after extensive analysis, BP and its NEP partners have concluded that coexistence across the entirety of the Overlap Zone is not feasible.”

BP has expressed scepticism a compromise can be found in time, saying it needs certainty about the fate of the zone ahead of its final investment decision to enable CO2 injection to start at the project in 2026 as planned.

“It is not realistic for any new robust and reliable solution to come forward within this or a comparative timescale,” it said in a March 2022 submission to UK authorities. “NEP will be unable to attract debt financing if the risks attached to the project’s financial viability are high,” it added in another March 2022 submission.

Orsted said in its planning documents, published the same month, that a sparser turbine layout that could mitigate boat access issues would reduce Hornsea Four’s annual energy production by 2.5%.

“This would have the impact of making the project far less commercially competitive,” it added.

The windfarm’s planned capacity of 2.6 gigawatts (GW) would help Britain move towards its goal of increasing offshore wind capacity from 11 GW in 2021 to 50 GW by 2030, a drive requiring huge investment in new offshore infrastructure in the North Sea.

Despite the obstacles, talks continue.

BP said it was committed to a mutually acceptable outcome through ongoing commercial discussions, while Orsted said it was confident an agreement could be reached to allow both projects to move forward.

There is hope on the horizon for wind and CCS projects that share ground, say regulators and industry experts.

Even when the NSTA regulator poured cold water on big shared areas, it stressed that technical advances could change the calculus. It added that alternative methods of CO2 monitoring were still in development stages or more expensive, increasing costs in a CCS sector where profits are already elusive.

The leading contender, ocean bottom nodes (OBN) fixed to the seabed, could do much of the work of the seismic data boats. However Ronnie Parr, senior geophysicist at the NSTA, said that while OBN costs were expected to fall, they would probably still cost three or four times more than using boats.

The regulator was clear.

“Based on current technologies, large physical overlaps between carbon storage sites and windfarms are presently considered not to be feasible,” it said in its August 2022 report.

A key moment looms next month when government planners are due to decide whether to grant the final green light to Hornsea Four.

While Endurance and its umbrella project, the East Coast Cluster, also face regulatory hurdles, the cluster was earmarked by the government in 2021 for a speedier development process.

With no breakthrough in sight between the companies, the same problem might rear its head elsewhere, according to Underhill at Aberdeen University, who highlighted the need for further CCS sites if Britain is to hit carbon-capture targets.

Other similar co-location sites include the planned Acorn carbon project off Scotland, which has an overlap with the MarramWind offshore windfarm, according to the NSTA and Underhill.

Shell and ScottishPowerRenewables, which secured initial rights to develop MarramWind a year ago, said discussions with Acorn were ongoing. Shell, also a developer on Acorn, added both projects were at a very early stage and that the overlap was not of a significant scale.

Underhill also pointed to decommissioned gas field Pickerill as a potential CCS site in the future but said existing plans to construct the Outer Dowsing windfarm could create problems.

David Few, Outer Dowsing’s project director, said the windfarm was on track to power 1.6 million homes by the decade’s end.

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Pakistan’s energy minister on Tuesday blamed the worst power outage in months on a lack of investment in the network, saying the aid-dependant nation had “learned lessons” from the breakdown that left millions of people without electricity.

Like much of the national infrastructure, the power network desperately needs an upgrade, but funding has been patchy as Pakistan lurched from one International Monetary Fund bailout to the next. The outage, which began on Monday morning, was the second major breakdown since October.

“We learned lessons from yesterday that we need to invest in the distribution system,” Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir told reporters as he announced that power had been fully restored to the nation of nearly 220 million people.

“There hasn’t been any investment in improving these systems from the previous government,” he added.

The International Monetary Fund has bailed out Pakistan five times in the last two decades. Its latest bailout tranche, however, is stuck due to differences with the government over a programme review that should have been completed in November.

Pakistan has enough installed power capacity to meet demand, but the sector is so heavily in debt that it cannot afford to invest in infrastructure and power lines. Analysts say transmission and distribution are the weakest links.

