U.S., Iran Resume Nuclear Talks After Netanyahu Warnings

The top U.S. and Iranian diplomats have begun a third day of talks over Iran's nuclear program in the Swiss resort of Montreux.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign
Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif resumed their discussions on March 4, hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that a deal meant to rein in Tehran's nuclear program could "pave Iran's path to the bomb" rather than block it.

The United States and five other powers are seeking a deal with Iran under which Tehran would limit its nuclear program, which Western nations fear could lead to the development of nuclear weapons, in exchange for sanctions relief.

Reacting to Netanyahu's speech to the U.S. Congress,
President Barack Obama said Netanyahu had offered no viable alternative.

The negotiating sides have set an end-of-March deadline for a framework agreement and a June 30 deadline for a full deal.

Thirty Two Killed In Ukraine Mine Explosion

Thirty two people have been killed and 70 more are
trapped underground following an explosion at a coal mine in rebel held eastern Ukraine.

The blast took place at a mine in the Donetsk region of the country and emergency services have launched a rescue attempt to reach those trapped.

Miners arrive to help with the rescue effort "More than 30 people were killed. Rescue workers have not yet come to the place of the explosion, they are removing
the poisonous gas and then will go down," said Vladimir Tsymbalenko, head of the local mining safety service.

One of the men caught up in the blast and taken to
a Donetsk hospital said: "I was blown away by an
explosion. I came round. There was dust everywhere and people were moaning."

Families of those caught up in the disaster have been
gathering at the entrance to the mine in Zasyadko, Donetsk.

The mines in Donbass are among some of the most
dangerous in the world due to the high levels of methane produced which increase the risk of explosions.

Separatist authorities in Donetsk said the blast occurred at a depth of more than 1,000 metres (0.6 miles) and that 230 workers were in the mine at the time.

The statement added the explosion was caused by a
mixture of gas and air - a common cause of industrial
mining accidents.

Some 300 men die in mine accidents in the region every
year.

Monroe Freedman, Expert on Legal Ethics, Dies at 86

Monroe H. Freedman, a dominant figure in legal
ethics, whose work helped chart the course of
lawyers’ behavior in the late 20th century and
beyond, died on Thursday at his home in
Manhattan. He was 86.

His granddaughter Rebeca Izquierdo Lodhi
confirmed the death.

At his death, he was a professor of law at Hofstra
University , on Long Island. Professor Freedman’s
book “ Understanding Lawyers’ Ethics ,” written
with Abbe Smith and currently in its fourth
edition, is assigned in law schools throughout the
country.

“He invented legal ethics as a serious academic
subject,” Alan M. Dershowitz, the Harvard Law
School professor, said in a telephone interview
on Monday. “Prior to Freedman, legal ethics was
usually a lecture given by the dean of the law
school, which resembled chapel: ‘Thou shalt not
steal. Thou shalt not be lazy.’ But Monroe
brought to the academy the realistic complexity
of what lawyers actually face.”

For half a century Professor Freedman was, by
his own account and that of colleagues, a gleeful
jurisprudential provocateur. On one occasion, he
waggishly titled a law-review article “ In Praise of
Overzealous Representation: Lying to Judges,
Deceiving Third Parties and Other Ethical
Conduct.” On another, he moved a future chief
justice of the United States Supreme Court to call
for his disbarment.

In his published writings and his many
interviews in the news media, Professor
Freedman persistently raised questions about
lawyers’ professional conduct that entailed deep
reflection, impassioned argument and — all too
often — discomforting answers.

“He was on my speed dial for everything I ever
did involving legal ethics,” Professor Dershowitz
said. “And I brought him to my classes every
single year: A legal education without Monroe
Freedman was incomplete.”

Drawing on a scholarly background that let him
invoke Hebrew Scripture, Christian Gospels, St.
Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant in support
of his legal arguments, Professor Freedman was
concerned in particular with defining the scope
of lawyers’ responsibilities toward their clients.
Central to his concern was the lawyer-client
relationship as it played out in criminal court.

