Six In The Morning Tuesday July 14

Iran nuclear talks: 'Historic' agreement struck

• 14 July 2015
 
• From the sectionMiddle East

World powers have reached a deal with Iran on limiting Iranian nuclear activity in return for the lifting of international economic sanctions.

Iran's foreign minister called the agreement "historic". The EU negotiator hailed it as "a sign of hope".

The deal reportedly gives UN nuclear inspectors extensive but not automatic access to sites within Iran.

Negotiations between Iran and six world powers - the US, UK, France, China and Russia plus Germany - began in 2006.

The so-called P5+1 want Iran to scale back its sensitive nuclear activities to ensure that it cannot build a nuclear weapon.

Iran, which wants crippling international sanctions lifted, has always insisted that its nuclear work is peaceful.

Anger over Australian 'ghost tour' of infamous backpacker murders

Night-time tours of NSW’s Belanglo state forest, where Ivan Milat killed and buried British, German and Australian backpackers in the 1990s, have outraged families and victim groups

Agence France-Presse

Tuesday 14 July 2015 06.58 BST

An “extreme terror tour” of the Australian forest where a notorious killer buried seven backpackers in the 1990s was on Tuesday attacked as “disgusting” and insensitive to the families of victims.

Goulburn Ghost Tours is advertising a small number of night-time visits to Belanglo state forest, where Ivan Milat dumped the bodies of two Britons, three Germans and two Australians more than 20 years ago.

Milat is serving consecutive life sentences for the murders of the young travellers which terrified Australia in the early 1990s. Their remains were found in Belanglo, 120km (74 miles) south-west of Sydney.

Isis in Iraq: Thousands of Shia militiamen to join decisive battle to take back Fallujah – but lack of experience risks heavy casualties

Thousands of Shia militiamen will join the fight for the Iraqi city this morning. But as Patrick Cockburn discovers in Karbala, while they match Isis in fanaticism, the Hashid Shaabi’s lack of training will lead to heavy casualties

PATRICK COCKBURN 

 

 

Tuesday 14 July 2015

Tens of thousands of Shia militiamen are poised to join the battle for Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, in a bid to recapture it from Isis fighters who seized the city 18 months ago. The battle is likely to be one of the decisive military engagements of the Iraq war as Fallujah has been at the centre of the Sunni revolt in Iraq since the US invaded the country in 2003.

“Fallujah is surrounded, but we will take it little by little,” Brigadier-General Ali Musleh, a senior commander of the Shia militia force known as the Hashid Shaabi, told The Independentas Iraqi armed forces pressed Fallujah on three sides. Iraqi forces say they are keeping open a corridor through which civilians can escape before ground fighting escalates.

In a brief statement, Iraq’s Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, vowed to “take revenge from Daesh [Isis] criminals on the battlefield … and their cowardly crimes against unarmed civilians will only increase our determination to chase them and to expel them from the land of Iraq”.

Normandy Secrets: Forgotten Nazi Arms Caches a Bonanza for Historians

By Frank Thadeusz

For decades, a vast network of Nazi arms caches and supply depots in the forest of Normandy lay forgotten. Now, research shows the extent to which the Wehrmacht sought to defend itself against the impending Allied invasion.

There are several attractions to recommend in the Normandy spa town of Bagnoles de l'Orne, including its Belle Époque Quarter and its widely renowned hot springs. But the village is also located next to a beautiful natural preserve, a forested region that looks straight out of a fairy tale.

Most visitors to the forest, however, are unaware of the leftovers from a dark chapter of history that litter the bucolic woodland. There are no plaques and no signs hinting at the intricate system of secret munitions and fuel depots that were established in the forest by the Wehrmacht, Germany's World War II army. Starting in 1943, the Nazis dug hundreds of bunkers into the floor of the Forêt des Andaines to hide vast quantities of munitions, fuel and provisions.

South China Sea dispute updates

July 14, 2015 - 2:15PM

The South China Sea's biggest dust-ups, a round-up

Planes downed, ships blocked, naval battles, and more, a list of incidents that have rattled the South China Sea region.

July 13, 2015: The Philippines case against China

The Philippines is trying to get an international court to rule whether China can claim sovereignty and resources rights to waters near Philippines' shores. The case is currently being heard at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. 

The Telegraph of London quotes Ian Storey, of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore: "It's the first time any of the claimants have challenged China's claim in an international court," 

...If the court rules that the so-called nine-dash line is incompatible with [UN Convention on the Law of the Sea], "that represents a major legal and moral victory for the Philippines and a defeat for China," the Telegraph reports. 

China refuses to participate in the case, so at some level, any resolution will may have more impact in the court of global opinion than in the actual boots on the ground on the disputed reefs. Nonetheless, over the longer term, that global opinion will matter too.

Crackdown on human rights lawyers intensifies in China (+video)

A rights-oriented law firm in Beijing was targeted last week, and subsequent detentions of more than 100 lawyers point to a concerted campaign by authorities.

By Robert Marquand, Staff writer JULY 13, 2015

The sweeping arrest in recent days of more than 100 human rights lawyers across China and the state's depiction in public of them as “troublemakers” represents a sharp stab at one of the most active sectors of Chinese civil society amid one of the harshest such crackdowns in decades, analysts say.

Some 114 lawyers had been arrested or questioned as of Monday during a 72-hour police operation, according to the Hong Kong-based Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group, reports the South China Morning Post. Leading figures in the Chinese public-interest law community said the arrests were intended to “terrorize” their colleagues and shock their community.

While 92 lawyers have now been released, others are missing. Chinese state media has named at least six or seven top advocacy lawyers that could face criminal charges that carry lengthy prison sentences.