China has invested in its power sector as part of a $60 billion infrastructure scheme that feeds into its “Belt and Road” initiative, but details of this investment are unclear.

Dastgir said the cause of the outage was not yet known, but the ministry was conducting a safety audit of the entire network. “The government plans to add more power distribution lines within the next 36 months,” he added.

Millions of Pakistanis suffer partial blackouts almost daily, including scheduled “load shedding” power outs aimed at conserving electricity.

Many take these disruptions in their stride, investing in generators and solar panels to generate their own power, but the frail infrastructure also takes its toll. “Without electricity, we can’t do anything,” said Sara Khan, the principal of a school for girls in Jacobabad, a southern city which regularly goes up to 18 hours a day without power. “The people are facing too many difficulties because of the power cuts.”

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Rep. George Santos leaves the US Capitol on January 12, 2023 in Washington, DC.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

• NY Rep. George Santos claimed to Brazilian media that he was the victim of an attempted murder.
• On the podcast Radio Novela Apresenta, he also said he was mugged in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue.
• Santos said he was robbed of his briefcase, watch, and shoes, but did not provide a police report.

Embattled New York Rep. George Santos told Brazilian media in December that he was the victim of a series of crimes, including an assassination attempt and a mugging on Fifth Avenue. 

In a clip uncovered by the “Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC, Santos tells the podcast Radio Novela Apresenta that his home was vandalized in January of 2021 simply because he was a Republican.

“I’m going to a New Year’s Eve party with my husband. We go back to our house, it was vandalized because we were at a Republican Party in Florida in December 2020,” Santos told the hosts, according to the Rachel Maddow Show translation. “So that’s it. I’ve experienced vandalism.”

Santos then makes another claim: Someone tried to take his life.

“We have already suffered an attempt on my life, an assassination attempt, a threatening letter, having to have the police, a police escort standing in front of our house,” Santos says.

Santos did not elaborate on his claim in the clip, according to host Rachel Maddow.

—Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) January 24, 2023

 

Later in the interview, Santos says he was a victim of a mugging “in broad daylight” on New York City’s Fifth Avenue in the summer of 2021. Santos said two men robbed him of his briefcase, watch, and shoes after he left his office and was getting into his car.

“They stole your shoes in the middle of Fifth Avenue?” interjected podcast interviewer João Batista Jr., per a translation of the clip by the Rachel Maddow show.

“In the middle of Fifth Avenue,” Santos answered. “And that wasn’t the worst of it. Nobody did anything, nobody did anything. The fear is real. It’s surreal what we live through here.”

Podcast interviewers Batista and Flora Thomson-Deveaux said they later asked Santos for his police report of the mugging, but he failed to respond.

On Friday, Thomson-DeVeaux tweeted that the December 7 interview with Santos was “one of the most infuriating interactions” she could remember in recent years, saying he “spewed unbelievable fake facts” but refused to engage when challenged.

The clip comes as Santos faces growing controversy over apparent falsehoods in his resume, campaign biography, family history, and religious background.

Though Santos admitted and apologized for embellishing his past while campaigning, he’s also accused the “elitist” New York Times of misrepresenting his employment history.

A representative for Santos and the NYPD did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is investigating whether there is any connection between manufacturers whose contaminated cough syrups it has linked to the deaths of more than 300 children in three countries, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Citing “unacceptable levels” of toxins in the products, the WHO is seeking more information about the specific raw materials used by six manufacturers in India and Indonesia to produce medicines linked to the recent deaths, as well as whether the companies obtained them from some of the same suppliers, the person said. The WHO has not named any suppliers.

The WHO also is considering whether to advise families globally to reassess the use of cough syrups for children in general while questions over the safety of some of these products are unresolved, the person said. WHO experts are evaluating the evidence for whether, or when, such products are medically necessary for children, the person said.

The deaths of children from acute kidney injury began in July 2022 in Gambia, followed by cases in Indonesia and Uzbekistan. The WHO has said the deaths are linked to over-the-counter cough syrups the children took for common illnesses and which contained a known toxin, either diethylene glycol or ethylene glycol.