“It is 50 years since the case of Gideon v.
Wainwright ,” the noted civil-rights lawyer
Michael E. Tigar said on Monday, invoking the
landmark Supreme Court case of 1963 that
established a criminal defendant’s right to an
attorney. “The law books are full of cases of what
is now called ‘ineffective assistance of counsel.’
Monroe championed a view of the lawyer’s role
and responsibilities that makes the promise of
Gideon a reality.”

Professor Freedman’s views on ethics sprang
from his early work as a civil-liberties lawyer,
and throughout his career he maintained that the
two fields should dovetail seamlessly.

“That’s how he saw legal ethics,” his co-author
Professor Smith, who teaches at the Georgetown
University Law Center, said on Monday. “To him,
access to justice was — and is — central.”

At midcentury, for instance, Professor Freedman
took the American Bar Association to task on
civil libertarian grounds for its longstanding ban
on professional advertising. For one thing, he
argued, the ban violated lawyers’ First
Amendment rights. For another, he said, it
denied low-income Americans ready access to
information about legal services. His work helped
pave the way for the lifting of the ban in 1977.

Likewise, as Professor Freedman told the CBS
News program “60 Minutes” in 1994, “I believe
that there is a professional responsibility on the
part of lawyers to chase ambulances.” He added:

“We are here to help members of the public. And
we are not helping members of the public the
way we’re supposed to do it if we are not there
to tell people who are ignorant of their rights
that they’ve got rights.”

In 1966, in what was undoubtedly his most
controversial public stance, Professor Freedman
published an article in The Michigan Law Review
titled “ Professional Responsibility of the Criminal
Defense Lawyer : The Three Hardest Questions.”

In it, he argued that a lawyer’s obligation to
represent clients vigorously (and to protect their
privacy just as vigorously) should trump all other
considerations — including the lawyer’s
knowledge that a client plans to lie on the stand.

Though lawyers should advise clients not to
commit perjury, Professor Freedman wrote, if it
became clear that the client was going to anyway
— or already had — the lawyer’s overriding
obligation was to remain silent.

“His argument is still resonating in the halls of
every courtroom and every deposition, because
perjury is still rampant in our legal system,”
Professor Dershowitz said on Monday. “He wrote
the article to provoke a discussion.”

But what it provoked was a firestorm. Several
prominent jurists, including Warren E. Burger,
then a federal appellate judge and later the
United States chief justice, called, without success,
for Professor Freedman’s disbarment.

“Monroe’s position was really based upon a view
that the lawyer’s primary obligation is the
defense of a client who is, after all, facing an
adversary with superior resources,” Professor
Tigar explained. “And with everything arrayed
against the accused, Monroe put this primary
value on the advocate’s obligation of undivided
loyalty and zeal.”

Monroe Henry Freedman was born on April 10,
1928, in Mount Vernon, N.Y.; his parents,
Chauncey Freedman and the former Dorothea
Kornblum, ran a pharmacy there. The young Mr.
Freedman earned a bachelor’s degree from
Harvard, followed by bachelor’s and master’s
degrees from Harvard Law School.

Near the start of his career, Professor Freedman
served as a volunteer counsel to the Mattachine
Society , the early gay-rights group; from 1960 to
1964, he was a consultant to the United States
Commission on Civil Rights. In the early 1980s,
he was the first executive director of what
became the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum .

Professor Freedman taught at George
Washington University before joining Hofstra in
1973. As the dean of Hofstra’s law school from
then until 1977, he was credited with helping to
give the school, founded in 1970, a national
profile as a teaching and research institution. He
was also a visiting professor at Georgetown.

Professor Freedman’s wife, the former Audrey
Willock, whom he married in 1950, died in 1998.
Besides his granddaughter Ms. Izquierdo Lodhi,
his survivors include a brother, Eugene; a sister,
Penny; a son, Judah; a daughter, Alice; six other
grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. A
son, Caleb, and a daughter, Sarah Freedman-
Izquierdo, died before him.

