Iran-6 power talks continue in name but US takes the lead
Iran-6 power talks continue in name but US takes the lead
UNITED NATIONS — First there were three nations negotiating with Tehran over its nuclear program. Then six. And now, mostly one — the United States.
Washington insists that the Iran-six power negotiations are alive and well. But with a deadline to a deal only eight weeks away, the U.S. is increasingly reshaping the talks it joined five years ago into a series of bilateral meetings with Iran as the two nations with the greatest stakes race to seal a deal — and strengthen ties broken more than three decades ago.
The shift began in 2009 when the U.S. thawed its 30-year freeze on talking to Tehran — in place since the Iranian revolution and siege of the American Embassy — and joined other nations at the nuclear negotiating table.
It gathered steam with a series of secret U.S.-Iran nuclear meetings starting in 2012, and culminated with a 15-minute telephone conversation last year between the President Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s newly elected president.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif have met several times on the nuclear issue since last year, the latest during the current round of negotiations that ended Friday.
Brown’s parents unmoved by police chief’s apology
WASHINGTON — The parents of Michael Brown said Saturday in an interview with The Associated Press they were unmoved by the apology of the Ferguson, Mo., police chief gave weeks after their unarmed 18-year-old son was killed by a police officer.
Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden, said, “yes,” when asked if Chief Tom Jackson should be fired, and his father, Michael Brown Sr., said rather than an apology, they would rather see Officer Darren Wilson arrested for the death of their son on Aug. 9.
The young man, who was black, was fatally shot last month by Wilson, who is white.
Hong Kong pro-democracy leaders kick off protest
HONG KONG — Hong Kong activists kicked off a long-threatened mass civil disobedience protest early today to challenge Beijing over restrictions on voting reforms, a surprise move that further escalates the battle for democracy in the former British colony after police arrested dozens of student demonstrators.
Organizers of “Occupy Central with Love and Peace” said they were starting their protest by continuing the “current occupation” of the streets outside government headquarters begun earlier by a separate group of student demonstrators that drew tens of thousands of people at its peak around midnight Saturday.
The Occupy Central movement had originally planned a mass sit-in to paralyze the Asian financial hub’s central business district on Wednesday, but organizers moved up the start of their protest and changed the location in an apparent bid to harness momentum from the student rally outside the government complex in the southern Chinese city.
Ex-Ohio congressman expelled after corruption conviction, dies
CLEVELAND — James Traficant, the colorful Ohio politician whose conviction for taking bribes and kickbacks made him only the second person to be expelled from Congress since the Civil War, died Saturday. He was 73.
Traficant was seriously injured Tuesday after a vintage tractor flipped over on him as he tried to park it inside a barn on the family farm near Youngstown. He died four days later in a Youngstown hospital, said Dave Betras, chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party.
By wire sources