US official: If nuclear talks collapse, it would be ‘a tragedy’

Negotiators resume talks in Vienna

World powers get back to work Tuesday seeking to nail down an elusive nuclear deal ending a 13-year standoff with Iran, only hours before another deadline expires.

After talking deep into the night Monday, foreign ministers from the so-called P5+1 group leading the negotiations meet briefly again Tuesday without the Iranian delegation.

The group — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States — is seeking to hammer out a final accord to put an atomic bomb out of Iran’s reach.

But Tuesday’s deadline for a deal — the fourth since an interim deal was struck in November 2013 — looks almost certain to be missed, as the ministers grapple with the toughest remaining issues which have so far thwarted an accord.

Diplomats extended their discussions by a week when they missed their goal of a pact by June 30, after passing previous deadlines in July 2014 and last November. For US Secretary of State John Kerry and his team, pressure is increasing from skeptical US allies and members of Congress. If the accord isn’t sent over to American lawmakers by Thursday, their month-long review period would be doubled to 60 days, hampering the ability of the Obama administration to offer speedy economic benefits to Iran for nuclear concessions.

— AFP, AP

Iran denies ties to Jordan terror suspect

Iran is rejecting reports by Jordanian state media that a terror suspect arrested in Jordan on suspicion that he planned attacks against the kingdom is linked to an Iranian group.

The spokesman for Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard, Gen. Ramazan Sharif, tells The Associated Press on Tuesday that the reports are “baseless.”

Jordan’s government-owned al-Rai newspaper reported Monday that security forces also seized 45 kilograms (100 pounds) of high-grade explosives in the case and that it was the biggest haul in Jordan a decade. Al-Rai and the state news agency Petra said the suspect has ties to an Iranian group called Beit al-Maqdis, but did not elaborate.

Sharif dismisses the allegations as part of “phobia and propaganda” against Iran, comparing it to “past claims” by other countries.

— AP

Rivlin condoles with Greek FM over debt crisis

President Reuven Rivlin meets with Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias at his official residence in Jerusalem.

“The Israeli people see what is happening in Greece and we share in your pain,” Rivlin says. “Greece is the birthplace of democracy, and we have seen over the last days the power of the democratic voice. The true sovereign of any country is the people, and your people have made their voice heard. We hope that a solution is found that is acceptable to all sides.”

The Greek foreign minister thanks Rivlin, and says it’s a “great honor” to be in the Jewish state.

“We are two peoples living in this part of the world for many thousands of years. The whole of Western culture is based on our culture, history and traditions — only sometimes they forget this. I think we not only have a common past, but we will have a common future, which is in the interest of our peoples,” Kotzias says.

3.5 years in jail sought for ex-SS guard

German prosecutors on Tuesday say they are seeking three and a half years’ jail time for a former SS officer known as the “Bookkeeper of Auschwitz.”

Oskar Groening, 94, stands accused before a court in the northern city of Lueneburg of 300,000 counts of “accessory to murder” in the cases of deported Hungarian Jews sent to the gas chambers between May and July 1944.

Public prosecutor Jens Lehmann says in closing arguments that his sentencing request was based on the “nearly incomprehensible number of victims,” mitigated by “the limited contribution of the accused” to their deaths.

— AFP

Journalists extend Vienna hotel reservations

An AFP reporter in Vienna writes on Twitter that her hotel reservation has been extended until Saturday.

Desk clerk told me to Friday! pic.twitter.com/ZbcoRuC4to

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— jo biddle (@Jobiddle) July 7, 2015

Now seems Grand hotel staff saying rooms extended to July 11, that's Saturday ! #IranTalks

— jo biddle (@Jobiddle) July 7, 2015

200 detonators stolen from French army

French authorities are investigating the theft of roughly 200 detonators plus grenades and plastic explosives from a military site in southeastern France, officials say.

The thefts at the Miramas site, which is operated by a combination of military services west of Marseille, appears to have occurred overnight from Sunday to Monday. The break-in comes as France has strengthened its security measures after two deadly attacks by extremists this year.

Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin says in a statement that an investigation has started on charges of “theft with break-in carried out by a criminal group” and “fraudulent entry into a military compound.”

An official with the gendarmerie police force, which generally runs law enforcement in more rural areas of France, says the thief or thieves appeared to have cut through a fence to enter the high-security site. The official was not authorized to speak publicly because the operation is ongoing.

— AP

EU says talks to continue for next few days

In Vienna, EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini says nuclear talks will continue over the next few days.

She emphasizes that this is not an extension.

Some foreign ministers will leave Vienna, she says, but are ready to return to seal an agreement.

