For the first time, U.S. health regulators have judged a type of smokeless tobacco to be less harmful than cigarettes, a decision that could open the door to other less risky options for smokers.

The milestone announcement on Tuesday makes Swedish Match tobacco pouches the first so-called reduced-risk tobacco product ever sanctioned by the Food and Drug Administration.

FDA regulators stressed that their decision does not mean the pouches are safe, just less harmful, and that all tobacco products pose risks. The pouches will still bear mandatory government warnings that they can cause mouth cancer, gum disease and tooth loss.

But the company will be able to advertise its tobacco pouches as posing a lower risk of lung cancer, bronchitis, heart disease and other diseases than cigarettes.

The pouches of ground tobacco, called snus — Swedish for snuff and pronounced “snoose” — have been popular in Scandinavian countries for decades but are a tiny part of the U.S. tobacco market.

Users stick the teabag-like pouches between their cheek and gum to absorb nicotine. Unlike regular chewing tobacco, the liquid from snus is generally swallowed, rather than spit out. Chewing tobacco is fermented; snus goes through a steamed pasteurization process.

Long-term data

FDA acting commissioner Ned Sharpless said the agency based its decision on long-term, population-level data showing lower levels of lung cancer, emphysema and other smoking-related disease with the use of snus.

Sharpless added that the agency will closely monitor Swedish Match’s marketing efforts to ensure they target adult tobacco users.

“Anyone who does not currently use tobacco products, especially youth, should refrain from doing so,” he said in a statement.

Stockholm-based Swedish Match sells its snus under the brand name General in mint, wintergreen and other flavors. They compete against pouches from rivals Altria and R.J. Reynolds. But pouches account for just 5% of the $9.1 billion U.S. market for chew and other smokeless tobacco products, according to Euromonitor market research firm.
 
And public health experts questioned whether U.S. smokers would be willing to switch to the niche product.

“Snus products have a bit of a challenge” among smokers who are used to inhaling their nicotine, said Vaugh Rees, director of Harvard University’s Center for Global Tobacco Control.

U.S. smoking rate

The U.S. smoking rate has fallen to an all-time low of 14% of adults, or roughly 34 million Americans. But smoking remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the U.S., responsible for some 480,000 deaths annually.

The FDA’s decision has been closely watched by both public health experts and tobacco companies.
 
Public health experts have long hoped that alternatives like the pouches could benefit Americans who are unable or unwilling to quit cigarettes and other traditional tobacco products. Tobacco companies are looking for new products to sell as they face declining cigarette demand due to tax increases, health concerns, smoking bans and social stigma.

The FDA itself also has much at stake in the review of snus and similar tobacco alternatives.

Congress gave the FDA the power to regulate key aspects of the tobacco industry in 2009, including designating new tobacco products as “modified risk,” compared with traditional cigarettes, chew and other products.
 
But until Tuesday, the FDA had never granted permission for any product to make such claims.
 
The FDA is reviewing several other products vying for “reduced risk” status, including a heat-not-burn cigarette alternative made by Philip Morris International. While electronic cigarettes are generally considered less harmful than the tobacco-and-paper variety, they have not been scientifically reviewed as posing a lower risk.
 

…

A top U.S. Census Bureau official says the agency has pivoted away from verifying addresses and is now kicking off a campaign to recruit and hire as many as a half million temporary workers to help with the largest head count in U.S. history next spring.

Timothy Olson, the agency’s associate director for field operations, said Tuesday that 32,000 workers verified 50 million addresses over an almost two-month period that ended more than a week ago.

Olson called the address verification process a success.

The agency already has 900,000 people who have applied for 2020 Census jobs, but the bureau wants a potential pool of 2.7 million applicants to choose from.

The 2020 Census head count will be the first decennial census when respondents are encouraged to answer questions online.
 

…

Iran will not be allowed to participate in any international judo competitions until it allows its athletes to face Israelis.

The International Judo Federation (IJF) on Tuesday issued an indefinite ban “until the Iran Judo Federation gives strong guarantees and prove that they will respect the IJF Statutes and accept that their athletes fight against Israeli athletes.”

IJF investigated Iran’s policy after Iranian Saeid Mollaei walked off the Iranian team during last year’s world championships in Tokyo. Mollaei, who was the reigning champion, claimed that he had been pressured to deliberately lose in the semifinals in order to avoid facing Israelis.

The IJF accused the Iranian government of pressuring its athletes and flouting international completion rules.

Iran has denied pressuring Mollaei, who is now in hiding in Germany.

But the IJF investigation into the incident found that Iran’s actions “constitute a serious breach and gross violation of the Statutes of the IJF, its legitimate interests, its principles and objectives.”

Iran is expected to appeal the ban to the Switzerland-based Court for Arbitration of Sport.

…

Boeing is replacing the head of its commercial-airplanes division as it struggles with a crisis created by two deadly crashes of its newest airliner.

Boeing said Tuesday that Kevin McAllister is out as chief executive of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. He is being replaced by Stanley Deal, leader of Boeing’s services division.

The shake-up in Boeing’s top ranks comes just days after the release of internal communications that showed a senior test pilot experienced serious problems while testing flight-control software for the 737 Max on a simulator.

That software, called MCAS, is at the center of investigations into two crashes that killed 346 people and led to grounding of the Max. Boeing is taking much longer than executives expected to change the software and get the plane flying again.

Boeing announced two other promotions, including a replacement for Deal, who has led Boeing Global Services since the division was created in 2016.

McAllister was recruited from General Electric Co.’s jet-engine operation to run Boeing’s biggest division in 2016, just months before the 737 Max went into service. Boeing did not specify whether he quit or was fired.

“The Boeing board fully supports these leadership moves,” Chairman David Calhoun said in a prepared statement.

Calhoun himself is new in his position. CEO Dennis Muilenburg also served as company chairman until the board stripped him of that job and elevated Calhoun two weeks ago.

