News 1

Obama: Iran nuclear deal limits ability to create nuclear weapons (CNN)
Geneva, Switzerland (CNN) -- [Breaking news update, 11:19 p.m. ET] -- U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the six-month deal rolls back Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium and increases the time Iran would need to develop a nuclear weapon. -- Kerry said Iran will have "zero" 20 percent enriched uranium in six months under the deal announced Sunday. -- Kerry said Iran has "agreed to unprecedented international monitoring" of its nuclear program. "This first step, let me be clear, does not say that Iran has a right to enrich uranium." Contradicting Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Kerry also said the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons does not grant Iran the right to enriched uranium. -- Kerry said the easing of controls on Iran's "restricted oil revenues" during the six-month nuclear agreement announced Sunday does not roll back the "vast majority of the sanctions that are currently in place." -- Kerry said the alternative to the deal with Iran on its nuclear program would be further development of Iran's nuclear capabilities. He said no world power represented in the new deal believes Iran would capitulate in the face of unrelenting sanctions. -- Kerry said Iran must prove its peaceful intentions with actions, not words. He said President Barack Obama will not take military force "off the table," but he said war would not be a lasting solution. -- Kerry said the deal announced Sunday is "a serious step" toward answering the world's questions about Iran's nuclear intentions. -- Kerry calls the nuclear deal a rollback of that nation's nuclear program and a first step toward "a comprehensive agreement that will make Israel and the rest of the world safer. -- Kerry: "We need to set about the critical task of proving to the world what Iran has said many times -- that its program is in fact peaceful." The top U.S. diplomat said the initial agreement creates "time and space" to allow Iran to demonstrate its peaceful intentions. [Previous version published at 10:49 p.m. ET] (CNN) -- A historic deal was struck early Sunday between Iran and six world powers over Tehran's nuclear program that freezes the country's nuclear development program in exchange for lifting some sanction while a more formal agreement is worked out. The agreement -- described as an "initial, six-month" deal -- includes "substantial limitations that will help prevent Iran from creating a nuclear weapon," U.S. President Barack Obama said in a nationally televised address.

The deal, which capped days of marathon talks, addresses Iran's ability to enrich uranium, what to do about its existing enriched uranium stockpiles, the number and potential of its centrifuges and Tehran's "ability to produce weapons-grade plutonium using the Arak reactor," according to a statement released by the White House. Iran also agreed to provide "increased transparency and intrusive monitoring of its nuclear program," it said. Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief, formally announced the agreement in Geneva where the foreign ministers representing Iran, the United States, Britain, China, Russia, France and Germany were meeting.

Reaction to deal in Tehran

Israel reacts to Iran nuke deal

How to enrich uranium into fuel

The Iran nuclear deal is a first step requiring actions by both sides, which have "a strong commitment to negotiate a final comprehensive solution," Ashton said. According to a statement released by the White House, the deal halts Tehran's nuclear program, including halting the development at the Arak reactor and requiring all of the uranium enriched to 20% -- close to weapons-grade -- to be diluted so it cannot be converted for military purposes. But there were conflicting reports about whether Iran's right to enrich uranium had been recognized. The senior administration official said the deal does not recognize the right, while Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi -- on a Twitter feed commonly attributed to him by Iranian media -- said that "our enrichment program was recognized." "Congratulation(s) to my nation which stood tall and resisted for the last 10 years," Araghchi said in the post. For years, Iran and Western powers have left negotiating tables in disagreement, frustration and at times open animosity. But the diplomatic tone changed with the transfer of power after Iran's election this year, which saw President Hassan Rouhani replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Caustic jabs at the United States and bellicose threats toward Israel were a hallmark of Ahmadinejad's foreign policy rhetoric. He lambasted the West over the economic sanctions crippling Iran's economy and at the same time, pushed the advancement of nuclear technology in Iran. Rouhani has struck up a more conciliatory tone and made the lifting sanctions against his country a priority. Despite the sanctions, Iran today has 19,000 centrifuges and is building more advanced ones, according to Mark Hibbs, a nuclear policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Most world powers believe that Iran could not realistically build a usable bomb in less than a year, Hibbs said. And Iran recently signed a deal with the International Atomic Energy Agency that agrees to give the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency access to long-unseen nuclear sites, including a heavy-water reactor in Arak. Tehran is also a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which requires it not to create nuclear weapons or enable other countries to obtain them.

