Morning Briefing

"Nations have crafted a draft treaty to fight a booming trade in illicit tobacco products that's costing governments as much as $50 billion a year in lost tax revenue, officials said Wednesday," the Associated Press/Washington Post reports. "But there are notable holdouts to the negotiations -- the United States, Indonesia and more than a dozen other nations -- where the treaty would have no effect," the news agency writes (4/4). According to the WHO, tobacco-related diseases, including cardiovascular disease, cancers, diabetes, and other illnesses, kill almost six million people annually, Reuters notes. "Formally a protocol to the 2005 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the world's first public health pact, the new agreement was reached after nearly five years of negotiations, including a fifth and final round this past week," the news agency writes (Nebehay, 4/4).