To date, the WHO has identified six drugmakers in India and Indonesia who produced the syrups. These manufacturers have either declined to comment on the investigation or denied using contaminated materials that contributed to any deaths. Reuters has no evidence of wrongdoing by the companies the WHO has named.

“This is of the highest priority for us, to see no more child deaths from something that is so preventable,” WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris said, without commenting further on the details of the organisation’s work.

The United Nations health agency said on Monday it had widened its investigation into potential diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol contamination in cough syrups to four additional countries where the same products may have been on sale: Cambodia, the Philippines, East Timor and Senegal. It called on other governments and the global pharmaceutical industry to launch urgent checks to root out substandard medicines and improve regulation.

The WHO is expected to comment further on the cough syrup situation during a news conference later on Tuesday.

The WHO has already issued specific alerts for cough syrups made by two Indian manufacturers, Maiden Pharmaceuticals and Marion Biotech, in October 2022 and earlier this month. It said their syrups were linked to deaths in Gambia and Uzbekistan respectively, and the alerts asked people to stop using them.

Maiden and Marion’s manufacturing plants have both been shuttered. Maiden is now seeking to reopen after the Indian government said in December that its testing had found no problems with Maiden’s products.

Maiden has repeatedly told Reuters, including in December, that it did nothing wrong and Managing Director Naresh Kumar Goyal said on Tuesday he had no comment on WHO investigating possible connections between the companies under scrutiny.

Marion’s office phone went unanswered on Tuesday and the company did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. Earlier this month, it told the government of Uttar Pradesh, where it is located near New Delhi, that it was being blamed for the deaths in Uzbekistan “to malign the image of India and the company”.

The WHO, working with Indonesia’s drugs regulator, also issued an alert in October about cough syrups made by four Indonesian manufacturers and sold domestically. The manufacturers are: PT Yarindo Farmatama, PT Universal Pharmaceutical, PT Konimex, PT AFI Farma.

PT Yarindo Farmatama, PT Konimex and PT AFI Farma did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday about the WHO investigating connections between the deaths in the three countries.

PT Universal Pharmaceutical Industries’ lawyer, Hermansyah Hutagalung, said it had pulled from the market all cough syrups deemed dangerous. “Chase the suppliers, they’re the real criminals,” Hutagalung added. “They’re the ones that forge raw ingredients by falsifying raw ingredient documents all the way to pharmaceutical companies.” He did not identify specific suppliers or give details to back up the claim.

The WHO said the syrups were contaminated with diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol, which it called “ toxic chemicals used as industrial solvents and antifreeze agents that can be fatal even taken in small amounts.” Their toxic effects include an inability to pass urine, kidney injury and death.

The deaths have highlighted potential gaps in global regulation of commonly-used medications, including oversight of factories and supply chains, particularly those producing products for developing countries which lack the resources to monitor medicines for safety.

The WHO sets guidelines on medicine manufacturing standards globally and supports countries investigating any lapses, but it has no legal mandate or enforcement authority to take direct action against violators.

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The Russian profession administration of Luhansk is evacuating the families of servicemen of the 2nd Army Corps of the Russian Armed Forces from the city to the territory of the Russian Federation.

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The post Invaders evacuating families of Russian military from Luhansk appeared first on Ukraine Intelligence.

WASHINGTON — Four members of the Oath Keepers were convicted Monday of seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack in the second major trial of far-right extremists accused of plotting to forcibly keep President Donald Trump in power.

The verdict against Joseph Hackett of Sarasota, Florida; Roberto Minuta of Prosper, Texas; David Moerschel of Punta Gorda, Florida; and Edward Vallejo of Phoenix comes weeks after after a different jury convicted the group’s leader, Stewart Rhodes, in the mob’s attack that halted the certification of President Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

Read More: Inside One Combat Vet’s Journey From Defending His Country to Storming the Capitol

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It’s another major victory for the Justice Department, which is also trying to secure sedition convictions against the former leader of the Proud Boys and four associates. The trial against Enrique Tarrio and his lieutenants opened earlier this month in Washington and is expected to last several weeks.

