10 things you need to know today: July 14, 2015

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif laughs.

(Image credit: (Joe Klamar/Pool Photo via AP))

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1. Landmark Iran nuclear deal reached
2. Netanyahu calls Iran deal 'a bad mistake of historic proportions'
3. Obama commutes sentences of 46 prisoners
4. New York City settles with Eric Garner's family for $5.9 million
5. Pentagon aims to lift transgender ban in the military
6. Hillary Clinton attacks GOP on income inequality
7. Boy Scouts lift gay leadership ban
8. Mexico offering $3.8 million reward for 'El Chapo'
9. Spacecraft gets first close-up images of Pluto
10. Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman released

published 14 July 2015

1. Landmark Iran nuclear deal reached

On Tuesday morning, Iran and six world powers announced a long-awaited deal limiting Iran's nuclear program in exchange for relieving economic sanctions over time. "This deal demonstrates that American diplomacy can bring about real and meaningful change," President Barack Obama said. "Change that makes our country and the world more secure." Iran had been working on the deal with the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany for 20 months.

Before the details of the historic deal with Iran had even been made public, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on the offensive. "This is a bad mistake of historic proportions," he said in Jerusalem on Monday, calling the agreement "a sure path to nuclear weapons." Netanyahu has been against the deal from the beginning, condemning it as "Iran's path to the bomb" in a March speech to Congress that the Obama administration called "destructive."

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President Obama announced in a video Monday that he will grant clemency to 46 prisoners. "These men and women were not hardened criminals," the president said. "But the overwhelming majority had been sentenced to at least 20 years," many for "non-violent drug offenses." "Their punishments didn't fit the crime," Obama said. "And if they'd been sentenced under today's laws, nearly all of them would have already served their time." Obama has now commuted 89 prisoners — the most since Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s.

The family of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man who died after being placed in a chokehold by police, reached a settlement with New York City for $5.9 million. The family filed a notice of claim, the first step in filing a lawsuit against the city, in October, asking for $75 million. Last July, police stopped Garner outside a Staten Island store for selling loose cigarettes. A bystander captured video of officers taking Garner down to the ground. He was heard saying, "I can't breathe," before losing consciousness.

Pentagon leaders are expected to announce this week that they will try to lift the ban on transgender individuals in the military, senior officials told The Associated Press. Scrapping the transgender ban would end "one of the last gender- or sexuality-based barriers to military service." After this week's announcement, there will be a six-month period for the Pentagon to assess the plan, during which transgender individuals will still not be able to join the military.

Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton spoke of her goal to fight income inequality in a speech Monday in New York. As expected, she called the need to raise middle-class income "the defining economic issue of our time." Clinton also singled out Republicans for allegedly deepening income inequality in a speech designed to lay out her would-be administration's economic agenda. "Twice now in the past 20 years a Democratic president has had to come in and clean up the mess," she said.

Boy Scouts of America unanimously voted to end its ban on gay scout leaders, the organization announced Monday. The president of the organization, Robert Gates, had called for the ban to be lifted back in May. The new rule is effective immediately. "While this policy change is not perfect — BSA's religious chartering partners will be allowed to continue to discriminate against gay adults — it is difficult to overstate the importance of today's announcement," said Zach Wahls, the executive director of Scouts for Equality.

A 60 million peso ($3.8 million) reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest of drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who escaped from the maximum security Altiplano prison on Saturday. During a news conference, Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said that Guzman, the leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel, had to have received help escaping. Three prison officials, including the director and the national prisons director, have been let go, and 34 prison staffers are being questioned.

NASA spacecraft New Horizons captured the first close-up pictures of Pluto on Tuesday after traveling 9.5 years and 3.3 billion miles. Scientists know little about the dwarf planet. "There's a feeling among scientists that Pluto probably will tell us what the early solar system looked like, and it's now locked in deep freeze and maybe it will tell us what we once were, a long time ago," said Ed Kruzins, the director of the Australian tracking station that will first receive the images.

Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman was released at midnight Tuesday. The book, written before To Kill a Mockingbird but set in later years, has already made waves due to its portrayal of Atticus Finch as a segregationist. There's also controversy over the circumstances of the book's discovery, and if Lee, 89, had the mental faculties to consent to its release by HarperCollins. The Guardian published chapter one online last week.

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Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.