Ryanair to start flying to Israel

No-frills airline Ryanair on Tuesday announces its first flights to Israel, with three new routes departing from Hungary, Lithuania and Poland.

The Irish carrier says it will operate six weekly flights, two each between Israel’s Eilat Ovda airport and Budapest, Kaunas and Krakow.

Eilat Ovda airport is located in the south of Israel, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Eilat City.

“Ryanair is pleased to announce our entry into the Israeli market from November 2015, our 31st country,” Ryanair Chief Commercial Officer David O’Brien says in a statement.

The airline forecasts that 40,000 customers will use the routes annually, adding it is in talks over introducing further flights to Israel.

— AFP

‘We have no deadline,’ Iran says

Iran says that it has no target date for completing a nuclear deal with world powers, after the EU foreign policy chief said talks in Vienna would go beyond Tuesday’s deadline.

“We have no deadline,” a spokesman for the Iranian delegation in talks with major powers in Vienna tells AFP.

— AFP

Kahlon slams real estate investors

Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon criticizes investors who purchase more than one apartment in Israel, saying they are being inconsiderate to young couples who cannot afford to buy property amid rising housing prices.

“Who are you to buy up all the apartments in the State of Israel?” Kahlon says, according to Israel Radio. “There are other people who live here.”

Tel Aviv stabber jailed for 28 years

A Palestinian man who stabbed several Israelis on a Tel Aviv bus in January reaches a plea bargain with Israeli prosecutors, under which he will serve a 28-year sentence.

Houza Matrouk, 23, a resident of the West Bank refugee camp of Tulkarem, injured some 17 people, four of them seriously, in the attack.

Interim deal terms to remain in effect until Friday — US

The terms of the 2013 interim nuclear deal between Iran and major powers have been extended until Friday, the US says, meaning this is the new effective deadline for talks on a final deal.

“To allow for the additional time to negotiate, we are taking the necessary technical steps for the measures of the Joint Point of Action (the 2013 agreement) to remain in place through July 10,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf says.

— AFP

Top US anti-IS envoy visits Turkey

The US special envoy for the coalition against the Islamic State (IS) group is in Ankara on Tuesday to meet Turkish officials, after speculation Turkey could launch a military intervention inside Syria, sources tell AFP.

“General John Allen will hold talks in Ankara today,” a Turkish official tells AFP on condition of anonymity, adding that the talks were “naturally” expected to focus on the fight against IS.

Accompanied by US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Christine Wormuth and military officials, Allen is expected to meet with Feridun Sinirlioglu, the Turkish undersecretary of the foreign ministry as well as military chiefs, the source says.

Turkey has reinforced its military presence on the volatile border over the past week, deploying tanks and anti-aircraft missiles there as well as additional troops.

— AFP

Russian FM says arms embargo ‘major problem’ in talks

The lifting of a conventional arms embargo on Iran is a “major problem” in talks between Tehran and major powers toward a nuclear deal, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov tells Interfax on Tuesday.

“I can assure you that there remains one major problem that’s related to sanctions: this is the problem of an arms embargo,” Lavrov says during negotiations on the nuclear accord in Vienna.

— AFP

Disabilities integration town planned for north

The National Council for Planning and Building approves the construction of a town in northern Israel which will integrate Israel’s special needs population, the Ynet news website reports.

Some 20 percent of the population of the town, to be called Shibolet, will be on the autism spectrum or have other cognitive disabilities. The town will feature facilities catering to the population, including an employment center, and a pool and farm used for various therapies.

Spanish woman held for recruiting pre-teen girls to IS

Spanish police on Tuesday arrest a woman suspected of recruiting pre-teen girls and teenagers to send to areas controlled by the Islamic State armed group in Syria.

An Interior Ministry statement says the woman, a Spaniard, was arrested in the city of Arrecife on the Canary Island of Lanzarote.

The ministry says the woman maintained contact with Islamic State militants in Syria, including a facilitator who gave her orders for recruiting girls and arranging their travel to Syria.

Girls and teens who she helped get to Syria ended up being sexually exploited, did domestic work and work in hospitals and had roles policing women, the statement says. A few joined the Islamic State as combatants, the statement says.

Authorities do not specify how many people the woman was suspected of recruiting but say police have been investigating her since 2014 in a probe overseen by the National Court in Madrid.

— AP

Hamas asked IS to open Sinai smuggling route — IDF source

A senior intelligence officer in the IDF’s Southern Command tells the Ynet news website that the Sinai assault last week by the Islamic State was “aimed at opening a smuggling route to Hamas in the Gaza Strip.”

According to the officer, Hamas had asked the IS affiliate to open a route in the northern peninsula in an effort to obtain materials to build rockets.