His other books include “Lawyers’ Ethics in an
Adversary System” (1975) and “Group
Defamation and Freedom of Speech: The
Relationship Between Language and
Violence” (1995), which he edited with Eric M.
Freedman. With Professor Smith, he was the
editor of “How Can You Represent Those
People?” (2013), a collection of articles about a
lawyer’s obligation to take on distasteful clients.

As an index of his willingness to puncture all
manner of sacred cows, Professor Freedman, in a
series of articles in the 1990s, squared off against
possibly the most venerated figure in American
jurisprudence: Atticus Finch, the hero of Harper
Lee’s 1960 novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Among the moral transgressions for which
Professor Freedman takes Finch to task is the fact
that he defends Tom Robinson, a black man
accused of raping a white woman, not
voluntarily but because he was appointed by the
court.

“Atticus Finch never in his professional life
voluntarily takes a pro bono case in an effort to
ameliorate the evil — which he himself and
others recognize — in the apartheid of Maycomb,
Ala.,” Professor Freedman wrote in The Alabama
Law Review in 1994.

“Throughout his relatively comfortable and
pleasant life in Maycomb, Atticus Finch knows
about the grinding, ever-present humiliation and
degradation of the black people of Maycomb; he
tolerates it; and sometimes he even trivializes
and condones it.”

Professor Freedman added:

“For Finch, the civil rights movement of the
1960s is inevitable, but decades too soon.”

Charlotte Spiegel, Politician Who Safeguarded New York’s Windows, Dies at 92

Charlotte Spiegel, a civic leader and Democratic
politician from the Lower East Side who created
New York’s pioneering, lifesaving window guard
program in the 1970s, died on Friday in
Manhattan. She was 92.

Her death, at NYU Langone Medical Center, was
confirmed by her daughter Maura Spiegel.

As director of the health department’s Window
Falls Prevention Program, Ms. Spiegel
transformed what was a modest but promising
publicity campaign, called Children Can’t Fly,
into a formal health code requirement that
landlords provide window guards to tenants in
apartments occupied by children age 10 and
under.

It was widely described as the first window
guard requirement in the nation.

At first, the health department bought tens of
thousands of window guards at $3 apiece and
distributed them free of charge. When it ran out
of money, it shifted the burden to building
owners.

Landlords were originally required to install the
guards only if a tenant requested them. They
were later made responsible for determining
whether tenants were eligible for the guards and,
if so, installing them.

“If a child falls, the landlord is liable,” Ms.
Spiegel said, even if the landlord was the city’s
own Housing Authority, which she accused of
“foot dragging” in complying with the window
guard regulations.

In 1976, when the regulations were enacted, 217
children were injured in window falls and 24
died. In 2013, according to the health
department, six were injured and one died
falling from windows that should have been
equipped with guards.

A decade before the window guard campaign,
Ms. Spiegel found herself in the political
vanguard. In 1963, when Edward N. Costikyan
announced that he was retiring as the leader of
the Manhattan Democratic organization,
historically known as Tammany Hall, Ms. Spiegel
filled in as the acting New York County leader.

She was then elected chairwoman of the county’s
executive committee. She was the first woman to
hold each post.

Charlotte Sandra Neuman was born in
Manhattan on March 22, 1922, to Morris Neuman
and the former Ida Mitnitsky, a seamstress. An
uncle was treasurer of a Lower East Side
Democratic club. She was 15 when she was
admitted to Hunter College, having already
graduated from Washington Irving High School.

She went on to receive a master’s degree in
English from Columbia University, where she
overcame her painful shyness.

In 1944, she married Samuel A. Spiegel, who
represented the Lower East Side as an
assemblyman before being elected to the State
Supreme Court and to the Surrogate’s Court. He
died in 1977. Besides her daughter Maura, Ms.
Spiegel is survived by another daughter, Jill
Spiegel, and two grandchildren.