The Washington jury deliberated for about 12 hours over three days before delivering their guilty verdict on the rarely used charge, which carries up to 20 years in prison. The four were also convicted of two other conspiracy charges as well as obstructing an official proceeding: Congress’ certification of the 2020 election. Minuta, Hackett and Moerschel were acquitted of lesser charges.

The judge didn’t immediately set a date for sentencing. The judge denied prosecutors’ bid to lock up the men while they await sentencing, finding them not to be a risk of flight. They were ordered to remain in home detention with electronic monitoring.

It was one of the most serious cases brought so far in the sweeping Jan. 6 investigation, which continues to grow two years after the riot. The Justice Department has charged nearly 1,000 people in the riot and the tally increases by the week.

Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters after the verdict that he is “grateful to the prosecutors, agents and staff for their outstanding work.”

Oath Keepers leader Rhodes and Florida chapter leader Kelly Meggs were convicted of seditious conspiracy in the previous trial that ended in November. They were the first people in decades found guilty at trial of the Civil War-era charge. Three other Oath Keepers were cleared of the charge in that case but were found guilty of other serious crimes. They are all awaiting sentencing.

Lawyers for Moerschel and Minuta suggested after the verdict that their clients were hurt by not being able to stand trial alongside Rhodes because the judge split the case into two groups. Moerchel’s lawyer, Scott Weinberg, said he could have pointed to Rhodes as the “real bad guy.”

“I think it would be easier to be a low-level person in the same case as Stewart Rhodes, who is basically the figurehead of of this organization,” Weinberg said.

William Shipley Jr., Minuta’s attorney, said he was disappointed and “somewhat puzzled” by the verdict. He said the government’s witnesses didn’t stand up to scrutiny and there were gaps in the evidence presented.

“We didn’t really think that in the 15 days of trial testimony the government really had a good day,” Shipley said.

Vallejo left the courthouse without speaking to reporters. Joseph Hackett’s attorney, Angela Halim, declined to comment after the verdict.

Prosecutors told jurors that Rhodes and his band of extremists began shortly after the 2020 election to prepare an armed rebellion to keep Trump in power. Messages show Rhodes and the Oath Keepers discussing the prospect of a “bloody” civil war and the need to keep Biden out of the White House.

“Our democracy was under attack, but for the defendants it was everything they trained for and a moment to celebrate,” prosecutor Louis Manzo told jurors in his closing argument.

Prosecutors alleged that the Oath Keepers amassed weapons and stashed them at a Virginia hotel for so-called “quick reaction force” teams that could quickly shuttle guns into Washington to support their plot if they were needed. The weapons were never used.

Defense attorneys sought to downplay violent messages as mere bluster and said the Oath Keepers came to Washington to provide security at events before the riot. They seized on prosecutors’ lack of evidence that the Oath Keepers had an explicit plan to storm the Capitol before Jan. 6 and told jurors that the extremists who attacked the Capitol acted spontaneously like thousands of other rioters.

Prosecutors argued that while there is not evidence specifically spelling out a plan to attack the Capitol, the Oath Keepers saw the riot as a means to an end and sprung into action at an apparent opportunity to help keep Trump in power.

Hackett, Moerschel and other Oath Keepers approached the Capitol in a military-style stack formation before they entered the building, according to prosecutors. Minuta and his group from a second stack of Oath Keepers clashed with police after heeding Rhodes’ call to race to the Capitol, according to court documents.

Prosecutors said that Vallejo, a U.S. Army veteran and Rhodes ally, drove from Arizona to prepare with the “QRF” — the quick reaction force — at the hotel outside Washington. Jurors heard an audio recording of Vallejo talking about a “declaration of a guerilla war” on the morning of Jan. 6.