“In exchange, the Islamic State receives various resources from Hamas,” he says.

The IDF has said that Hamas provided the Sinai branch of the Islamic State weaponry and medical help. Last week, the jihadist group launched a massive attack, which included a wave of suicide bombings and assaults on Egyptian security installations by dozens of militants. Egyptian security officials said dozens of troops were killed, along with nearly 100 attackers, though the Egyptian Army officially acknowledges only 12 soldiers killed.

Hamas says PA arrested, tortured 200 of its members

Hamas alleges Tuesday that more than 200 of its members had been arrested by the Palestinian Authority recently, with most of them tortured, threatening to widen a rift between Palestinian factions.

“Hamas members in the occupied West Bank are being submitted to their worst campaign of arrests — their biggest and longest,” Hamas official Abdurahman Shadid tells journalists.

He says more than 200 had been arrested since July 2 in the West Bank and “most have been severely tortured.”

The Palestinian Authority had not immediately responded to the claims, though one of its officials said last week about 100 Hamas members had been arrested.

— AFP

PM pans ‘hurtful’ remarks against Reform Jews

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects Religious Services Minister David Azoulay’s “hurtful remarks about Reform Judaism, which do not reflect the position of the government,” according to the Prime Minister’s Office.

“I have spoken with Minister Azoulay to remind him that Israel is a home for all Jews and that as minister of religious services, he serves all of Israel’s citizens,” Netanyahu says.

— Raphael Ahren

FBI raids home of Subway spokesman

FBI agents and Indiana State Police raid the home of Subway restaurant spokesman Jared Fogle, removing electronics from the property and searching the house with a police dog.

FBI Special agent Wendy Osborne says the FBI was conducting an investigation in Zionsville, an affluent Indianapolis suburb, but wouldn’t say whether it involved Fogle or describe the nature of the investigation.

Neighbors confirmed the raid occurred at the home of Fogle, 37, who is Jewish, and who became the restaurant chain’s pitchman after shedding 245 pounds more than 15 years ago, in part by regularly eating Subway sandwiches. Subway began featuring Fogle in commercials soon after, and his story was instrumental in giving the sandwich chain an image as a healthy place to eat.

He has since worked to create awareness of childhood obesity through his Jared Foundation.

— AP

3 more women file complaints against Safed rabbi

Three more Israeli women file complaints of sexual assault against a Safed rabbi.

The new complaints filed Monday night bring the total to eight against the rabbi, who was arrested Thursday night at Ben Gurion Airport on his way to Brazil. The arrest was based on an accusation by a woman who claimed that she was raped by the rabbi several years ago.

A gag order was placed on the case, including the name of the rabbi, identified as a yeshiva head from the Safed area who belongs to modern Orthodox Zionist circles.

His name will be released on Wednesday, a Nazareth District Court judge ruled on Tuesday, pending an appeal by the rabbi to the Israeli Supreme Court, Haaretz reported.

The rabbi reportedly denies the accusations.

— JTA

Jewish tombstone pieces pulled from Polish river

Fragments of about 100 tombstones from a Jewish cemetery destroyed by the Nazis are removed from a riverbed in Poland.

Archaeologists remove the tombstone fragments from the Warta River, located in Mstow, Silesia, on the border with the Czech Republic, Radio Poland reports Tuesday.

The discovery of the fragments, identified by Hebrew-language inscriptions and Jewish symbols, was made by a team of archaeologists from the University of Lodz.

Some of the tombstones were used as paving stones, archaeologist Olgierd Lawrynowicz tells Radio Poland. He says the discovery of the fragments is a valuable source of information regarding the life of the Jewish community in Mstow prior to World War II.

Archaeologists will clean and catalog the fragments.

— JTA

Talks ‘not where we need to be’ — US

Global powers negotiating with Iran to seal a deal curbing its nuclear program are not yet where they want to be, a senior US official says.

“We have never been closer … and we are still not where we need to be,” a senior US administration official says.

— AFP

Iran to extend Syria’s credit by $1 billion

Syria’s parliament on Tuesday approves a deal with Iran under which Tehran will provide the government with a new line of credit worth $1 billion, state media says.

The credit line will be the third that Tehran has extended to Damascus since the conflict in Syria erupted with anti-government protests in March 2011.

“The People’s Council today approved a deal on a line of credit of $1 billion,” which was signed on May 19 in Damascus by Syria’s Commercial Bank and the Export Development Bank of Iran, the official SANA news agency says.

It says the credit would be used for “importing merchandise and carrying out projects,” without giving further details.

