Six In The Morning Tuesday July 7

Iran nuclear talks expected to power past deadline

World powers were set Tuesday to miss yet another deadline to nail down an elusive nuclear deal ending a 13-year standoff with Iran, despite hours of difficult top-level negotiations.

In a sign of how complex the negotiations have become, foreign ministers met deep into the night Monday grappling with the toughest remaining issues which have so far thwarted a deal to curtailIran's nuclear programme.

In what has become a high-stakes game of diplomatic poker, the ministers met twice Monday with the Iranian delegation led by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif for a total of almost three hours.

And even though he was seen smiling broadly when cameras were allowed a quick glimpse of the talks, there was little immediate sign of an end to the deadlock.

After busting through an initial June 30 deadline, the latest round of negotiations looked set to power beyond Tuesday's new target date.

HSBC sacks staff over Isis 'mock beheading' video

An HSBC boss called the video 'abhorrent'

CAROLINE MORTIMER 

 

 

Tuesday 07 July 2015

HSBC has sacked six employees after a video emerged of them engaging in an Isis-style "mock beheading".

The Sun reveaed that a video posted on Instagram but later deleted, showed five men wearing balaclavas force an Asian colleague to kneel down while wearing an orange jumpsuit.

One banker then reportedly yells "Allahu Akbar", meaning "God is great", and pretends to execute his prisoner with a coat hanger.

The workers filmed the stunt while be on a team-building day organised by HSBC in Birmingham, according to The Sun.

Bosnia paralysed by identity crisis 20 years after genocide

Shared vision of future elusive for communities divided by history

Dan McLaughlin

As Bosnia marks 20 years since members of one community slaughtered civilians from another and dumped them in mass graves, a stark question hangs over the country: what does it mean to be Bosnian?

Saturday’s commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide, when Bosnian Serb troops murdered more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys, will do nothing to unify a country still shaped and divided by its 1992-1995 war.

Bosnian Serbs and Serbia are now seeking to block a British draft UN resolution on Srebrenica, which they say ignores atrocities committed against Serbs during a war that claimed 100,000 lives.

El Nino tracks path of most intense event as bureau expects further strengthening

July 7, 2015 - 5:43PM

Peter Hannam

Environment Editor, The Sydney Morning Herald

The El Nino climate pattern building in the Pacific is on track to be one of the strongest on record, with recent cyclones likely to intensify the event, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

Sea-surface temperatures in the central equatorial Pacific in June recorded the second largest anomalies on record for the month, behind only the June 1997 reading during the super 1997-98 El Nino event, the bureau said in its latest update.

Weekly sea-surface temperatures (see below) were also more than 1 degree above average for each of the regions monitored, their warmest sustained values since the 1997-98 event.

A string of tropical cyclones, including the rare July southern hemisphere storm, Cyclone Raquel, mean the El Nino will likely strengthen in coming weeks as "a strong reversal of trade winds" near the equator takes place.

Singapore court frees 16-year-old blogger Amos Yee

By Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN

Updated 1520 GMT (2220 HKT) July 6, 2015

Teen blogger Amos Yee is free, according to his attorney.

Guilty of "obscenity" and "wounding of religious feelings" but free.

The youngster plans to appeal his conviction and sentence, which he feels is "manifestly excessive," to the High Court of the Republic of Singapore, according to the lawyer.

"We enquired from Amos as to his physical well-being earlier today as he had visibly lost weight. He said he was feeling better. He had a meal today but was feeling slightly giddy," attorney Alfred Dodwell said in a statement.

Yee was taken Sunday evening to Changi General Hospital after officials determined his loss of appetite had affected his blood pressure and blood sugar levels, his lawyer said.

Boycott Israel drive gains strength, raising alarm

 

By TIA GOLDENBERG2 hours ago

Ten years ago, a small group of Palestinian activists had a novel idea: inspired by the anti-apartheid movement, they called for a global boycott campaign against Israel as a nonviolent method to promote the Palestinian struggle for independence.

Long confined to the sidelines, the so-called BDS campaign appears to be gaining momentum — so much so that Israel has identified it as a strategic threat on a par with Palestinian militant groups and the Iranian nuclear program. While Israel says the movement is rooted in anti-Semitism, its decentralized organization and language calling for universal human rights have proven difficult to counter, resulting in a string of recent victories that have alarmed Israeli leaders.

"We are now beginning to harvest the fruits of 10 years of strategic, morally consistent and undeniably effective BDS campaigning," said Omar Barghouti, one of the group's co-founders. "BDS is winning the battles for hearts and minds across the world, despite Israel's still hegemonic influence among governments in the U.S. and Europe."