Representatives of the Canadian, Mexican, and U.S. governments signed a draft version (WSJ) of a new trade agreement in Mexico City shortly after U.S. House Democrats said they would support it, setting the deal up for likely approval in the U.S. Congress.
 
The deal is set to replace 1994’s North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), as promised during U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. House Democratic leadership announced support for the renegotiated deal even as they unveiled articles of impeachment (NYT) against Trump the same day. The draft deal creates new labor (WaPo) and environmental protections, intellectual property protections, minimum wage requirements for auto manufacturers, and rules for e-commerce. Support from the AFL-CIO was key to the deal’s endorsement by Democrats.

The World Bank continued a loan program for schools in China’s Xinjiang province even after requests to use the loans to buy surveillance equipment in 2017, according to an Axios report. The bank blocked the use of its funds for this purpose, but did not scale back the loan program until this year.
 
This CFR Backgrounder looks at China’s repression of Uighurs in Xinjiang.
 
China: Five international law enforcement experts resigned (FT) from a government-organized panel investigating police brutality in Hong Kong’s protests. Hong Kong authorities originally heralded their participation as proof that an external probe, long a demand of pro-democracy protesters, was unnecessary.
 

Attackers detonated a car bomb (NYT) at a medical facility construction site on Bagram Air Base, killing one person and wounding more than eighty others, officials said. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
 
India: New Delhi is set to introduce a bill on data protection (NYT) this week that would set tighter restrictions on international tech companies but also allow for wider government access to citizens’ data.

Two former prime ministers were sentenced to prison for corruption in fast-tracked cases (FT) that critics say aim to increase confidence in the country’s ruling military ahead of tomorrow’s election. Pro-democracy protesters have held regular rallies (Al Jazeera) denouncing the election for its slate of candidates tied to deposed President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
 
Israel: The country’s parliament advanced a measure to hold an election in March (Haaretz) after no lawmaker successfully formed a governing coalition following a September 2 vote.

Nationwide flooding has exacerbated power outages (BBC) and work stoppages, including at several leading mines, and caused President Cyril Ramaphosa to return early from an international trip.
 
Somalia: Security forces killed five people (VOA) suspected of attacking an upscale hotel in Mogadishu after an hours-long standoff, officials said. The militant group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that Moscow offered to publish (State Department) its correspondence with Washington from 2016 and 2017 to dispel claims of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, but that Washington blocked the information’s release.
 
Czech Republic: Tens of thousands of protesters called for (DW) the resignation of Prime Minister Andrej Babis after prosecutors reopened a fraud probe into his use of EU funds.

Former Secretary of Public Security Genaro Garcia Luna was arrested in Texas (El Universal) by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency on charges of taking millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa drug cartel, U.S. prosecutors announced.
 
This CFR Backgrounder looks at Mexico’s drug war.
 
Haiti: Civic activists called for an end (Miami Herald) to U.S. support for Haitian President Jovenel Moise and U.S. lawmakers debated solutions to widespread unrest in Haiti at the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s first hearing on Haiti in twenty years.
 
This CFR Brief looks at what is driving the protests in Haiti.