'No one should be surprised by this cynical strategy'

'The new nicotine product replacing e-cigarettes to addict teens'

Leana S. Wen at The Washington Post

Teen "nicotine use is finally declining again," but this is "now at risk of being undone," says Leana S. Wen. The "culprit: nicotine pouches that, like electronic cigarettes, are marketed as a less harmful alternative for adult smokers." In "reality, these products could reverse public health progress by addicting a new generation to nicotine." A "factor especially attractive to youths is the wide variety of available flavors." This "comes right out of the electronic cigarette playbook."

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'Lisa Murkowski, Charles Sumner, and a cowardice crisis in Congress'

Will Bunch at The Philadelphia Inquirer

Americans "are wondering if our flawed experiment in democracy can survive," but "something feels very different this time," says Will Bunch. Sen. Lisa Murkowski's "honesty about a climate of fear on Capitol Hill has been echoed by other colleagues." It's "like nothing you ever saw on 'Schoolhouse Rock,'" and "resembles the omerta-driven terror of the Gambino crime family." It "doesn't seem too much to simply ask that our senators and House members speak the truth about the dangers to democracy."

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'The yellow BRICS road'

Ted Snider at The American Conservative

As "American hegemony continues to strain and the U.S.-led unipolar world shows signs of stress and fractures," BRICS "continues to organize and grow," says Ted Snider. It's an "international organization whose primary purpose is to balance U.S. hegemony in the new multipolar world." BRICS "does not oppose the United States," but it "does seek to end the American-led unipolar world and replace it with a world with many poles and many nations who have equal voices."

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'The lingering shadow of India's painful partition'

Sam Dalrymple at Time

The "trauma of" India and Pakistan's "partition continues to define South Asian attitudes toward past, present, and future," says Sam Dalrymple. The "edgy, militarized border renders Indians and Pakistanis, who had lived together in overlapping communities before the Partition, almost completely inaccessible to one another." Despite a "ceasefire holding, even the most modest cultural and diplomatic exchanges between India and Pakistan have now vanished." Yet "Indo-Pak relations haven't always been defined by hostility alone."

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