Ms. Spiegel taught in the same elementary school
that she had attended, Public School 188 on the
Lower East Side, worked briefly for a public
relations company and was a partner in a small
interior decorating firm before she got involved
in civic groups, like the Grand Street Settlement
House and the League of Women Voters, and
Democratic politics.

In 1985, when she was 63, Ms. Spiegel was on a
cruise with the ship Achille Lauro when it was
hijacked in the Mediterranean by Palestinian
terrorists. She was one of the so-called beach
people who vacationed in the same condominium
complex on the Jersey Shore and was among 11
of them who had taken the cruise together.

Ms. Spiegel was one of five members of the group
who were not on board when the hijacking took
place; they were on a bus tour in Egypt at the
time, from Alexandria to Port Said. Her
childhood friend Leon Klinghoffer, who was in a
wheelchair, was shot and thrown overboard. His
wife, Marilyn, survived the hijacking and died a
year later.

Maura Spiegel recalled that her mother was
appointed to the health department directorship
by Mayor Abraham D. Beame , after she had
worked on his 1973 campaign and lost the
clubhouse district leadership she had held for
nearly two decades.

In government, Ms. Spiegel discovered how much
she could still accomplish, even during a fiscal
crisis, her daughter said. Under Children Can’t
Fly, her window guard program, reported falls
declined by 50 percent from 1973 to 1975.

For the U.S. and China, a Test of Diplomacy on South Sudan

A United Nations camp for displaced people in Bentiu,
South Sudan, where civil war has forced two million people from their homes. Peace talks are underway, but are not seen as promising.

UNITED NATIONS — The United States may have
midwifed the birth of South Sudan , the world’s
youngest nation. But China has quickly become
among its most important patrons, building its
roads and pumping its oil.

Now, more than a year after South Sudan’s
leaders plunged their country into a nasty civil
war, the nation has become something of a test of
diplomacy between the United States and China,
raising the question: Can Washington and
Beijing turn their mutual interests in South
Sudan into a shared strategy to stop the bloodshed?

To pressure the warring sides toward peace, the
United States has circulated a draft Security
Council resolution, dangling the threat of
sanctions and setting up the possibility of an
arms embargo somewhere down the road. The
measure could come up for a vote as early as Tuesday.

China, which has long espoused a policy of not
interfering in its partners’ domestic affairs, has
not revealed its hand. The Chinese foreign
minister, Wang Yi, signaled to diplomats here last
week that his government could be persuaded to back appropriate punitive measures against South Sudan.   

The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Liu Jieyi, then publicly questioned the “logic” of proposing sanctions while the two sides are talking. China could
abstain from voting on Tuesday and let the measure pass.

Peace talks — funded by both Beijing and Washington — are underway in Ethiopia this week between factions loyal to President Salva Kiir and his rival former Vice President Riek Machar. Yet prospects for a breakthrough by a Thursday deadline set by the mediators appear slim. Mr. Kiir, for his part, has refused to show up.

So far, neither Washington nor Beijing has advanced a comprehensive strategy to stop the civil war. Both nations have been hesitant to substantially defang the kingpins of the war, including imposing an arms embargo or limiting how oil revenues might be used to fund the conflict. Both measures are among the
recommendations of a recent International Crisis Group report on South Sudan.

“The ability of the United States and China to work toward a common strategy for peace in South Sudan is a test case for their ability to work together on the continent and beyond,” said Casie Copeland, the Crisis Group’s South Sudan expert. She described both countries as “sort of walking in a circle.”

That is not for a lack of interest — or even because of opposing interests. Although China and the United States have stubbornly been on opposing sides of the issue of Darfur, the long-suffering Sudanese region, the
two superpowers share a lot of common ground on South Sudan.

China has strong economic stakes in the country; the United States is heavily invested politically.