In a statement, Muilenburg thanked McAllister for his service “during a challenging time, and for his commitment to support this transition.”

Boeing took a $5.6 billion pretax charge this summer to cover its estimate for compensating airlines that have canceled thousands of flights because of grounded planes. It has disclosed nearly $3 billion in other additional costs related to the grounding.

The company faces dozens of lawsuits by families of passengers killed in the Max crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. It is also the subject of investigations by the Justice Department and Congress.

Chicago-based Boeing Co. is scheduled to report its latest financial results on Wednesday.

…

China has seized on an embarrassing revelation about U.S. President Donald Trump’s top trade adviser to score points and toughen its rhetoric in its long-running trade dispute with the United States.

At a briefing Tuesday in Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said the international community had been “in uproar and shocked” by revelations that U.S. trade adviser Peter Navarro used a fictitious analyst as a source of quotes in several books.

“Making up and peddling lies, even making policy based on lies, is not only ridiculous, but also extremely dangerous,” Hua was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.

A day earlier, the state-run television network CCTV said in an editorial that Navarro “has put much of his fantasy into practice as one of the most important pushing hands behind the U.S.’s decisions to stage a trade war against China. He is also the most radical White House adviser to voice the China threat narratives.”

Navarro, an academic seen as one of the administration’s strongest advocates for a hard line on China trade, has been forced to admit that Ron Vara, a hawkish analyst quoted in several of his books, is in fact a made-up person whose name is an anagram of Navarro’s own.

The fiction was first revealed last week by Tessa Morris-Suzuki at the Australian National University, who wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education that Ron Vara’s name turned up a dozen times in at least six of Navarro’s books, but that no such person could be found.

Navarro subsequently admitted to having invented the character but defended his action in a press statement, saying the fictional analyst was a “whimsical device and pen name” devised purely for “entertainment value,” not as a source of fact.

Credibility

Nevertheless, analysts say the revelation has weakened Navarro’s credibility as a key player in efforts to resolve the trade dispute, and handed Beijing a cudgel with which to hammer the American negotiators. Navarro is considered among the architects of the U.S. trade policy and has been a regular participant in those talks.

Gao Mobo, a professor of Chinese studies at the University of Adelaide, said academics need to be impartial and objective, supporting their assertions with empirical evidence or by citing credible sources. “You cannot just write up a statement or make an assertion without substantiation,” he said in an email to VOA.

Frank Xie, an associate professor of marketing at the University of South Carolina Aiken, suggested the Navarro episode had given Beijing an opportunity to do something it needed to do anyway — step up its rhetoric in the trade dispute.

China has to appear tough because its leaders realize their country is stuck in a trade war they cannot win, Xie said.

“If it caves in and accepts Trump’s deal, all the benefits for the privileged groups with vested interests and state-run enterprises will be gone. That will collapse the party,” Xie said. “But if it fights [the U.S.] by decoupling the Chinese economy from the U.S. economy, the party will also fall from power.”

Stall tactics

Stuck between two unpalatable alternatives, Xie said, China appears to be trying to stall the trade negotiations in the hope that Trump will be defeated in the 2020 election and they will be able to deal with a new American president.

China is also expected soon to convene a fourth plenary session of the Chinese Communist Party, an event that is long overdue, fueling suspicions of political undercurrents unfavorable to President Xi Jinping. That, Xie said, gives the Chinese leadership another reason to toughen its rhetoric and present a public image of strength.

Despite the commotion over the exposure of Navarro’s alter ego, some analysts doubt the revelation will have much impact on the U.S.-China trade talks.

“The Trump administration’s credibility cannot be hurt any further anyway,” argued Gao, the University of Adelaide professor. Neither will it harm future Sino-U.S. relations, which he said “aren’t based on this kind of credibility.”

Yen Chen-shen, an international relations professor at Taipei’s National Chengchi University, suggested that Navarro’s role in the talks is not that important because the U.S. president has his own agenda toward China and largely makes his own decisions.

The professor advised both the U.S. and Chinese governments to downplay Navarro’s role if they truly want to strike a trade deal.  
 

…

Major League Baseball’s 116th World Series championship series begins Tuesday in Houston, Texas, when the hometown Astros will face off against the Washington Nationals.

Houston will send 19-game regular season winner Gerrit Cole to the mound for Game 1, while three-time Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer gets the start for Washington.

The Astros reached their second World Series in three seasons last Saturday when they beat the New York Yankees 6-4 to win the American League Championship Series, thanks to a dramatic ninth-inning home run by star second baseman Jose Altuve. The Astros won the World Series back in 2017, outlasting the Los Angeles Dodgers 4 games to 3 in the best-of-seven series.

The Nationals are the fairy tale story of this year’s Series — after beginning the season at 19-31, the Nationals reached the playoffs as a wild card (a team that fails to win their division despite having a winning record).  They proceeded to beat the Milwaukee Brewers and the Dodgers in the first two rounds before sweeping the highly favored St. Louis Cardinals in four straight games to win the National League Championship Series, thanks to dominant pitching from starters Anibal Sanchez, Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg and Patrick Corbin.  

The Nationals are in the World Series for the first time in their 50-year history, beginning play as the Montreal Expos before moving to Washington in 2005.

The last time a World Series was played in the U.S. capital city was in 1933, when the Washington Senators lost to the New York Giants.  That team — also dubbed the Nationals  — was the second of three separate Senators franchises that played in Washington between 1891 and 1971, and the most successful, having won the Series in 1924.  

But that team fell on hard times over the next three decades, before moving to Minneapolis in 1960 and becoming the Minnesota Twins.  The third Senators franchise began play a year later, and remained in Washington until 1971, when they became the Texas Rangers.  

…

The king of Thailand has stripped his royal consort of her titles less than three months after they were bestowed upon her.

An announcement in the Royal Thai Government Gazette said 34-year-old Sineenat Bilaskalayani was stripped of all her titles and military ranks for being “ambitious” and trying to “elevate herself to the same state as the queen.”

