Six In The Morning Monday July 13

Iran and world powers inch towards nuclear deal

Iran and West say historic deal could be signed by Monday as John Kerry says "major issues" remain to be resolved.

13 Jul 2015 06:06 GMT

Iran and six world powers are close to signing a historic nuclear deal that will bring sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on Tehran's atomic programme, officials say.

After more than two weeks of negotiations in Vienna, Iranian and Western officials said on Sunday that an agreement could be ready on Monday, the self-imposed deadline for clinching the deal, though that could be extended again.

"We still have got work to do tomorrow," Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told reporters on Sunday from his hotel balcony. "No deal today [Sunday]."

Video contradicts account of Israeli officer who killed Palestinian teenager

Claims that Col Yisrael Shomer was in imminent danger when he shot dead 17-year old Mohammed Kasbeh appear to be contradicted by video evidence

Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem

Monday 13 July 2015 06.54 BST

New video footage has emerged of the moments leading up to the fatal shooting of a teenage stone thrower by a senior Israeli army officer, contradicting the soldier’s account of the killing.

Doubts about the account of Col Yisrael Shomer, a brigade commander in the occupied territories, began to emerge last week in witness accounts and medical evidence collected by the Guardian, Washington Post and human rights groups.

They suggested that 17-year-old Mohammed Kasbeh was shot in the upper body by Shomer as the youth was fleeing, not in the midst of a life-threatening attack.

According to the Times of Israel, following the emergence of the video, Shomer was interviewed under caution by military police who were already investigating the shooting.

ROBERT FISK

Monday 13 July 2015

First rule of refugees – don’t be a Muslim if you want help

We now treat each refugee on the grounds of their race, religion or purpose of flight. We do not treat them as human beings

Nineteenth-century Americans were on safe ground when they inscribed the words of Emma Lazarus on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

A comparatively new country, the United States needed the destitute of Europe – the Irish, the Jews of Russia – to expand their nation. There was no question of referring to the Irish “poor” as “economic migrants” or to those Jews “yearning to breathe free” as “asylum seekers” or “political refugees” from the Tsar’s pogroms.

In the decades to come, however, the world assumed that the “huddled masses” could be returned in safety to their land of origin. Thus US and other “Christian” nations decided that survivors of the 1915 Armenian genocide should go back to what had been their homes in “Western Armenia” (Ottoman Anatolia). And many hundreds of thousands of Armenians lingered on the edge of Turkey in the hope that the victors of the First World War would return them to lands no longer controlled by their Ottoman Turkish killers.

Not so gay times in Russia

The launch of an anti-gay flag and calls to ban the rainbow-colored gay flag in Russia is yet another example of a bureaucracy gone mad, as Fiona Clark writes from Moscow.

Summer is a great time for picnics. It's a point not lost on the pro-Putin party, United Russia. It chose this week to launch its 'straight pride' flag at a picnic for "real families" in a Moscow city park.

The flag, a modified version of one produced by a French organization, shows a male and female couple with three children. It comes in three colors, based on the Russian flag, red, blue and white, with the family members holding hands and the slogan #НастоящаяCемья or #realfamily underneath them.

Alexey Lisovenko, United Russia's deputy head in Moscow, said the flag would form part of a social media campaign promoting traditional family values.

"This is our answer to same sex marriages. The meaning of 'family' is being tortured. We must stop the gay fever in our country and support traditional values," Lisovenko told the media.

Colombia, FARC rebels reach de-escalation agreement

Latest update : 2015-07-13

The Colombian government reached a major de-escalation agreement Sunday with leftist FARC guerrillas, agreeing for the first time to reduce anti-rebel operations in the decades-long armed conflict, diplomats in Havana said.

The move marks a significant step in stop-start peace talks in the Cuban capital between the two sides that began in November 2012 but have been hampered in recent months by an uptick in violence.

On Wednesday, FARC said it had agreed to a one-month unilateral ceasefire starting July 20, and on Sunday the government committed to curtailing its efforts against guerrillas for the first time since peace talks began.

"The national government, from July 20, will launch a process of de-escalation of military action, in response to the suspension of offensive actions by the FARC," said a joint statement read by Cuban and Norwegian diplomats, who have been mediating the talks.

China targets rights lawyers in crackdown on activists

July 13, 2015 - 3:36PM

Gerry Shih

Chinese authorities have widened a crackdown on human rights groups, detaining or questioning more than 50 lawyers and activists in a sweep over the past few days, rights groups say.

Citing the need to buttress national security and stability, President Xi Jinping's administration has tightened government control over almost every aspect of civil society since 2012.

In recent years, the government has detained dozens of Chinese for dissent and Tibetans and Uighurs have complained of rights abuses, prompting criticism from the US.

Meanwhile, China asserted that some of the Uighurs deported to China last week from Thailand had planned to go to Syria and Iraq for jihad. State television broadcast footage of the Uighurs being bundled out of an aircraft in China in black hoods with their heads held down, and at least one apparently in chains.