BRUSSELS (AP) — The U.S. and Western powers have clashed with Russia and others at the global chemical weapons watchdog over a new investigative team being set up to apportion blame for poison gas and nerve agent attacks.
Russia said the new team would wield unlawful powers within the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and on Monday called for an "expert group” to assess the viability of such a team, something the U.S. insisted would hamstring the development of the team. The UK ambassador to the OPCW said that the Russian move would "undermine” plans to set up the team.
Britain has accused Russia of using a nerve agent in the attempted assassination in March in the English city of Salisbury of former spy Sergei Skripal. Moscow denies any involvement.

***

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) -- Disaster coordination authorities have asked eight communities in Guatemala to evacuate and go to safe areas after an increased eruption of the Volcano of Fire.
The volcano is located between the departments of Escuintla, Chimaltenango and Sacatepéquez in the south-central part of the country.
David de Len, spokesman for the National Coordinator for Disaster Reduction, told The Associated Press that at least eight communities should leave.
De Len said monitoring of the volcano's activity during the day showed the intensity of the eruption was being maintained, so the evacuation was called for to protect people.
An eruption of the volcano in June killed 194 people and left at least 234 missing, although organizations supporting the communities have insisted there are thousands of missing persons.


***

JAKARTA (AFP) -- Dozens of Indonesian mosques that cater to government workers are spreading radicalism and calling for violence against non-Muslims, the country's intelligence agency said Monday.
Its findings come six months after Indonesia's second-biggest city Surabaya was rocked by a wave of suicide bombings at several churches during Sunday services, killing a dozen people.
They were the deadliest terror attacks in about a decade and once again put religious tolerance in the world's biggest Muslim majority in the spotlight.
The Indonesian State Intelligence Agency said Monday it has probed about one thousand mosques across the Southeast Asian archipelago since July and found that imams at some 41 places of worship in one Jakarta neighborhood alone were preaching extremism to worshippers -- mostly civil servants who work at nearby government ministries.
The Agency found about 17 clerics expressed support or sympathy for Daesh and encouraged parishioners to fight for the takfiri group in Syria and Marawi, the Philippine city overrun by foreign IS fighters last year.

***

MOSCOW (Reuters) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin told U.S. Vice President Mike Pence Russia had nothing to do with meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, Interfax reported on Monday, during discussions about an upcoming meeting between Putin and President Donald Trump.
Putin and Pence spoke in Singapore last week about key issues that could be discussed at the meeting between the two leaders, expected to take place at the G-20 summit in Argentina in late November, a Kremlin spokesman said.
Pence raised the issue of external meddling in the U.S. election but Putin told him that "the Russian state had nothing to do ... and cannot have anything to do with meddling" in any electoral processes, Interfax quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.

***

FRANKFURT, Germany (Dispatches) -- French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel consulted on migration, fixing the euro, Europe’s defense, taxing digital companies and other issues as the two leaders looked to preserve their influence abroad while their authority flags at home.
Macron, who came to Berlin to take part in Germany’s national remembrance day for the victims of war and dictatorship, urged European government to seize more responsibility for their own fate, especially regarding defense.
The first French president to address the Bundestag in 18 years, Macron called for greater European unity in order for the bloc to meet future challenges in an uncertain world. He said the French-German alliance "is invested with this obligation not to allow the world to slide into chaos, and to accompany it on the road of peace.”
He said Europe must not "become a plaything of great powers, must assume greater responsibility for its security and its defense, and must not accept a subordinate role in world politics.”
Merkel said she agreed with Macron’s assessment that Europe stands "at a crossroads.”

***

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The World Health Organization says progress in reducing the number of people contracting malaria has stalled after several years of global declines.
The WHO said Monday that there were about 219 million cases of malaria in 2017, up 2 million from the previous year. In contrast, the number of malaria cases had dropped from 239 million in 2010 to 214 million in 2015, according to the United Nations agency.
The WHO’s annual report on malaria says 70 percent of cases (151 million) and deaths (274,000) in 2017 happened in India and 10 African countries. It says there were 3.5 million more malaria cases in the 10 African nations than in 2016, while India made progress in reducing cases of the deadly disease.