It said her actions “are considered dishonorable, lacking gratitude, unappreciative of royal kindness, and driving a rift among the royal servants, making misunderstanding among the people, and undermining the nation and the monarchy.”

King Maha Vajiralongkorn, who ascended to the throne in 2016, named Sineenat his royal consort just two months after he married his fourth wife, Queen Suthida.

This was the first time a Thai monarch has taken a consort in nearly a century.

Both Sineenat and Suthida had served as senior officers in palace security units. Suthida was previously a flight attendant with Thai Airways, while Sineenat was an army nurse.

Sineenat’s fate in the royal court is similar to that of the king’s second and third wives.

The king’s second wife fled to the U.S. after she was denounced by him. The kings has also disowned their four sons.

His third wife was also stripped of her titles and banished from the court. Their teenage son lives with his father.

The king’s first marriage also ended in divorce but that wife was also his cousin and part of the royal family so she didn’t share the fate of the others. 

…

Canadian news outlets are predicting that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party will win a second term in office, but will have to do so as a minority government.  

As of late Monday night, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation said Trudeau’s Liberals were either elected or leading in 146 of 338 legislative districts, versus just 118 for the Conservatives, led by Andrew Scheer.  If the results hold, that would leave the Liberals short of the 170 seats needed for a solid working majority.  Trudeau would have to form a governing coalition with one or more smaller parties, most likely the progressive New Democrats. 

The 47-year-old Trudeau won a definitive parliamentary majority in 2015, leading the first Liberal government in 10 years. During his term, he has become a champion of liberals worldwide for his support of free trade, diversity, environmental policies and taking an active role on the world stage.
 
But Trudeau’s bid for a second term was threatened by a handful of scandals, both personal and political in nature. At least three photographs of Trudeau in blackface and brown face from the 1990s and early 2000s surfaced just weeks ahead of the vote.

In another scandal, Trudeau’s former attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, said he pressured her to stop the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalian, a Quebec engineering company, under bribery charges. The firm was formally charged with corruption for paying Libyan government officials, including former dictator Moammar Gadhafi, millions of dollars for contracts between 2001 and 2011.

Wilson-Raybould said she resigned because of the pressure, and continued to receive “veiled threats” from a government official after her resignation.

Trudeau said he was standing up for jobs, but the scandals have benefited Scheer’s campaign.

Conservative supporters chanted “Lock him up! Lock him up!” at a rally Saturday after Scheer said he would investigate the possible corruption. He changed the chant to “Vote him out.”

If Conservatives win the most seats and fail to win a majority, they would probably try to form a government with the backing of Quebec’s separatist Bloc Quebecois Party.

A first-term Canadian prime minister with a parliamentary majority has not lost a bid for re-election in 84 years.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama made an unprecedented endorsement of Trudeau in an Oct. 16 tweet, urging Canadians to reelect the weakened prime minister.

…

Iran says it has given the U.S. a list of detained Iranians whom it wants to be freed in a prisoner swap, drawing a vague public response from U.S. officials who have sought to discuss the issue with Tehran.

Speaking to reporters Monday in Tehran, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said Iran had provided the names of the detained Iranians to the U.S. and was ready to do a trade. He did not specify who was on the list or how it was handed to Washington, with whom Tehran has no formal ties.

But Mousavi said the Iranian government believes about 20 Iranians have been detained by the U.S. on what it considers to be “baseless” charges of circumventing U.S. economic sanctions against Iran. He singled out one of them, Iranian scientist Masoud Soleimani, as a cause for concern due to ill health.

U.S. authorities arrested Soleimani, a stem cell researcher, in October 2018 upon his arrival at a Chicago airport. He was charged with trying to export biological materials to Iran in violation of the sanctions.

Asked by VOA Persian to confirm whether it has received Iran’s list for a proposed prisoner swap, a State Department spokesperson declined to comment specifically and only restated U.S. policy, saying: “The recovery of hostages held by the Islamic Republic of Iran is a top priority for the U.S. government.”

Iran has been detaining at least four Americans for security-related offenses that their relatives and supporters have dismissed as trumped-up charges. The detainees include former U.S. soldier Michael R. White, Chinese-American Princeton University researcher Xiyue Wang, and Iranian-American businessman Siamak Namazi and his elderly father Mohammad Bagher Namazi.

A fifth American, retired FBI agent Robert Levinson, went missing in Iran 12 years ago and his family has said they believe he remains in detention there, a contention denied by Tehran.

Previously, Reuters quoted a U.S. State Department official last month as saying Iran had received a U.S. letter sent earlier this year seeking talks about the fate of several Americans jailed by Tehran. The unnamed official said U.S. efforts to reach out to Iranian officials on the issue were ongoing.

The U.S. official cited by Reuters appeared to be referring to a letter that Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said he received from then-U.S. envoy for hostage affairs Robert O’Brien, who now serves as U.S. National Security Adviser.

U.S. news site Al-Monitor has reported that Zarif acknowledged receiving the letter while speaking to the press on an April visit to the United Nations in New York. It quoted Zarif as complaining that the letter merely asked for Iran to release the detained Americans rather than offering a deal.

A day before making those comments, Zarif told an Asia Society forum in New York that he had made an offer to the Trump administration in October 2018 to swap the detained Americans for Iranians held in the U.S., but heard nothing in response.

The Iranian foreign ministry spokesman’s latest statement about sending a list of detainee names to Washington does not reflect a change in policy, according to Iran analyst Ali Vaez of the Belgium-based International Crisis Group. But in a VOA Persian interview, Vaez said the Iranian official’s comment about the list is a sign that Tehran is raising the profile of its campaign for a prisoner swap.

“It’s one of most important levers that the Iranians have to get the Trump administration to the negotiating table,” Vaez said. “Since U.S.-Iran mediation efforts by world leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have come to naught, Iran is trying to use the prisoner card to establish a communication channel, which could evolve into a broader discussion with the U.S. about how to resolve their current standoff,” he added.

