Iranian Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad has announced that Iran will cooperate with Russian companies in a $4 billion energy agreement as they work to bolster ties while attempting to withstand Western economic sanctions.
Paknejad stated earlier on Friday on state television that the agreement aims to work with Russian companies to develop seven Iranian oilfields.
Tehran and Moscow have forged closer ties since the start of the Ukrainian military conflict, signing a strategic partnership treaty in January, ranging from military cooperation to energy, banking, and agriculture.
The pair’s effort to break down barriers in all areas of cooperation is reflected in Friday’s agreement.
Iran’s efforts to resume nuclear negotiations with the United States come as a result of consultations with its allies in Moscow and Beijing earlier this week.
OPEC
Putin’s top envoy for OPEC relations, Alexander Novak, met with Paknejad on Thursday in a meeting with the Russian deputy prime minister.
The group, which includes OPEC and its allies led by Russia, suggested that the group increase oil output for the second month in a row at the time of the meeting.
The proposed increase highlights a member dispute over whether to comply with production quotas.
It comes in response to US President Donald Trump’s calls for OPEC to lower oil prices and his return to a “maximum pressure” policy on Iran, whose oil exports Washington wants to reduce to zero.
Additionally, the two nations announced on Friday that Moscow may offer Tehran 1.8 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas this year at an undetermined price.
Paknejad claimed the agreement was still pending, but that Gazprom, a Russian company, was in charge of implementation, was working with the countries to reach an agreement as soon as possible.
Qatar and Turkmenistan have long been interested in establishing a similar hub in Iran.
long history
Russia has long cooperated with Iran in the fields of energy production and supply, and it supported Iran’s construction of its first nuclear reactor in Bushehr, which is located in Iran’s southern region.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian met in the Kremlin in January to discuss the potential supply of up to 55 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas to Iran, starting with smaller volumes of up to 2 bcm.
A 55 bcm increase in flow would be comparable to the Nord Stream 1 undersea pipelines to Europe, which lost all of their gas in the Ukraine war in 2022 after being blown up by explosions in 2022.
After reaching the weight limit of 14g (0. 5 oz) over the weight limit for Saturday’s long-awaited fight with fellow Briton Conor Benn at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Chris Eubank Jr will be fined 375, 000 pounds ($500, 000).
Benn, who weighs 71 kg (146. 4 lbs.), was lighter than expected for the 12-round Ring Magazine middleweight bout, which was set at 72. 57 kg (160 lbs.).
In a hotel in London, Eubank was weighed in behind closed doors for the second time, coming in at a weight of 72. 597 kg (160.05 lb).
A rehydration agreement between the boxers prevents them from putting on more than 4.54 kg (10 lbs) between Friday’s weigh-in and a second check on Saturday morning.
Later on Friday, the pair will face-to-face for a ceremonial weigh-in.
Benn, 28, who has won only 23 fights with 14 knockouts, has been mostly a welterweight, two classes down, while Eubank, 35, has previously fought at super-middle.
The British Boxing Board of Control has already fined Eubank $100,000 for slapping Benn with an egg at a press conference in February, making her the IBO middleweight champion.
When Chris Eubank Sr. and Nigel Benn’s sons tested positive for trace amounts of the fertility drug clomifene, the fight between the sons of former world champions was called off in 2022.
In 2023, the World Boxing Council found that Benn had intentionally done doping, blaming “highly elevated consumption of eggs” as a justification for the test failures.
At a press conference on Thursday, Eubank spoke of his brother Sebastian’s suffering and his difficult relationship with his father.
He said, “These things are what pain is to me.” The rehydration clause, the weight loss cap, and other factors are not significant.
According to the Investigative Committee, which investigates serious crimes in the nation, a home-made explosive device tore through a parked car in the town of Balashikha, east of Moscow.
Authorities identified Lieutenant-General Yaroslav Moskalik as the victim of Friday’s attack, which appeared to be consistent with previous assaults on Russians in connection with Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine.
The Investigative Committee stated in a statement on Friday that “the explosion occurred as a result of the detonation of a homemade explosive device filled with destructive elements.”
A Volkswagen Golf blew up outside a block of apartments in Balashikha, prompting investigators to launch an investigation into the deadly attack. Who might be responsible for the incident was not disclosed in the statement.
Second victim was identified.
A second person was also killed, according to Russian media Kommersant.
A car was gutted by a blaze that was captured on social media.
Moskalik lived in Balashikha, but the Volkswagen he owned wasn’t registered with him, according to the Agentstvo investigative news site, which cited leaked information.