News 2

Baltimore jail officers accused of taking bribes, bringing drugs to gang members (CNN)
(CNN) -- A large group of Baltimore corrections officers and members of a notorious prison gang have been working together to peddle drugs, phones and sex inside the city's jail, prosecutors say. But an indictment released this week is another shot, prosecutors say, in putting an end to it. An indictment, announcing charges on 14 more Baltimore corrections officers, reads like script from the now defunct HBO crime drama "The Wire." But the U.S. Attorney's Office for Maryland says this drama involving prison gang , the Black Guerrilla Family, and a growing number of Baltimore jail guards has gone on for too long. "Correctional officers were in bed with BGF inmates," said U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein. Rosenstein seemed to mean that literally and figuratively, court documents show. According to one indictment, alleged gang member Tavon White had a sexual relationship with four jail guards while he was incarcerated. He impregnated all four of them and they all helped him smuggle items in prison, according to the indictment. One of the guards had "Tavon" tattooed on her wrist, the indictment said. In January, White summed up his standing in the prison while talking on a cell phone that had been smuggled in, the indictment says "This is my jail. You understand that? I'm dead serious ... I make every final call in this jail ... and nothing go past me ... Any of my brothers that deal with anybody, it's gonna come to me. Before (somebody) stab somebody, they gotta run it through me," White said according to the indictment. Correctional officers were allegedly "bribed" to smuggle in drugs, cell phones and other prohibited objects, which they hid underneath their clothes, "inside body cavities," even in sandwiches. New Orleans jail video shows drugs, guns, filth Some inmates who weren't part of the gang had to pay protection money -- or more accurately, their relatives on the outside did -- authorities claim.

"Court documents allege the BGF members recruited correctional officers through personal and often sexual relationships, as well as bribes, and that some officers traded sex for money," the U.S. Attorney's office said in its news release. The end result was what Rosenstein's office called a "criminal organization" operating inside jails "enabling (participants) to make large amounts of money through drug trafficking, robbery, assault, extortion, bribery, witness retaliation, money laundering and obstruction of justice." The investigation first came to light in April with the announcement of the first round of arrests. In all, 44 people have been indicted on federal charges. Twenty seven of them are Baltimore correctional officers, CNN affiliate WJZ reported.

News 3

Syria conflict: Children 'targeted by snipers' (BBC)

More than 11,000 children have died in Syria's civil war in nearly three years, including hundreds targeted by snipers, a new report says. Summary executions and torture have also been used against children as young as one, the London-based Oxford Research Group think tank says. The report says the majority of children have been killed by bombs or shells in their own neighbourhoods. It wants fighters trained in how not to put civilians' lives at risk.
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AnalysisLyse DoucetChief international correspondent

This report is the first major examination of how children are being killed in Syria. It confirms what has long been regarded as one of the most disturbing aspects of this brutal conflict.

Syrian children are not just being "caught in crossfire." They're being deliberately targeted, and even tortured. The very start of this uprising is usually traced to the arrest in March 2011 of schoolboys in Daraa who were reportedly tortured for painting anti-government graffiti. Nearly three years on, this report urges all sides in this conflict to spare the children, and calls for the threat of prosecution against those who commit the most egregious of atrocities. Casualties are only one part of what this report calls the war's "catastrophic effect" on children. With so many schools and neighbourhoods in ruin, and children making up half of the refugees, Syria's conflict is also a war on childhood. Read more from Lyse

'Plea to all sides'

