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Obama faces negotiations test in Russia

WASHINGTON, July 5 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama Sunday was preparing to leave on a trip to Russia for his first nuts-and-bolts negotiations with rival leaders, analysts say.

Obama arrives in Moscow Monday after his administration had made it clear they want to "hit the reset button" on the United States' relationship with Russia in the fields of arms control, missile defense and nuclear non-proliferation, The Washington Post reported.

Observers will be watching to see how well Obama does in what likely will be hardball negotiations with his Russian counterpart, President Dmitry Medvedev, who wants U.S. pledges to scrap a missile defense system in Eastern Europe as well as guarantees Washington won't seek to draw former the Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO.

Obama, meanwhile, is seeking Russian cooperation backing tough sanctions against Iran if he can't produce a diplomatic breakthrough to curb Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

"We're not going to reassure or give or trade anything with the Russians regarding NATO expansion or missile defense," Michael McFaul, special assistant to the president and senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs, told the Post.

Southern China battered by flooding

BEIJING, July 5 (UPI) -- Flooding from dangerously high rivers in southern China has killed at least 15 people and displaced more than 400,000, authorities said Sunday.

While a week of storms in China and Vietnam began to subside Sunday, the possibility of more flooding remained in Guangxi, Hunan, Jiangxi and Fujian provinces, Xinhua, China's state-run news agency reported.

Flooding from the storms destroyed thousands of homes, cut power, damaged major roads and eroded hundreds of thousands of acres of valuable crop land, Xinhua said.

In Guangxi's Rongshui county, an estimated 300 students were trapped above flood waters in a boarding school, with local authorities managing to get food and safe drinking water to them.

About 7,000 people in Guangxi's Luocheng county were moved to safety as a section of the Kama reservoir weakened under the rising water level, Xinhua reported.

Facebook showed pics of spy chief nominee

LONDON, July 5 (UPI) -- John Sawers' suitability to head Britain's Secret Intelligence Service is being questioned in light of his wife's disclosures on Facebook, sources said.

Sawers is Britain's ambassador to the United Nations. In November, he's scheduled to become chief of MI6, Britain's spying operations abroad.

Last month, Sawers' wife, Shelley, posted dozens of pictures, with captions, to her account on Facebook showing where the Sawers live and work, who they call friends and where they all go on holiday, The Sunday Telegram reported.

The material was removed from the site after the Telegraph alerted the British Foreign Office to the photos and their details, the newspaper said.

Senior political leaders reportedly said Shelley Sawers' actions raised doubts about her husband's suitability to lead the intelligence service, the Telegraph said.

Edward Davey, a Liberal Democrat and a member of Parliament, has called on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to investigate whether the Facebook disclosures have compromised Sawers, the Telegraph reported.

Leading clerics condemn Iranian election

CAIRO, July 5 (UPI) -- A powerful group of clerics is publicly supporting Iranians who believe their nation's presidential election was rigged, political observers said.

In a posting on its Web site, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum Saturday called the election illegitimate and chastised government leaders for the use of force in crushing public protests across Iran last month, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The powerful clerics also urged other religious leaders to join them in fighting the government's refusal to adequately reconsider charges of voter fraud.

The clerics' statement was an act of defiance against Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the most public sign, so far, of a split in the nation's clerical establishment, said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University.

"I don't ever remember in the 20 years of Khamenei's rule where he was clearly and categorically on one side and so many clergy were on the other side," Milani said.

Khamenei's government has portrayed the opposition, and its top presidential candidate, Mir Hussein Mousavi, as traitors, while encouraging the nation to accept incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for another term.