In January 2016, U.S. President Donald Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama freed seven Iranians held in the U.S. in exchange for Iran releasing four Iranian-American prisoners, including Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian.

While campaigning for the U.S. presidential election later that year, Trump criticized Obama for delivering a planeload of cash worth $400 million to Iran on the same day that it released the four Americans, calling it a ransom payment. The Obama administration said the money was previously owed by the U.S. government to Iran but acknowledged using it as leverage to win the Americans’ freedom.

“I know President Trump is reluctant (to do a prisoner swap), but the only solution to get these Americans back home is to engage in some quid pro quo with Iran,” Vaez said. “If the arrangement is limited to a swap of prisoners (and does not include a transfer of cash), it would be more palatable politically in Washington,” Vaez added.

Decades-old tensions between Washington and Tehran have escalated since last year, when Trump withdrew from a 2015 deal between world powers and Iran to limit the Iranian nuclear program in return for lifting international sanctions on the Iranian economy. Trump criticized the deal as not doing enough to stop Iran from engaging in malign behaviors and has been tightening U.S. sanctions against Tehran ever since to achieve that goal.

Iran has vowed to resist those sanctions and retaliate for any U.S. military action against it.

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service. Cindy Saine contributed from the State Department.
 

…

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons has started photocopying inmate letters and other mail at some federal correctional facilities across the U.S. instead of delivering the original parcels, in an attempt to combat the smuggling of synthetic narcotics like K-2, officials told The Associated Press on Monday.

The program is being implemented at a “number of Bureau facilities impacted by the increased introduction of synthetic drugs,” the agency said in a statement to the AP. At those jails and prisons, Bureau of Prisons employees are currently copying incoming mail and then distributing the copies to inmates, the agency said.

Officials would not say how many staff members are being assigned to make photocopies or whether they are removing correction officers to perform the task. The initiative raises questions about whether the agency, which has been plagued by chronic staffing shortages and violence, is reassigning staff members to spend time making photocopies instead of watching inmates.

The Bureau of Prisons has faced increased scrutiny since billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein was able to take his own life behind bars at a federal facility in New York in August. Across the board, the agency has been down 4,000 jobs since 2017. Staffing shortages are so severe that guards routinely work overtime shifts day after day, sometimes being forced to work mandatory overtime.

 In the wake of Epstein’s death, Attorney General William Barr removed the agency’s acting director and named Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, the prison agency’s director from 1992 until 2003, to replace him.

Officials did not provide details on the specific jails and prisons where the program is being implemented, but a person familiar with the matter told AP that one of the facilities is USP Canaan, a high-security penitentiary for male inmates in Pennsylvania. The person spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss jail operations.

Officials say wardens at each of the facilities have discretion under current policy to order the photocopying because they “may establish controls to protect staff, inmates, and the security, discipline, and good order of the institution.”

The agency is also exploring the possibility of using an off-site vendor to scan general correspondence and then send it as electronic files to kiosks in the correctional facilities where inmates would be able to view and print the letters.

The choice to have mail photocopied depends on the size and security level of the correctional facility, as well as the “degree of sophistication of the inmates confined, staff availability, and other variables,” the statement said.

…

Canadians began voting in a general election Monday, with surveys predicting a minority government as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party risks losing its majority or even being kicked out of office.

The Liberals and the Conservatives, led by Andrew Scheer, could be set for a near dead heat with pundits calling it one Canada’s closest elections ever.

Polls opened at 1100 GMT in the provinces of Labrador and Newfoundland, in eastern Canada, the first of the country’s six time zones. Polls will remain open in far western British Columbia until 0200 GMT Tuesday, although the first results are expected starting at 2300 GMT.

Some 27.4 million Canadians are eligible to elect 338 members of parliament after a tense and sometimes bitter election campaign.

Campaigning ended as it began some 40 days earlier, with polls showing a near perfect equilibrium.

Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives — the parties that have led Canada since Confederation in 1867 — is forecast to win enough support to secure an absolute majority of seats in parliament.

Faded golden boy

At final campaign stops in westernmost British Columbia on Sunday, former golden boy Trudeau made an emotional appeal to voters to enable him to build on the achievements of his first term.

He warned against Scheer’s pledged rollback of environmental protections including a federal carbon tax that discourages the use of large amounts of fossil fuels.

“We need a strong, progressive government that will unite Canadians and fight climate change — not a progressive opposition,” Trudeau told a rally in a suburb of Vancouver after whistle-stops in Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta.

“We need to unite as citizens. We need to unite as a planet.”

After winning in a 2015 landslide — in a repeat of the wave of support that in 1968 carried his late father Pierre to power — Trudeau’s star has dimmed while in office.

His image has been tainted by ethics lapses in the handling of the bribery prosecution of an engineering giant, while his campaign was rocked by the emergence of old photographs of him in blackface make-up.

Surging social democrats and resuscitated Quebec separatists have also chipped away at Liberal support.

Main parties both struggle

If Trudeau hangs on, it will be because Scheer has struggled to win over Canadians with his bland minivan-driving dad persona and a throwback to the thrifty policies of past Tory administrations.

Canadians “cannot afford” a Liberal government propped up by the third-place New Democratic Party (NDP), Scheer said at the end of a marathon last push from the Atlantic to Pacific oceans.

“We can only imagine what the NDP’s price would be to keep Justin Trudeau in power,” he said.

“Whatever it is, we know Trudeau would pay any price to stay in power and he’d use your money to do it.”

Campaign attack ads have included false accusations that Liberals would legalize hard drugs and the Tories would allow the proliferation of assault weapons.

At one rally, Trudeau was forced to wear a bulletproof vest.

Along the bruising way, Trudeau and Scheer traded barbs.

Trudeau evoked the bogeymen of past and current Tory parties fostering “politics of fear and division” and Scheer called the prime minister a “compulsive liar,” “a phoney and a fraud.”

