NATION/WORLD
Friday, April 3, 2015
World powers, Iran seal nuke breakthrough
Associated Press
LAUSANNE, Switzerland — Cap-
ping exhausting and contentious talks,
Iran and world powers sealed a break-
through agreement Thursday outlin-
ing limits on Iran’s nuclear program
to keep it from being able to produce
atomic weapons. The Islamic Re-
public was promised an end to years
of crippling economic sanctions, but
only if negotiators transform the plan
into a comprehensive pact.
They will try to do that in the next
three months.
The United States and Iran, long-
time adversaries who hashed out
much of the agreement, each hailed
the efforts of their diplomats over
days of sleepless nights in Switzer-
land. Speaking at the White House,
President Barack Obama called it a
“good deal” that would address con-
cerns about Iran’s ambitions. Iranian
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad
Zarif called it a “win-win outcome.”
Those involved have spent 18
months in broader negotiations that
were extended twice since an interim
accord was reached shortly after Irani-
an President Hassan Rouhani entered
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of more than a year of secret negotia-
tions between the Obama administra-
tion and Iran, a country the U.S. still
considers the world’s leading state
sponsor of terrorism.
Opponents of the emerging accord,
including Israel and Republican lead-
ers in Congress, reacted with skepti-
cism. They criticized the outline for
failing to do enough to curb Iran’s po-
tential to produce nuclear weapons or
to mandate intrusive enough inspec-
tions. Obama disagreed.
“This framework would cut off ev-
ery pathway that Iran could take to de-
velop a nuclear weapon,” he declared.
“This deal is not based on trust. It’s
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If implemented, the understandings
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time in more than a decade of diplo-
matic efforts that Iran’s nuclear efforts
would be rolled back.
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cuts in centrifuges, the machines that
can spin uranium gas to levels used
in nuclear warheads. Of the near-
ly 20,000 centrifuges Iran now has
installed or running at its main en-
richment site, the country would be
allowed to operate just over 5,000.
Much of its enriched stockpiles would
be neutralized. A planned reactor
would be reconstructed so it produced
no weapons-grade plutonium. Moni-
toring and inspections by the U.N. nu-
clear agency would be enhanced.
AP Photo/Vahid Salemi
An Iranian man flashes the victory sign from his car while celebrating
on a street in northern Tehran, Iran, Thursday, after Iran’s nuclear agree-
ment with world powers in Lausanne, Switzerland.
America’s negotiating partners
in Europe strongly backed the re-
sult. President Francois Hollande of
France, which had pushed the U.S. for
a tougher stance, endorsed the accord
while warning that “sanctions lifted
can be re-established if the agreement
is not applied.”
Obama sought to frame the deal as
a salve that reduces the chances of the
combustible Middle East becoming
even more unstable with the introduc-
tion of a nuclear-armed Iran. Many
fear that would spark an arms race that
could spiral out of control in a region
rife with sectarian rivalry, terrorist
threats and weak or failed states.
Obama said he had spoken with
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and that
he’d invite him and other Arab leaders
to Camp David this spring to discuss
security strategy. The Sunni majority
Saudis have made veiled threats about
creating their own nuclear program to
counter Shia-led Iran.
The American leader also spoke by
telephone with Israeli Prime Minis-
ter Benjamin Netanyahu, perhaps the
sharpest critic of the diplomacy with
Iran. Netanyahu told Obama a deal
based on the agreement “would threat-
en the survival of Israel.” The White
House said Obama assured Netanyahu
that the agreement would not diminish
U.S. concerns about Iran’s sponsor-
ship of terrorism.
Obama saved his sharpest words
for members of Congress who have
threatened to either try to kill the
agreement or approve new sanctions
against Iran. Appearing in the Rose
Garden, Obama said the issues at
stake are “bigger than politics.”
“These are matters of war and
peace,” he said, and if Congress kills
the agreement “international unity
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will widen.”
Hawks on Capitol Hill reacted
slowly to the news from the Swiss
city of Lausanne, perhaps because the
framework was far more detailed than
many diplomats had predicted over a
topsy-turvy week of negotiation.
House Speaker John Boehner said
it is “naive to suggest the Iranian re-
gime will not continue to use its nucle-
ar program, and any economic relief,
to further destabilize the region.”
Many of the nuclear limits on
Iran would be in place for a decade,
while others would last 15 or 20 years.
Sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear pro-
grams would be suspended after the
International Atomic Energy Agency
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In a joint statement, European
Union foreign policy chief Federica
Mogherini and Iran’s Zarif called the
agreement a “decisive step.” High-
lighting Iran’s effort to show a new
face of its government, Zarif then held
a news conference, answering many
questions in English, and Obama’s
statement was carried live and uncen-
sored on Iranian state TV.
Still, all sides spoke with a sense of
caution.
“We have taken a major step, but
are still some way away from where
we want to be,” Zarif told reporters,
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agreement might ease suspicion be-
tween the U.S. and Iran, which hav-
en’t had diplomatic relations since the
1979 overthrow of the shah and the
subsequent U.S. Embassy hostage cri-
sis in Tehran.
California moves to save the water, kill the lawn
LONG BEACH, Ca-
lif. (AP) — What’s it go-
ing to take to get people
to use a lot less water in
drought-stricken California,
the Technicolor landscape
of lush yards, emerald golf
courses and aquamarine
swimming pools?