Three other Oath Keepers have pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in the hopes of getting a lighter sentence. They are among about 500 people who have pleaded guilty to riot-related charges.

The Biden administration has confronted China’s government with evidence that suggests some Chinese state-owned companies may be providing assistance for Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, as it tries to ascertain if Beijing is aware of those activities, according to people familiar with the matter.

The people, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations, declined to detail the support except to say that it consists of non-lethal military and economic assistance that stops short of wholesale evasion of the sanctions regime the US and its allies imposed after Russian forces invaded Ukraine.

The trend is worrying enough that US officials have raised the matter with their Chinese counterparts and warned about the implications of supplying material support for the war, the people said, though they declined to provide details of those contacts. President Xi Jinping has avoided criticizing Russia over the war but has also offered to play a role in peace talks and come out against the use of nuclear weapons in the conflict.

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A spokeswoman for the National Security Council declined to comment, as did the Central Intelligence Agency. The Chinese Embassy in Washington didn’t respond to two emails seeking comment. While the information isn’t clear-cut and remains the subject of debate, US officials said they agree the Russia-China relationship is extremely close now and China is doing more than it once did in support of Russia.

The people familiar with the administration’s thinking characterized the state-owned enterprises’ activities as knowingly assisting Russia in its war effort. They didn’t elaborate on what evidence the administration might have to support that view.

The administration is reviewing the evidence it’s accumulated to determine its significance. A finding that Chinese companies were supporting the invasion would have troubling implications on US policy toward both Russia and China.

The US strategy over Ukraine rests in part on isolating President Vladimir Putin’s government and seeking to choke off his economy and hinder the war effort. Increased support from China, the world’s second-biggest economy, could significantly undercut that strategy.

And if Biden and his advisers determined China’s government was involved in or tacitly accepted the actions of those state-owned enterprises, they would be forced to decide how much to push back. That could risk opening a whole new area of dispute at a time when the US has sought to balance its desire for stabilized ties with Beijing against moves to limit Chinese access to high-end mircochips and confront China over what it sees as a more aggressive posture toward Taiwan.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen met Vice Premier Liu He last week and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to visit Beijing in February, the first such visit since the Covid-19 outbreak shut down travel in early 2020.

Russia and China declared a “no limits” relationship before the war and US officials believe that China initially intended to sell lethal weapons to Russia for use in the battlefield. But the administration views China as having scaled back that plan and argues it isn’t doing as much as it could to help Putin’s invasion, the people said.

The administration believes China’s government wants to help Russia and isn’t neutral as it claims, according to the people. China has also deepened its trade relationship despite US demands that other nations distance themselves from the Russian economy.

China on principle rejects any sanctions apart from those agreed at the United Nations, and views American calls on other countries to restrict trade as a violation of sovereignty. China’s imports from Russia grew by nearly 50% from a year earlier in 2022, while exports rose 13%.

There are thousands of state-owned enterprises in China, some directly controlled by the central government with chief executives who rank equal to ministers and others that are subject to less direct supervision. All of them are subject to Communist Party influence, even if the details of their operations are not always monitored in detail.

The trend would only exacerbate what US officials have said in public is a problem. After meeting a senior Chinese official in July, Blinken said he had relayed his concern about China’s “alignment with Russia.”

“Now, what you hear from Beijing is that it claims to be neutral,” Blinken said at the time. “I would start with the proposition that it’s pretty hard to be neutral when it comes to this aggression. There is a clear aggressor. There is a clear victim.”

In late December, Xi and Putin held a phone call in which they agreed to cooperate on trade, energy, finance and agriculture, according to Chinese state television. Xi told Putin Beijing would continue to play a constructive role in seeking to resolve the Ukraine “crisis,” though the road to peace talks won’t be smooth, the broadcaster said.

Yet deepening support for Moscow would cut against recent indications that China is trying to improve ties with the US after months of heightened tension. After meeting in Bali last year, President Joe Biden and Xi said that “a nuclear war should never be fought” and that they oppose “the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine,” according to the White House statement.