Trudeau defends record

Trudeau defended his record: a strong economy and low unemployment, legal cannabis, the resettlement of 60,000 Syrian refugees, doctor-assisted deaths, a public inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women, and free trade deals with Europe, Pacific nations and North American neighbors.

Former U.S. president Barack Obama endorsed Trudeau, calling him an “effective leader who takes on big issues like climate change.”

“The world needs his progressive leadership now,” Obama said in a tweet.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, have stood alone among all of the parties in pledging austerity measures to return to a balanced budget within five years.

Scheer was shaken late in the campaign over revelations of his US dual citizenship and allegations that his party hired a communications firm to “destroy” the upstart People’s Party, led by former Conservative foreign minister Maxime Bernier.

The party has situated itself to the right of the Conservatives and could draw votes away.

On the left, the Bloc has come back from a ruinous 2015 election result, tapping into lingering Quebec nationalism to challenge the Liberals’ dominance in the province.

The Bloc and NDP have said they would not prop up the Tories if they secure a minority.

Who will govern may still be unclear for weeks after the polls close during alliance negotiations that could keep Trudeau in office even if his party loses.

…

Four drug companies reached a last-minute legal settlement over their role in the opioid addiction epidemic, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

Drug distributors AmerisourceBergen Corp, Cardinal Health Inc and McKesson Corp and Israel-based drugmaker Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd will announce the settlement on Monday, according to the report.

It was unclear if the fifth defendant, pharmacy chain operator Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc, had reached a settlement with the two Ohio counties that were the plaintiffs in the trial set to begin Monday morning.

…

A senior Israeli official attended a maritime security conference in Bahrain on Monday in another sign of Gulf Arab nations and Israel transcending longtime enmities to focus on a perceived common threat from Iran.

Israel, which regards Sunni Muslim Gulf states as natural allies against Shi’ite Muslim Iran, has formal diplomatic relations with only two Arab states, neighboring Egypt and Jordan, established in 1979 and 1994 respectively.

The maritime workshop being held in Manama stems from a Middle East conference held in Warsaw in February that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the time called a “historical turning point” for an alliance against Tehran.

The United States is trying to build a global maritime coalition to secure vital trade channels following attacks on tankers in Gulf waters in May and June that Washington has blamed on Iran, a charge Tehran denies.

Tensions have risen since President Donald Trump last year withdrew the United States from a 2015 deal between world powers and Iran under which it agreed to curbs on its disputed nuclear program in return for the lifting of sanctions.

Washington has since reimposed a panoply of sanctions meant to strangle Iran’s vital oil exports, and Tehran in turn has scaled back on commitments under the deal to restrict its uranium enrichment program.

“Aviation and maritime security are at top of the policy agenda in the region,” Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa told the opening of the Maritime and Aviation Security Working Group.

Israeli Foreign Ministry official Dana Benvenisti, head of its counter-terrorism department, attended the Manama gathering in a rare visit by an Israeli official to Bahrain.

In April a group of Israeli businessmen and government officials canceled a planned visit to an economic conference in Manama due to what organizers said were “security concerns”, following a social media campaign by Bahraini opponents of the visit.

In June, Bahrain hosted a “Peace to Prosperity” workshop meant to encourage investment in the Palestinian Territories as the first part of a broader White House political plan to end the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Last year Oman hosted Netanyahu on a surprise trip, the first time an Israeli leader had visited the sultanate in 22 years. An Israeli cabinet minister subsequently visited the United Arab Emirates.

…

Sudanese activists are calling for mass protests in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere across the country to demand the disbanding of former President Omar al-Bashir’s National Congress Party.
 
The Sudanese Professionals’ Association, which spearheaded the uprising against Bashir’s rule, says Monday’s protests will also renew demands to step up an independent investigation into the deadly break-up of protests in June.
 
The SPA has called for the appointment of regional governors and the make-up of the legislative body, which was part of an August power-sharing agreement between the pro-democracy protesters and the country’s powerful military.
 
The transitional government has previously said it would postpone appointing the governors and the legislative body till achieving peace with the country’s rebel groups. It began talks with the rebels earlier this month.

…

The Duke and the Duchess of Sussex said in a joint interview with ITV news filmed during their tour in Africa earlier this month and aired Sunday, that they would not let British tabloids destroy their life.

Prince Harry told ITV that most of what is published in the British tabloids is not true, adding “I will not be bullied into playing a game that killed my mum.” Harry said the memory of Princess Diana’s death was “still incredibly raw every single day and that is not me being paranoid…”

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Prince Harry Walks Through Angola Mine Field, Echoing Diana

The southern African nation hopes to be land mine-free by 2025, a goal of scores of countries around the world

The former U.S. television star Meghan Markle said that while her friends were happy for her when she met Harry, her British friends warned her not to marry Harry “because the British tabloids will destroy your life.”

Speaking of how she can cope with such intense scrutiny, Meghan replied: “In all honesty I have said for a long time to H – that is what I call him – it’s not enough to just survive something, that’s not the point of life. You have got to thrive.”

Earlier this month the couple sued British tabloid The Mail on Sunday for invasion of privacy, claiming it illegally published a letter she wrote to her father.

At the time, Harry said the treatment of Meghan was reminiscent of the tabloid’s approach to his mother.

…

Egypt will push Ethiopia this week to agree to an external mediator to help resolve a deepening dispute over a giant hydropower dam being built on Ethiopia’s Blue Nile, officials said on Sunday.‮‮ ‬‬

Egypt sees the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) as an existential risk, fearing it will threaten scarce water supplies in Egypt and power generation at its own dam in Aswan. ‮‮ ‬‬

Cairo says it has exhausted efforts to reach an agreement on the conditions for operating GERD and filling the reservoir behind it, after years of three-party talks with Ethiopia and Sudan.

