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Monday to decide what new penalties should be issued if Moscow continues to ignore the West's warnings.
• Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland told a Senate panel this week that current U.S. and EU sanctions are "biting" and "pinching" the Russian economy, "and we're now considering further measures."
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• TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran says it has no plans to name a new diplomat to the United Nations after the United States blocked the man Tehran chose.
• Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is quoted by the semiofficial Mehr news agency as saying Saturday that the Islamic Republic instead seeks to challenge the U.S. decision through legal channels.
• The U.S. blocked Iran's pick because it alleges Hamid Aboutalebi took part in the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, in which 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days.
• Aboutalebi says he was only a translator when militant students stormed the Embassy. Iran says he is one of the country's best diplomats, and that he previously received a U.S. visa. He has already served at Iranian diplomatic missions in Australia, Belgium and Italy.
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• BERLIN (AP) -- After racing against the clock in an all-night session, the U.N.'s expert panel on climate change was putting the final touches Saturday on a scientific guide to help governments, industries and regular people take action to stop global warming from reaching dangerous levels.
• As always when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change adopts one of its high-profile reports, the week-long talks in Berlin were slowed by wrangling between scientists and governments over which words, charts and tables to use in the roughly 30-page summary of a much bigger scientific report.
• The painstaking process is meant to clarify the complex world of climate science to non-scientists but it also reflects the brinksmanship that characterizes international talks on climate action -- so far unsuccessful in their goal to stop the rise of

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