A massive explosion, which was captured on security camera, caused fragments to fly into the air, according to footage from the Izvestia newspaper. When someone is seen approaching the car, the explosion occurs.
Moskalik participated in the “Normandy Format” discussions on Ukraine in 2015, amidst the conflict between Kyiv and separatists supported by Russia, according to the Kremlin website.
In 2021, Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, appointed him lieutenant-general.
In addition to the fatal attacks on Russians during the Ukrainian War, there have been fatal attacks on Russians in the past, including the fatal explosion in a Saint Petersburg cafe in April 2023 that resulted in the death of prominent military correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky.
The most outrageous assassination claimed by Kyiv since the start of the conflict was Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian military’s chemical weapons unit.
The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) reports that an earthquake of magnitude 6.3 has struck close to the Ecuadorian coast.
According to EMSC, the quake was 23 kilometers (14.29 miles) deep.
Buildings are clearly visible damage from an earthquake, according to images shared online. No casualties were immediately reported.
earthquakes in the past
Ecuador’s history of seismic disasters is complex and agonizing.
At least 14 people were killed and homes, schools, and medical facilities destroyed in a quake that erupted in northern Peru and southern Ecuador in 2013 and left them in critical condition.
At least 77 people were killed and more than 500 others were hurt in Ecuador’s strongest earthquake, magnitude 7.8, in 2016 after a devastating earthquake of magnitude 7.8, which hit the country’s hardest since 1979.
The nation is located along the volatile seismic and vulcanic “Ring of Fire” in the Pacific, which circles the ocean.
Ecuador lies atop the boundary between the massive tectonic plates of South America and Nazca, which both grind against one another and move at a rate of 65 millimeters (2. 5 inches) annually.
A woman’s body, according to archaeologists, is thought to have been preserved for up to five thousand years. The oldest city in the Americas, Caral, is thought to be the home of the mummy.
*Asif Dar unapologetically realized that “all eyes were on me” as he passed through the narrow and crowded streets of Jalandhar, a city in the northern state of Punjab.
And their gazes weren’t friendly.
Dar recalled that “I felt like everyone in the audience was committing retribution.”
Two unidentified people approached them as Dar and a friend stopped by an ATM and inquired about their ethnicity. They ran away in a panic. Dar left his home the following day, April 23 to purchase milk. According to Dar, “Three men saw me and hurled islamophobic slurs.” One of them yelled, “He is a Kashmiri, everything happens for him.”
26 tourists were killed and dozens injured when gunmen opened fire on tourists in Kashmir’s resort town of Pahalgam on April 22.
The killings have also uncovered the nation’s religious and ethnic divides, even though New Delhi has attributed the attack to Pakistan, which an armed group claimed sought secession from India.
Kashmiris living across India have reported being heckled, harassed, and threatened by far-right Hindu organizations or even their classmates as the Indian government searches for the attackers in Kashmir’s dense jungles and mountains.
Shopkeepers are refusing to trade with them, and landlords are pushing Kashmiri tenants out from Uttarakhand, Punjab, and Uttar Pradesh. As they make their way home, a number of Kashmiri students are sleeping in airports.
The deadly attack was carried out by another person. Dar responded, “And we are now left here to pay the price.”
Following a alleged militant attack on tourists near south Kashmir’s picturesque Pahalgam, Indian security personnel are standing by the side of the road.
“Mistrust is everywhere I look.”
India and Pakistan both claim the entire region of Kashmir, but they also rule in some places.
Islamabad has accused the Pahalgam attack and “cross-border terrorism” of being directly involved. Pakistan refutes the accusations, claiming that it only gives moral and diplomatic support to Kashmiri nationalism. India has claimed that it has not provided any proof of Pakistan’s involvement in the Pahalgam attack, which has sparked a tense standoff between the nuclear-armed neighbors: both countries are evicting each other’s citizens and reducing the diplomatic effectiveness of their missions in their respective capitals.
However, Kashmiris are most enraged by the attack from Tuesday inside of India.
A further ten Kashmiris who spoke with Al Jazeera, who were speaking anonymous, claimed they had locked themselves inside their rooms in at least seven cities in India and stayed away from online purchases and cab reservations.
In Jalandhar, Dar attends a second-semester class studying anesthesia and operating theatre technology. Dar has for the first time left Kashmir and his parents to pursue higher education.
In a phone interview, he said, “I want to study hard for my future because there are no opportunities in Kashmir.” “I will be able to support my family if I do well here.”