— AFP

UN restrictions on arms, missiles stay in Iran deal — US

UN sanctions on arms trade and missile sales related to nuclear activity will remain in place in any Iran deal, a US official says Tuesday.

“There will be an ongoing restriction on arms just like there will be ongoing restrictions regarding missiles,” the senior administration official says, adding that negotiators were drafting a new resolution as part of the Iran nuclear deal to go before the UN Security Council.

— AFP

US says no Iran deal would be a ‘tragedy’

Negotiators are taking the talks “day by day,” as they seek to slot together the last pieces of a “Rubik’s cube” into a complex negotiation which has lasted almost two years now, a senior US official says.

“Sometimes things have to align in … a moment of history to be able to do something. We are probably closer than we’ve ever been, because there is more of an alignment, but whether it clicks into that final cube we don’t yet know,” the official tells reporters.

“You can get 95 percent of the way, and you can’t get there in the end.”

The official says there was astonishment in the US delegation at media speculation that a deal was within reach with the talks playing out behind closed doors in Vienna.

“I quite frankly think, expectations need to be based more on a sense of reality. This is very, very hard tough, stuff,” the official says, asking not to be identified.

“If very tough political decisions, hard choices, can get made soon, I do believe we can get to an agreement … it is possible,” the official says, adding it would be “a tragedy” if after months of work the talks collapsed.

— AFP

US only training 60 moderate Syrian rebels

America’s top two military leaders on Tuesday defend President Barack Obama’s strategy to defeat Islamic State militants amid blistering criticism from Republican senators who argue that the administration’s program to train and equip thousands of moderate Syrian rebels is faltering.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter acknowledges publicly for the first time that the program aimed at stopping the momentum of IS has slowed to the point where it has only about 60 participating fighters — a level well beneath that envisioned by US policymakers.

Sen. John McCain, the Armed Services Committee chairman and persistent Obama foreign policy critic, tells Carter: “I got to tell you that after four years, Mr. Secretary, that is not a very impressive number.”

At a committee hearing, Carter said there were 7,000 prospective recruits in the pipeline, but conceded that 60 trainees was not an impressive number.

“That is a small class,” Carter said. “It results in the fact that this is the number that got through a very vigorous vetting and selection process that we have. … We expect that number to improve.”

— AP

Animal rights groups sue NYC over Jewish ritual

An animal rights group is suing several rabbis, synagogues and New York City to halt a Yom Kippur ritual in which chickens are slaughtered.

The Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporas filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court against the kapparot ritual, which is practiced by Orthodox Jews in the city, New York media reported Monday.

Kapparot involves swinging a live chicken over one’s head three times and reciting a prayer to cast sins to the bird. The chicken is then slaughtered and donated to the poor. In recent years, money has replaced the chicken in the rite for many Jewish groups.

The lawsuit accuses the police and health departments of assisting the ritual by blocking off streets and sidewalks, and not enforcing city and state laws that regulate health and animal cruelty issues, the New York Daily News reports.

— JTA

Israeli tourist killed in Uganda

An Israeli tourist in his 50s is killed during a trip to Uganda, the Foreign Ministry says.

The ministry says the man, who has not yet been named, was injured and flown to Kampala for medical treatment. He was later pronounced dead.

The ministry does not specify how the man was hurt, and says it is withholding details about the case at the family’s request.

His remains will be flown to Israel for burial.

Israel slams UNESCO over Jerusalem resolution

Israel is criticizing a looming decision on Jerusalem by the UN’s cultural agency, saying it ignores Jewish and Christian ties to the biblical city.

Several Arab states submitted a draft resolution to UNESCO that condemns Israel for archaeological digs in Jerusalem’s Old City and for building a light rail line nearby that it says caused damage and ruined its “visual integrity.”

A UNESCO official says a resolution is due to be adopted Wednesday.

Israeli Foreign Ministry Director Dore Gold says the text “deliberately ignores the historical connection between the Jewish people and their ancient capital.” He says it also ignores Christianity’s ties to Jerusalem.

— AP

Western Wall rabbi sorry for kippah incident

The rabbi of the Western Wall apologizes that a woman was turned away from the holy site for wearing a kippah, but said he was not familiar with the incident.

Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch says in a statement issued Tuesday that if the incident did occur, the response was incorrect.

Rabinovitch also says that the Israel Police have not reported such an incident involving a woman identified by the Women of the Wall group only as Linda, a recently arrived American yeshiva student.

“If there was an incident of this kind, Western Wall officials were wrong to prevent Linda from entering,” the rabbi says. “The Western Wall is open to all men and women. I give my sincere apologies and the apologies of my staff to Linda and hope you return soon to visit the Western Wall.”

— JTA