Ethiopia has denied that three-way talks are stalled, accusing Egypt of trying to sidestep the process.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi is expected to raise the demand for a mediator when he meets Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed during a Russian-African summit in Russia this week.

“We’re hoping this meeting might produce an agreement on the participation of a fourth party,” an Egyptian foreign ministry official told journalists at a briefing. “We’re hopeful to reach a formula in the next few weeks.”

Egyptian officials said they had suggested the World Bank as a fourth party mediator, but were also open to the role being filled by a country with technical experience on water sharing issues such as the United States, or the European Union.

Recent proposals put forward by Egypt for a flexible reservoir-filling process and a guaranteed annual flow of 40 billion cubic meters were rejected by Ethiopia.

The latest rounds of talks in Cairo and Khartoum over the past two months ended in acrimony. “The gap is getting wider,” the Egyptian foreign ministry official said.

Egypt draws almost all of its fresh water supplies from the Nile, and is faced with worsening water scarcity for its population of nearly 100 million. It says it is working to reduce the amount of water used in agriculture.

Hydrologists consider a country to be facing water scarcity if supplies drop below 1,000 cubic meters per person per year.

Egypt currently has around 570 cubic meters per person per year, a figure that is expected to drop to 500 cubic meters by 2025, without taking into account any reduction in supply caused by GERD, Egyptian officials said.

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Three U.S. soldiers were killed and three others injured in the state of Georgia Sunday in an accident involving the armored combat vehicle they were in, the military said in a statement.

The army provided no details on the nature of the accident, which is under investigation, except to say it occurred during an exercise at Fort Stewart, Georgia.

“Six soldiers were involved, with three pronounced deceased on site, and three more evacuated to Winn Army Community Hospital where they are being treated and evaluated for their injuries,” an army statement said.

Major General Tony Aguto, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, called it a “heartbreaking day.”

The soldiers, who were in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, were from the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team.

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Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on Sunday defended his claim that President Donald Trump did not withhold nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine in order to get Kyiv to undertake investigations of Democratic rivals and the 2016 election.

Mulvaney told reporters last week there was such a” quid pro quo” by Trump, but hours later walked back the statement and continued to advance his revised version of White House policy discussions in an interview on the “Fox News Sunday” talk show.

“There were two reasons we held up the aid,” Mulvaney said. “The first one was the rampant corruption in Ukraine. It’s so bad in Ukraine that in 2014 Congress passed a law … requiring us to make sure that [the fight against] corruption was moving in the right direction. So corruption’s a big deal. Everybody knows it.”

He added, “The president was also concerned about whether other nations, specifically European nations, were helping with foreign aid to Ukraine.”

Mulvaney also mentioned during his White House news conference last Thursday that Trump wanted to know whether Ukraine had possession of a computer server used at the Democratic National Committee in 2016 as it supported former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her unsuccessful campaign against Trump for the White House. The whereabouts of the computer is part of a debunked theory that Ukraine had meddled in the 2016 election, and not Russia, as the U.S. intelligence community concluded.

But Mulvaney said Sunday his mention of Trump’s concerns about the computer “wasn’t connected to the aid,” although last week had said, “That’s why we held up the money.”

“We do that all the time with foreign policy,” Mulvaney had said at the White House.

On Sunday, he said, “I never said there’s a quid pro quo because there isn’t.”

Trump, while initially blocking the aid to Ukraine, eventually released the money to Kyiv.

“The aid flowed,” Mulvaney said Sunday. “Once we were able to satisfy ourselves that corruption, that they were doing better with it…” and other countries’ aid to Ukraine had increased, “the money flowed.” During the news conference last week, Mulvaney added a third condition, whether Ukraine was assisting a U.S. Justice Department probe of the origins of 2016 election investigations that eventually implicated Russia’s interference to help Trump win.

Trump’s interactions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy are at the center of the impeachment inquiry Democrats in the House of Representatives have opened against Trump.

The inquiry was touched off when an intelligence community whistleblower expressed concern about Trump’s July 25 telephone call with Zelenskiy, with a White House-released transcript of the call showing Trump urging the Ukrainian leader to open a corruption investigation into one of his key 2020 election rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden, as well as a probe of his son Hunter Biden’s lucrative position on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.

Both Bidens have denied any wrongdoing, although the younger Biden, 49, said last week he used “poor judgment” in agreeing to work for the Ukrainian company because of the political fallout for his father.

Trump has alleged that when Joe Biden was U.S. vice president, he threatened to withhold loan guarantees to Ukraine unless an earlier corruption probe into the gas company was stopped.

No evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens has surfaced. But reaching out to a foreign government to dig up dirt on a rival is considered to be interference in a presidential election.

Trump has described his call with Zelenskiy as “perfect” and accuses the Democratic-led House of a witch hunt.

 A House vote for Trump’s impeachment in the coming weeks is a possibility, although his conviction after a trial in the Republican-majority Senate and removal from office remains unlikely.

Trump donor Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, told impeachment investigators last week that Trump ordered him and other diplomats to work with the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to pressure Ukraine into investigations that could help Trump politically.

Those investigations would include the 2016 election and the Ukrainian gas company where Hunter Biden worked.

Sondland told the investigators he was disappointed that Trump directed diplomats to work with Giuliani on Ukraine matters.

“Our view was that the men and women of the State Department, not the president’s personal lawyer, should take responsibility for all aspects of U.S. foreign policy towards Ukraine,” Sondland said.

He said the diplomats who worked with Giuliani did not know “until much later” that Giuliani would push for a probe of Biden “or to involve Ukrainians, directly or indirectly, in the president’s 2020 re-election campaign.”

“Let me state clearly: Inviting a foreign government to undertake investigations for the purpose of influencing an upcoming U.S. election would be wrong,” Sondland said in his statement. “Withholding foreign aid in order to pressure a foreign government to take such steps would be wrong. I did not and would not ever participate in such undertakings.”