Residents may be about
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SRVHV WKH ¿UVW PDQGDWRU\
statewide water-use restric-
tions later this year.
Gov. Jerry Brown on
Wednesday ordered a 25
percent overall cutback
in water use by cities and
towns, but not farms, in
the most sweeping drought
measures ever undertaken
in Calfornia.
The crackdown comes
as California and its nearly
40 million residents move
toward a fourth summer of
drought with no relief in
sight. State reservoirs have
a year’s worth of water,
and with record low snow-
fall over the winter there
won’t be much to replenish
them. Wells in some parts
of the state are going dry as
groundwater levels fall.
Brown’s move to get
tough on water use came
after his push for volun-
tary conservation yielded
mixed results. Asked by
Brown in January 2014 to
cut their water consumption
by 20 percent, Californians
achieved only about half
that.
$IÀXHQW 6RXWKHUQ &DO-
ifornia communities with
lots of landscaping on auto-
matic timers were some of
the worst offenders, topping
300 gallons of water per
person a day compared with
70 gallons for some San
Francisco Bay Area com-
munities.
6WDWHZDWHURI¿FLDOVZLOO
now draw up the emergen-
cy regulations to carry out
the governor’s order and
hope to have them ready
for enactment in May, said
George Kostyrko, spokes-
man for the state Water Re-
sources Control Board.
The governor’s order
requires the roughly 400
water agencies around the
state to cut water use by
one-quarter from the 2013
level. The state government
is also ramping up a water
conservation campaign that
will include billboards and
radio messages through the
end of June.
Homeowners will get
rebates for replacing lawns
with greenery more suited
to the semi-arid state and
for installing more wa-
ter-thrifty appliances and
SOXPELQJ¿[WXUHV7KHVWDWH
also will press water agen-
cies to impose higher, grad-
uated rates to discourage
water guzzling.
East Oregonian
Page 9A
BRIEFLY
Al-Shabab
militants kill 147 at
Kenya university
GARISSA, Kenya (AP)
— Al-Shabab gunmen
rampaged through a
university in northeastern
Kenya at dawn Thursday,
killing 147 people in the
group’s deadliest attack in
the East African country.
Four militants were slain by
security forces to end the
siege just after dusk.
The masked attackers
— strapped with explosives
and armed with AK-
47s — singled out non-
Muslim students at Garissa
University College and then
gunned them down without
mercy, survivors said. Others
ran for their lives.
Amid the massacre, the
men took dozens of hostages
in a dormitory as they battled
troops and police before the
operation ended after about
13 hours, witnesses said.
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Kenyan security forces
struck the attackers, the
militants exploded “like
bombs,” Interior Minister
Joseph Nkaissery said,
adding that the shrapnel
wounded some of the
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Al-Shabab spokesman
Ali Mohamud Rage said
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based extremist group were
responsible. The al-Qaida-
linked group has been
blamed for a series of attacks
in Kenya, including the
siege at the Westgate Mall in
Nairobi in 2013 that killed
67 people, as well as other
violence in the north. The
group has vowed to retaliate
against Kenya for sending
troops to Somalia in 2011
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cross-border attacks.
Most of the 147 dead
were students, but two
security guards, one
policeman and one soldier
also were killed in the attack,
Nkaissery said.
German crash
co-pilot researched
suicide, cockpit
BERLIN (AP) —
Germanwings co-pilot
Andreas Lubitz spent time
online researching suicide
methods and cockpit door
security in the week before
crashing Flight 9525,
prosecutors said Thursday
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fatal descent may have been
a premeditated act.
As the browsing history
on a tablet computer found
at Lubitz’s apartment added
a disturbing new piece to
the puzzle of the March 24
crash, French investigators
said they had recovered
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data recorder — another
step toward completing the
picture.
Attention has focused on
Lubitz since investigators
evaluated the plane’s cockpit
voice recorder last week.
They believe the 27-year-
old locked his captain out
of the cockpit during the
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Duesseldorf and deliberately
plunged the plane into a
French mountainside.
Duesseldorf prosecutors
said they had reviewed
search terms from March 16-
23 that were in the browser
memory of the computer
found in Lubitz’s home in
the city.
The co-pilot researched
“on one hand medical
treatment methods,
and on the other hand
informed himself about
types and ways of
going about a suicide,”
prosecutors’ spokesman
Ralf Herrenbrueck said in a
statement.
“In addition, on at least
one day, (Lubitz) concerned
himself for several minutes
with search terms about
cockpit doors and their
security precautions,” he
added.
Multiple countries
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slavery claims
BENJINA, Indonesia
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countries are traveling to
remote islands in eastern
Indonesia to investigate
how thousands of foreign
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forced into catching seafood
that could end up in the
United States, Europe and
elsewhere.
A week after The
Associated Press published
a story about slavery
in the seafood industry
— including video of
men locked in a cage —
delegations from Thailand
and Indonesia visited the
island village of Benjina.
A government team from
Myanmar is also scheduled
to visit the area next week to
try to determine how many
of its citizens are stuck there
and what can be done to
bring them home.
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the problem stretches across
several countries, and
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to resolve. The migrant
workers lured or even
NLGQDSSHGLQWR¿VKLQJDUH
usually from Myanmar,
also known as Burma, one
of the poorest countries
in the world, along with
Cambodia, Laos and poor
areas of Thailand.
Mike Stratton
Business
Health
Farm
Life
Mike Stratton, CIC/CFP
One Responsible Source Agent
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