BUSAN, South Korea — On Monday, countries discussing a worldwide pact to reduce plastic pollution were unable to come to an agreement. While some oil producers were willing to focus just on plastic trash, over 100 countries wanted to cap output. It was supposed to be the last conference of the U.N. Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5), which met in Busan, South Korea, with the goal of producing a legally binding international treaty. Countries could only agree to delay important decisions and restart negotiations, known as INC 5.2, to a later date because they were still at odds over the fundamentals of a treaty. According to Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, it is evident that divergence is still present. Limiting plastic manufacture, controlli...

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The Iranian judiciary's Mizan news agency said early on Monday that Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi was freed from prison on Sunday after serving a one-year term for criticizing the Iranian regime. A revolutionary court had sentenced Salehi to death in April on accusations related to unrest in the country in 2022–2023, but the Iranian Supreme Court overturned that decision in June. The death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman who was imprisoned for reportedly wearing an inappropriate hijab that violated Iran's Islamic dress code, in police detention provoked months of protests, which his songs praised. After publicly endorsing the nationwide protests, Salehi was jailed in October 2022. The protests that followed Amini's murder in September 2022 presented the largest obstacle ...