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Influential Iraqi Shi’ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr has given his supporters the green light to resume anti-government protests, after the movement was interrupted following a deadly crackdown.

Protests shook Iraq for six days from October 1, with young Iraqis denouncing corruption and demanding jobs and services before calling for the downfall of the government.

The protests — notable for their spontaneity — were violently suppressed, with official counts reporting 110 people killed and 6,000 wounded, most of them demonstrators.

Calls have been made on social media for fresh rallies on Friday, the anniversary of Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi’s government taking office.

“It’s your right to participate in protests on October 25,” Sadr told his followers in a Facebook post on Saturday evening.

Protesters have opposed any appropriation of their leaderless movement and the firebrand cleric was restrained on Sunday in comparison to his previous exhortations for “million-man marches”.  

He qualified his support by adding: “Those who don’t want to take part in this revolution can choose another via the ballot box in internationally supervised elections and without the current politicians,” he said.

His statement echoed another he made during protests at the start of the month, in which he called on the government — of which his bloc is a part — to resign and hold early elections “under U.N. supervision”.

In his latest message, Sadr called on his supporters to protest peacefully.

“They expect you to be armed,” he said, alluding to authorities blaming “saboteurs” for infiltrating protests. “But I don’t think you will be.”

Sadr’s influence was on display Saturday during the Shi’ite Arbaeen pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala, 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Baghdad.

Thousands of his supporters heeded his call to dress in white shrouds and chanted, “Baghdad free, out with the corrupt!”

October 25 will also mark the deadline issued by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, spiritual leader for Iraq’s Shi’ite majority, for the government to respond to protester demands.

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Tens of thousands of Lebanese protesters of all ages gathered Sunday in major cities and towns nationwide, with each hour bringing hundreds more people to the streets for the largest anti-government protests yet in four days of demonstrations.

Protesters danced and sang in the streets, some waving Lebanese flags and chanting “the people want to bring down the regime.” In the morning, young men and women carried blue bags and cleaned the streets of the capital, Beirut, picking up trash left behind by the previous night’s protests.

The spontaneous mass demonstrations are Lebanon’s largest in five years, spreading beyond Beirut. They are building on long-simmering anger at a ruling class that has divvied up power among themselves and amassed wealth for decades but has done little to fix a crumbling economy and dilapidated infrastructure.

The unrest erupted after the government proposed new taxes, part of stringent austerity measures amid a growing economic crisis. The protests have brought people from across the sectarian and religious lines that define the country.

“People cannot take it anymore,” said Nader Fares, a protester in central Beirut who said he’s unemployed. “There are no good schools, no electricity and no water.”

Politicians are now racing against time to put forward an economic rescue plan that they hope will help calm the public.

On Saturday night, a Lebanese Christian leader asked his four ministers in the Cabinet to resign. Samir Geagea, who heads the right-wing Lebanese Forces Party, said he no longer believes the current national unity government headed by Prime Minister Saad Hariri can steer the country out of the deepening economic crisis.

In a speech Friday night, Hariri had given his partners in the government a 72-hour ultimatum to come up with convincing solutions to the economic crisis. A day later, Hariri said he was meeting Cabinet ministers to “reach what serves the Lebanese.”

On Sunday, Hariri continued his meetings to finish suggestions to revive the country’s crumbling economy, which has been suffering from high unemployment, little growth and one of the highest debts ratios in the world standing at 150% of the gross domestic products.

Many of the protesters have already said they don’t trust the current government’s reforms, and are calling on the 30-member Cabinet to resign and be replaced by a smaller one made up of technocrats instead of members of political groups.

“I hope the government will resign and I think we are ready and the whole country is ready for something else at last,” said real estate agent Fabian Ziayde.

Since Saturday, the protests have been mostly peaceful with many protesters bringing their children with them to the gatherings.

But some demonstrators went on a rampage Friday night, smashing shop windows and bank exteriors in Beirut’s glitzy downtown. Security forces eventually responded by firing tear gas and water cannons. Dozens were arrested.

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The mayor of riot-stricken Barcelona pleaded Saturday for calm after violent protests by Catalan separatists rocked Spain’s second largest city for a fifth consecutive night.

“This cannot continue. Barcelona does not deserve it,” Mayor Ada Colau told reporters, adding that Friday’s violence was the worst so far.

Protesters clashed with police again later Saturday despite efforts by some citizens to mediate by gathering between the two sides. There was also a skirmish between separatist supporters and police in a square in Spain’s capital, Madrid. Authorities are bracing for more protests in the coming days.

Supreme Court verdict

Radical separatists have fought with police every night in Barcelona and other Catalan cities following huge peaceful protests by people angered by Monday’s Supreme Court verdict that sentenced nine separatist leaders to prison for their roles in a failed 2017 secession attempt.

More than 500,000 people gathered in downtown Barcelona Friday in a massive show of support for the secession movement that is backed by roughly half of the wealthy northeastern region’s 5.5 million voters.

Before night fell, several hundred masked youths had surrounded the headquarters of the National Police and started a street battle that raged into the night in Barcelona, a popular tourist destination.

“The images of organized violence during the night in Barcelona have overshadowed the half a million people who demonstrated in a peaceful and civic manner to show they rejected the verdict,” said Catalan interior chief Miquel Buch, who oversees the regional police.

Rioters have burned hundreds of trash bins and hurled gasoline bombs, chunks of pavement, acid and firecrackers, among other objects, at police. They have used nails to puncture the tires of police vans and fireworks to hit one police helicopter, without doing it serious damage.

Residents, tourists flee

Outnumbered officers in riot gear from both Catalonia’s regional police and Spain’s national police have used batons, rubber and foam bullets, tear gas and water cannon to battle back.

Residents and tourists have run for cover.

“It has been quite scary,” said Deepa Khumar, a doctor from Toronto visiting for a medical conference. “This place, it looks like a war zone.”

Authorities say more than 500 people have been hurt this week, including protesters and police. Eighteen people remained hospitalized, at least one in very serious condition. Police have made more than 150 arrests.

Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said that 101 police officers were injured Friday and that 264 police vehicles have been severely damaged in the week’s riots.

‘We feel so anguished’

A small group of supporters of Spanish unity approached the police headquarters that has been the focus of separatists’ rage to give officers flowers and gifts Saturday.

“We feel so anguished,” said 54-year-old economist María Jesús Cortés. “There used to be a nice atmosphere here in Barcelona. Everybody with their own ideas, and that was it. We used to live in peace.”

Minister Grande-Marlaska asked Catalonia’s regional president to explicitly condemn the escalating violence and express his support for law enforcement officials.

“We have gone five days in which there has not been a firm condemnation of violence” by Catalan leader Quim Torra, Grande-Marlaska said.

Torra has called on protesters to respect the nonviolent tenets of the separatist movement that has surged over the past decade.

But Saturday Torra and his vice president, Pere Aragonès, used a televised address mostly to criticize the Supreme Court verdict. Aragonès also insinuated that the national police, whom are controlled by Madrid, had acted too aggressively with protesters.

Torra demanded to meet Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to push his agenda for secession and freedom for the prisoners.

“We ask once again the acting Spanish PM to set the date and time to sit with us at a negotiating table,” Torra said. “Today this is more necessary than ever before.”

The prime minister’s office responded that “the government of Spain has always been in favor of dialogue, but within the confines of the law.”
 

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants Syrian government forces to move out of areas near the Turkish border so he can resettle up to 2 million refugees there, his spokesman told The Associated Press on Saturday. The request will top Erdogan’s talks next week with Syria’s ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Arrangements along the Syrian-Turkish border were thrown into disarray after the U.S. pulled its troops out of the area, opening the door to Turkey’s invasion aiming to drive out Kurdish-led fighters it considers terrorists. 

Abandoned by their American allies, the Kurds — with Russia’s mediation — invited Damascus to send troops into northeastern Syria as protection from Turkish forces. That has complicated Turkey’s plan to create a “safe zone” along the border, where it can resettle Syrian refugees now in Turkey. Most of those refugees fled Syria’s government. 

Erdogan’s spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, said Ankara does not want either Syrian forces or Kurdish fighters in the border area because refugees would not go back to areas under their control. 

Turkey has said it wants to oversee that area. 

“This is one of the topics that we will discuss with the Russians, because, again, we are not going to force any refugees to go to anywhere they don’t want to go,” he said. “We want to create conditions that will be suitable for them to return where they will feel safe.” 

Turkey has taken in about 3.6 million Syrians fleeing the conflict in their homeland but now wants most of them to return. So far, very few have returned to an enclave Turkey already took over and has controlled since 2017. 

Under an agreement made by the U.S. and Turkey on Thursday, a five-day cease-fire has been in place. Turkey expects the Kurdish fighters to pull back from a border area. 

Agreement on pullback

A senior Syrian Kurdish official acknowledged for the first time that the Kurdish-led forces agreed to the pullback, stating that his forces would move 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of the border. 

Redur Khalil, a senior Syrian Democratic Forces official, told the AP that the withdrawal would take place once Turkey allowed the Kurdish-led force to evacuate its fighters and civilians from Ras al-Ayn, a border town under siege by Turkish-backed forces. He said that the Kurdish-led force was preparing to conduct that evacuation Sunday, if there were no further delays. 

Khalil said Kurdish-led fighters would pull back from a 120-kilometer (75-mile) stretch along the border from Ras al-Ayn to Tal Abyad, moving past the international highway. 

“We are only committed to the U.S. version, not the Turkish one,” Khalil said. 

A previous agreement between the U.S. and Turkey over a “safe zone” along the Syria-Turkish border floundered over the diverging definitions of the area. 

Erdogan has said the Kurdish fighters must withdraw from a far larger length of the border, from the Euphrates River to the Iraqi border — more than 440 kilometers (260 miles) — or else the Turkish offensive will resume Tuesday. 

But U.S. officials say the agreement pertains to the smaller section between the two towns. Kalin confirmed that is the area affected by the pause in fighting, but said Turkey still wanted the larger zone. 

Sticking point

Two days into the cease-fire, the border town of Ras al-Ayn has been the sticking point in moving forward. 

“We hope that as of tonight or tomorrow, they will stick to this agreement and leave the area,” Kalin said. 

The Kurdish official meanwhile said his force had negotiated with the Americans the details of its pullback from the border, starting with the Ras al-Ayn evacuation. But he said the evacuation stalled for 48 hours because Turkish-backed forces continued their siege of the town. 

A partial evacuation took place Saturday. Medical convoys were let into part of the town still in Kurdish hands, evacuating 30 wounded and four bodies from a hospital. Khalil said the plan to complete the evacuation from Ras al-Ayn was now set for Sunday. 

Turkish officials denied violating the cease-fire or impeding the fighters’ withdrawal, blaming the continued violence on the Kurds. 

If Kurdish fighters then pull back from the 120-kilometer border area, it is uncertain what the arrangement would be along the rest of the northeastern border, most of which remains solely in the hands of Kurdish-led fighters. 

Last week, Syrian forces began deploying into Kurdish areas, moving only into one location directly on the border, the town of Kobani, and a few positions further south. 

Khalil said the Syrian government and its ally Russia did not want to deploy more extensively in the area, apparently to avoid frictions with Turkey. 

“We noticed there was no desire [from the Russians and Syria] to have the Syrian military on the dividing line between us and the Turks except in Kobani,” he said. 

The border town of Kobani also stands between Turkish-controlled Syrian territories to the west and Kurdish-held eastern Syria. 

Khalil said it was not clear what would happen after his forces’ withdrawal and the end of the five-day cease-fire. 

“The deal essentially is handing Syrian land to a foreign country. This is not good. It is bad for us,” he said. “We have nothing to win. The only win is the international sympathy.” 

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