Their report, Stolen Futures - the Hidden Toll of Child Casualties in Syria, examines data from the start of the conflict in March 2011 to August 2013. Of the 11,420 victims aged 17 and under, 389 were killed by sniper fire. Some 764 were summarily executed, and more than 100 - including infants - were tortured, the report says. Boys outnumbered girls among the dead by around two to one. Boys aged 13 to 17 were most likely to be victims of targeted killings, the report says. The highest number of child deaths occurred in the governorate of Aleppo, where 2,223 were reported killed. Report co-author Hana Salama said that the way children are being killed is disturbing. "Bombed in their homes, in their communities, during day-to-day activities such as waiting in bread lines or attending school. "Shot by bullets in crossfire, targeted by snipers, summarily executed, even gassed and tortured," she said.The data was provided by Syrian civil society groups recording casualties.

Deadliest area by populatio n size

Deraa Idlib Homs Rif Dimashq Hama Deir Ezzor Aleppo Damascus

Childre n killed

% of total child death s

10.1% 14.2% 16.3% 15.9% 7.3% 5.8% 19.9% 6.7%

Populatio n

One-in-how-man y children killed

1,134 1,584 1,817 1,772 821 648 2,223 749

1,027,000 1,501,000 1,803,000 2,836,000 1,628,000 1,239,000 4,868,000 1,754,000

408 426 447 720 892 860 985 1,054

The report only considers the deaths of named victims, and only cases where the cause of death could be identified. But it stresses the figures are incomplete as access is impossible in some areas. The figures should be "treated with caution and considered provisional: briefly put, it is too soon to say whether they are too high or too low", the report says.

These children in Aleppo are living in the midst of war

Mortar fire killed this child in Damascus, along with three others, state media says

Some refugees from Syria are now begging on the streets of Beirut in Lebanon

Many Syrian families are living in refugee camps outside the country

The conflict in Syria has had a "catastrophic effect" on children in Syria, the report says, and calls for all sides to refrain from targeting civilians and buildings such as schools, hospitals and places of worship. Amongst its recommendations, the Oxford Research Group also calls for access and protection for journalists and others contributing to the recording of casualties. More than 100,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the conflict. More than two million Syrians have fled the country; around half of those are believed to be children.

News 4

China establishes 'air-defence zone' over East China Sea (BBC)

China has demarcated an "air-defence identification zone" over an area of the East China Sea, covering islands that are also claimed by Japan. China's defence ministry said aircraft entering the zone must obey its rules or face "emergency defensive measures". The islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, are a source of rising tension between the countries. Japan lodged a strong protest over what it said was an "escalation".
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Analysis

Damian GrammaticasBBC News, Beijing

Since President Xi Jinping took power a year ago, he has overseen a more muscular effort to assert Chinese control over disputed territories in East and South China seas. His nationalist approach, backed-up by large increases in spending on the armed forces, is welcomed by many in China. But it has led to increasing tension with almost all of China's neighbours. Many, like Japan, have defence agreements with the United States, which has long sought to preserve the balance of power in Asia. The fear is that one small incident, for example between Chinese and Japanese vessels or aircraft, could escalate rapidly into a far wider and more serious crisis.

"Setting up such airspace unilaterally escalates the situations surrounding Senkaku islands and has danger of leading to an unexpected situation," Japan's foreign ministry said in a statement.

Taiwan, which also claims the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands, expressed regret at the move and promised that the military would take measure to protect national security.

'No specific target'

In its statement, the Chinese defence ministry said aircraft must report a flight plan, "maintain two-way radio communications", and "respond in a timely and accurate manner" to identification inquiries. "China's armed forces will adopt defensive emergency measures to respond to aircraft that do not co-operate in the identification or refuse to follow the instructions," said the statement. It said the zone came into effect from 10:00 local time (02:00GMT) on Saturday. State news agency Xinhua showed a map on its website covering a wide area of the East China Sea, including regions very close to South Korea and Japan. Responding to questions about the zone on an official state website, a defence ministry spokesman, Yang Yujun, said China set up the area "with the aim of safeguarding state sovereignty, territorial land and air security, and maintaining flight order". "It is not directed against any specific country or target," he said, adding that China "has always respected the freedom of over-flight in accordance with international law".