But he finds solace in the actuality. Dar claimed that as a result of his term exams looming down his spine, he has grown anxious and depressed. He claimed, “I have forgotten everything I have learned in these months.” I may stay non-attendant [at class], return to my home, or go home because “my head just doesn’t work.”
He said, “There is mistrust everywhere I look.” Our faces and features reveal our ethnicity, and we are also cursed.
Multiple survivor accounts emerged shortly after the attack, suggesting that the gunmen had separated the attacked tourists according to their religion. 25 of the 26 people who were killed were Hindu men.
The identity of the 26th victim, a Kashmiri Muslim man who attempted to stop the attackers from killing the tourists, was largely overlooked in the roost of anti-Kashmiri and anti-Muslim sentiment that has permeated Indian social media since Tuesday.
Sheikh Showkat, a political analyst and academic from Kashmir, claimed that “today’s India is high on xenophobic propaganda that has been unleashed for some time and mostly targets Muslims.”
Being a Kashmiri and a Muslim, he said, “Kashmiris bear a double burden.” They are “the simple targets always.”
During a demonstration in Srinagar, Kashmiri men protest the tourists’ killing with placards and candles. ]Dar Yasin/AP]
Give this treatment to Muslims from Kashmir.
The leader of a far-right Hindutva outfit issued a chilling warning on Tuesday in Dehradun, the capital of Uttarakhand state, nearly 350 kilometers (217 miles) away from Jalandhar.
Kashmiri Muslims, leave by 10am, or else you’ll face action you can’t imagine, according to Lalit Sharma, the Hindu Raksha Dal leader, in a video statement. All of our employees will leave their homes tomorrow to treat Kashmiri Muslims this way.
*Mushtaq Wani, a 29-year-old Kashmiri student in the city, was soon receiving similar warnings on his social media accounts.
Wani, who is older than the majority of Kashmiri students in the city, started getting panicked calls from others as he pursued his master’s degree in library science. He said, “We took the threats seriously.”
Kashmiris have been subjected to violence in the area: shortly after the Pulwama suicide bombing attack that left at least 40 paramilitary personnel dead, Kashmiri students were imprisoned in Dehradun, assaulted, and forced back home. Several people left the city.
Wani lamented, “This is what our life is like.” Why can’t India defeat the militants in a single attack? “This happens again and again. There are so many troopers, and there are so few militants in the country that someone kills someone and causes havoc for our lives.
Wani has coordinated the return of at least 15 students to Kashmir since the threats. For his own good, he is studying for his term exams starting the following week while locked up inside a friend’s home. We are scared and don’t feel safe, but he claimed that if I miss my exams, I could lose a lot.
Wani claimed that Sharma, the far-right leader, was apprehended by the police and that he was relieved that they had been given assurances that the authorities would protect their safety.
Activists and members of Pasban-e-Hurriyat, a refugee organization in Kashmir, chant slogans during a demonstration in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan’s capital.
“Pahalgam completely altered everything,”
Omar Abdullah, Jammu and Kashmir’s newly elected chief minister, pleaded with other state chiefs on X to ensure the safety of Kashmiris after videos of frightened Kashmiris and of their physical assault in nearly half a dozen Indian cities surfaced on social media.
Later, Abdullah retorted, “I request that the Indian people refrain from treating Kashmiris as their enemies.” “What transpired did not occur without our knowledge.” We are not adversaries.
In the midst of a communications blackout, the Indian government unilaterally revoked the region’s semi-autonomous status and divided the former state into Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. The Jammu and Kashmir government currently has far less power than any other provincial administration, with New Delhi largely in charge.
South Kashmir resident Urs Parray has been a student of pharmacy in Jammu for five years. The union territory’s two administrative blocks are Jammu and Kashmir, which both have Hindu and Muslim populations.
Before Pahalgam, he claimed, life in Jammu had been normal. He claimed that “the Pahalgam attack changed everything.”
Prior to this, Parray would take friends on late-night walks to ice cream shops with them. Parray hasn’t left his house in a Kashmiri neighborhood where many people live since the attack.
Descent riders riding through the neighborhood the night after the attack blared horns and yelled “Jai Shri Ram,” a traditional religious anthem and a rally cry for the far-right movement that has recently been transformed into a war cry.
Later, a video of men running after Kashmiri students in his nearby lane emerged.
He claimed, “We have never seen anything like this.”
A Kashmiri student was brutalized by the mob in Janipur, Jammu, last night, despite being a Muslim and being a Muslim. How long will identity theft be a criminal offense for us? Our home is also here. #Jammu #StopTargetingKashmiris picture https://twitter.com/ubFagGIrwX