They both have an interest in restoring stability to the country and avoiding disruptions to its oil flow. Both capitals have also opted to go slowly. Obama administration officials have deep emotional ties to South Sudan, and so far they have resisted taking any steps, like an arms embargo, that would weaken the government in Juba. As the administration’s former South Sudan envoy, Princeton Lyman, put it this week,
“The position is hardening in the administration, but it has taken a while.”

All the while, fighting between forces loyal to Mr. Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and Mr. Machar, an ethnic Nuer, has killed tens of thousands, displaced two million people, brought the country to brink of famine and left a trail of rape and killing. The United Nations children’s agency last week said school children had been conscripted by a militia loyal to Mr. Kiir’s forces.

The United States and China have vastly different
histories there. The United States championed its
independence from Sudan, whose president, Omar al-Bashir, it loathed, and whom it referred to the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide in Darfur.

China, by contrast, was one of Mr. Bashir’s most
important allies — and still is. But when South Sudan split off, it took vast amounts of oil with it, so China soon courted the new government in Juba and kept its stake in the oil fields.

That helps explains why China has taken an
unusually active role, considering its traditional policy of noninterference. It has dispatched its own soldiers to the United Nations peacekeeping mission there and
persuaded the Security Council to include a most unusual mandate for the mission: Peacekeepers there are tasked with protecting not just civilians, but also the country’s oil installations, which have been attacked. China has also stopped shipping arms to the government in Juba.

The American-drafted resolution would impose travel bans and asset freezes on individuals who threaten the peace and security of South Sudan, including those who are accused of committing serious rights abuses, using child soldiers, and attacking United Nations personnel. It would set up a committee to evaluate who should fall on the sanctions list. The measure would raise the possibility of an arms embargo further in the future.

Crucial to the effectiveness of these measures are South Sudan’s neighbors, including Uganda and Ethiopia, which have ties to the rival parties. Only if the countries in the region agree to punitive measures, like sanctions and an arms embargo, Mr. Lyman pointed out, will China give its consent on the Council.

Asked why it has taken so long to propose a draft
resolution on the Security Council, an American official said: “There are a lot of actors in this situation. We’ve been waiting for the right moment.”

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity
because of diplomatic protocol. “Everyone is sort of rowing in the same direction,” he added. A wild card is what to do about the potential war crimes committed by both sides in the conflict.

The African Union has completed its own investigation into human rights abuses, but refused to make it public while peace talks are continuing. The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has urged the
organization to release it.

United Nations investigators have chronicled a litany of horrors since fighting broke out in December 2013. “In Juba, I met people whose whole families have been executed, primarily due to their ethnicity, and women and girls who were taken as sex slaves after their husbands were killed,” the United Nations assistant secretary general for human rights, Ivan Simonovic, told the Council last week, urging the panel to ensure accountability for the victims.

The next question will be whether China or the
United States agrees to send its friends to the
dock.

Nemtsov funeral: Slain Russian opposition leader laid to rest, mourners queue to pay respects

Thousands of people, including prominent
Russian and foreign politicians and
activists, have pay their last respects to
Boris Nemtsov - an opposition leader, who
was assassinated in Moscow last week.

People stood in a kilometer-long queue to
get to the memorial service, which took
place in the Sakharov Center in Moscow.
Not all were able to get inside.

From there Nemtsov’s coffin was taken to
the Troekurovskoye cemetery, where about
600 people attended the funeral, Interfax
estimates.

Merkel says to push for freedom of expression in Russia

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday she would push Russia to guarantee the freedom of expression after what she described as the serious and sad murder of Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday she would push Russia to guarantee the freedom of expression after what she described as the serious and sad murder of Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov.

"We expect everything to be done to clear up this murder. I hope and we will make clear that we want those people who think differently in Russia to have a chance to articulate their thoughts - though I know it is anything but easy,"

Merkel told reporters at a news conference with the
president of Mongolia.