"Normal flights by international airliners in the East China Sea air-defence identification zone will not be affected in any way." The islands have been a source of tension between China and Japan for decades. In 2012, the Japanese government bought three of the islands from their Japanese owner, sparking mass protests in Chinese cities.
Continue reading the main story

Air-defence identification zones

Zones do not necessarily overlap with airspace, sovereign territory or territorial claims States define zones, and stipulate rules that aircraft must obey; legal basis is unclear During WW2, US established an air perimeter and now maintains four separate zones - Guam, Hawaii, Alaska, and a contiguous mainland zone UK, Norway, Japan and Canada also maintain zones Source: aviationdevelopment.org

Since then, Chinese ships have repeatedly sailed in and out of what Japan says are its territorial waters.

In September this year, Japan said it would shoot down unmanned aircraft in Japanese airspace after an unmanned Chinese drone flew close to the disputed islands. China said that any attempt by Japan to shoot down Chinese aircraft would constitute "an act of war". Last month Japan's defence minister, Itsunori Onodera, said China's behaviour over the disputed East China Sea islands was jeopardising peace. BBC World Service East Asia editor Charles Scanlon says the confrontation over the small chain of uninhabited islands is made more intractable by conflicting claims for potentially rich energy resources on the sea bed. But the issue has now become a nationalist touchstone in both countries, making it hard for either side to be seen to back down, he says.
News 5

Coalition minister wants to give land to young to build own homes (The Guardian)
Young people who cannot afford to buy somewhere to live should be handed plots of state-owned land so they can build homes of their own, the planning minister, Nick Boles, has suggested. The idea is in the development stage of coalition policy and Boles is giving it extra impetus, declaring that young Britons want "the opportunity to get on and help themselves". Housebuilding remains at very low levels even though there has been an upturn in the past three months. The coalition is acutely aware that it needs to find a way to assure the so-called Generation Rent that, if they want, they will be able to purchase or custom-build a home of their own. Boles is proposing that, instead of renting in the open market or applying for council housing, young people should be able to "put yourself on the list for self-build". The list would run in parallel with the council house waiting list.

Recent moves to relax planning controls have been highly controversial with many Conservative supporters, but Boles suggested that the government should "go even further" to enable young people to own their own homes. He said: "A liberal planning policy is one in which you say to people, if you own a home and you want to do something reasonable to change it or extend it, you should be able to do so, without bureaucrats and politicians getting in the way, and that is something we have done." He added: "I think we might want to go even further ... We should think about saying, if you can't buy a home then you should be able to get a plot and to be able to build yourself a home if you want one put yourself on the list for self-build." Boles caused controversy earlier this week when speaking at a Conservative thinktank by raising concerns that Tories were seen by many young voters as "aliens". He set out his plans for self-build at the same meeting. He said many elderly Conservatives were desperate to find a way to persuade young people to vote for the party and suggested that reforming planning laws to let people build their own homes was one way of reaching out to these younger voters. "There are empowering liberal reforms to planning that we can make, that fit with this generation," he said. "They don't want help, they just want to be given the opportunity to get on and help themselves. We have got to help them." The government has so far set aside 12 plots for self-build on public land, and Boles would like to see the programme expanded. Official statistics this week showed housing starts over the past 12 months increased by 16% on the year before, rising from 101,280 to 117,110. The 32,230 homes on which construction started between July and September this year represent the fastest rate of house-building since 2008.

News 6

California split as professor in murder trial of her alleged rapist is jailed (The Guardian)
A psychology professor has been locked up on suspicion of facilitating the gruesome murder 18 years ago of a man who allegedly raped her as a student prompting

