Deadline looms for Belgium deal
BRUSSELS — If Belgium cannot break a deadlock over the European Union’s landmark free trade deal with Canada by Monday night, EU leaders will consider canceling a signing ceremony scheduled for later in the week, two officials with knowledge of the negotiations said.
Officials said Sunday that EU leaders plan to have telephone talks with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about canceling the Thursday summit if Belgium’s support for the deal isn’t secured by the deadline.
The deal needs unanimity among the 28 EU nations, and Belgium needs unanimity among its regions. The francophone region of Wallonia, population 3.5 million, has been the lone holdout and refused to approve the trade pact.
New attempts were made to sway Wallonia leader Paul Magnette to sign on over the weekend.
Missing students case
IGUALA, Mexico — Officials arrested Felipe Flores, the former police chief of the town of Iguala, in the mass disappearance of 43 Mexican college students about 125 miles from Mexico City, where the students were last seen in 2014. Authorities say his arrest could shed some new light on how and why the students vanished — and where they might be now.
The 58-year-old, who was arrested Friday and on the run, is accused of organized crime and kidnapping.
The students from a teaching college in Ayotzinapa were last seen alive on Sept. 26, 2014, when they were crammed into police cars. They traveled to Iguala that day to protest against education reforms. At some point, they hijacked a bus and were stopped by police officers who opened fire at them.
Film opposition dropped
MUMBAI, India — As tensions with rival Pakistan fuel jingoistic fervor in India, a Hindu nationalist party has withdrawn its opposition to an upcoming Bollywood film after its producers promised they no longer would work with Pakistani artists.
The deal appeared to clear the way for the Oct. 28 release of “Ae Dil Hai Mushkil” (“This Heart is Complicated”), a romantic drama that had been threatened with violence because its cast includes Pakistani actor Fawad Khan.
The Hindu party, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, or MNS, picketed outside the producers’ offices and vowed to burn theaters that showed the film, timed for release on the eve of the Hindu festival Diwali.
Explosion kills 1 in Tokyo
TOKYO — Two apparent explosions hit the Japanese city of Utsunomiya back-toback Sunday, killing one person and injuring three others in what police are viewing as a possible suicide.
Japanese media reports suggest that the victim, believed to be a 72-year-old former military officer, may have set his house on fire, blown up his car in a public parking lot and then blown himself up in a nearby park.
Also in the world ...
Negotiators for Colombia and the longtime rebel organization FARC met Sunday in Havana to begin talks on a new peace deal, after one previously agreed upon was rejected in a referendum . ... OPEC’s second-largest producer threw an obstacle in the group’s path toward a final deal to stabilize oil markets when Iraq balked at joining efforts to trim output to prop up crude prices; Iraq should be exempted from cutting production because it’s embroiled in a war with Islamic militants, Oil Minister Jabber Al-Luaibi said Sunday at a news conference in Baghdad.