campaigners across Europe and the US to rally to her defence. She strongly denies the charges. Norma Patricia Esparza, 39, was taken into custody in Orange County,California, last week and charged with a count of special circumstances murder. Prosecutors say Esparza, who is an assistant professor of psychology and counselling at Webster University in Geneva, set in motion the kidnapping, beating and killing of Gonzalo Ramirez, who was murdered with a meat cleaver in 1995. Police arrested her at Boston airport last year when she returned to the US for an academic conference, apparently unaware that detectives had revived the investigation into a cold case. Esparza, who is married and has a four-year-old daughter, was led away in handcuffs from a court hearing on Thursday, her bail revoked, after rejecting a plea deal to reduce the charge from murder to voluntary manslaughter. "The principle of what they're asking me is to plead guilty to something that they know I am not responsible for," she said. She has been charged along with three other people who are alleged to have actually carried out the killing. Susan Kang Schroeder, chief of staff for the district attorney, said Esparza would be treated the same as anyone else. "I know she wants to try this case in the media. We look forward to trying this case in court." The jailing triggered an outcry from advocacy groups, who say Esparza is a victim not just of her alleged rapist but also of the ex-boyfriend who allegedly killed him in revenge and of her father, who allegedly molested her as a girl. Members of End Rape on Campus, a group which lobbies universities to investigate sexual assault reports, attended the court hearing in solidarity. "This is a tragic situation," said Caroline Heldman, a co-founder of the organisation. "Dr Esparza has been failed by every institution in her life. The fact the DA is terrorising a victim in this case is unconscionable. They're sending a chilling message to rape survivors." A petition at change.org urging Orange County's district attorney to drop the charge has received more than 2,600 signatures. Under the name Project Hope Geneva, it says that Esparza is no threat to society and that the prosecution is unjust. "In continuing to pursue her you are sending a troubling message to other rape victims who already have a sense that they will not receive justice within the legal system," the petition says. Signatories in Switzerland and the US have praised the academic as an intelligent, wise and dedicated mother and wife who has already suffered enough. Others, however, have used social media and newspaper comment pages to brand Esparza as a "witch" who was facing overdue justice.

She was born in Mexico and as a child moved with her family to Santa Ana, just south of Los Angeles. A scholarship to Phillips Exeter Academy, a private school in New Hampshire, was followed by another to Pomona College, a liberal arts institution in Los Angeles county. One weekend in March 1995, Esparza, then 20 and in her second year at college, allegedly met Ramirez, 24, at the El Cortez nightclub in Santa Ana. The next day, over breakfast, he offered to drive her and a friend back to Pomona. Once they got to her college dorm room, Esparza later said, he raped her. She went to a college nurse who gave her a contraceptive pill, but Esparza did not notify the police. "I don't think I was thinking at that time," she told the Los Angeles Timesshortly before being taken into custody. "I felt guilty. I didn't want to come forward because I didn't want my family to know." Esparza said childhood abuse compounded her guilt and shame. She told an ex-boyfriend, Gianni Anthony Van, about the assault and he became enraged. Twice they went looking for Ramirez at the nightclub, she told investigators last year. She thought the worst that could happen was that Van would "rough up" Ramirez. On 15 April, a few weeks after the alleged rape, she identified Ramirez in a bar. Leaving Esparza behind, Van and three friends, Shannon Gries, Kody Tran and Diane Tran, allegedly tailed their quarry, crashed his truck and abducted him when he got out. He was beaten, hacked with a meat cleaver and hung from the ceiling of a transmission shop owned by Kody Tran. Esparza saw the body before it was dumped on the side of Sand Canyon Road in Santa Ana. A few days later she married Van. It was a sham marriage, she said, because she feared him and other members of the group, which believed that the marriage would prevent her from testifying against her husband. Police questioned Esparza soon afterwards, but filed no charges and the case lay dormant. She graduated, divorced Van in 2004, and took a post at a Swiss campus close to the Alps accredited to Webster University in St Louis, Missouri. The professor lived across the border in a small French town with her second husband, Jorge Mancillas, a neurobiologist and health policy consultant, and their daughter. After her arrest last year she was freed on $300,000 bail. After rejecting the plea deal offered by prosecutors, they then argued that she was a flight risk. Her co-defendants Van, 44, Gries, 42, and Diane Tran, 45 deny the charges and are also being held without bail. Kody Tran died in a shootout with police last year. The trial is expected to start in January.