- PSG held by Nice to leave Monaco clear at top of Ligue 1
- AC Milan fall at Fiorentina after De Gea's penalty heroics
- Lewandowski treble for leaders Barca as Atletico held
- Fresh Israeli strikes hit south Beirut
- Sucic stunner earns Real Sociedad draw against Atletico
- PSG draw with Nice, fail to reclaim top spot in Ligue 1
- Gudmundsson downs AC Milan after De Gea's penalty heroics for Fiorentina
- 'Yes' vote prevails in Kazakhstan nuclear plant vote: TV
- 'Difficult day': Oct 7 commemorations begin with festival memorial
- Commemorations begin for anniversary of attack on Israel
- Lewandowski hat-trick powers Liga leaders Barca to Alaves victory
- 'Nothing gets in way of team,' says Celtics' MVP hopeful Tatum
- India maintain Pakistan stranglehold as Windies cruise at Women's T20 World Cup
- 'We will win!': Mozambique's ruling party confident at final vote rally
- Tunisia voting ends as Saied eyes re-election with critics behind bars
- Florida braces for Milton, FEMA head slams 'dangerous' Helene misinformation
- Postecoglou slams 'unacceptable' Spurs after 'terrible' loss at Brighton
- Marmoush double denies Bayern outright Bundesliga top spot
- Rallies worldwide call for Gaza, Lebanon ceasefire
- Maresca hails Chelsea's 'fighting' spirit after draw with 10-man Forest
- New 'Joker' film, a dark musical, tops N.America box office
- Man Utd stalemate keeps Ten Hag in danger, Spurs rocked by Brighton
- Drowned by hurricane, remote N.Carolina towns now struggle for water
- Vikings hold off Jets in London to stay unbeaten
- Ahead of attack anniversary, Netanyahu says: 'We will win'
- West Indies cruise to T20 World Cup win over Scotland
- Arshdeep, Chakravarthy help India hammer Bangladesh in T20 opener
- Lewandowski's quickfire hat-trick powers Liga leaders Barca to Alaves victory
- Man Utd fire another blank in Aston Villa stalemate
- Lewandowski treble powers Liga leaders Barca to Alaves victory
- Russian activist killed on front line in Ukraine
- Openda strike briefly sends Leipzig top of Bundesliga
- Goal-shy Man Utd have to 'step up', says Ten Hag
- India bowl out Bangladesh for 127 in T20 opener
- Madueke rescues Chelsea in draw with 10-man Forest
- Beckett's belief rewarded as Bluestocking storms to Arc glory
- Trump on the stump, Harris hits airwaves in razor-edge US election
- Flash flooding kills three in northern Thailand
- Kaur leads India to victory over Pakistan in Women's T20 World Cup
- Juventus held by Cagliari after late penalty drama
- In France's Marseille, teen 'stabbed 50 times' then burned alive
- Ruthless Gauff beats Muchova in straight sets to win China Open
- India restrict Pakistan to 105-8 in Women's T20 World Cup
- England target repeat of Pakistan Test whitewash
- Penrith Panthers win fourth straight NRL title after downing Storm
- Weary Sinner happy for day off after battling into Shanghai last 16
- Pakistan's Masood warns England still a force without Stokes
- Madrid's Carvajal to miss several months after serious knee injury
- Israel pounds Lebanon ahead of Hamas attack anniversary
- Two elephants die in flash flooding in northern Thailand
Swiss vote to ban nearly all tobacco advertising
The Swiss voted on Sunday to tighten their notoriously lax tobacco laws by banning virtually all advertising of the hazardous products, partial results showed.
Nearly 56 percent of voters and 15 of Switzerland's 26 cantons backed the near-total tobacco advertising ban, according to official results after all ballots had been tallied in 22 cantons.
"We are extremely happy," Stefanie De Borba of the Swiss League against Cancer, told AFP as the results became clear.
"The people have understood that health is more important than economic interests."
Switzerland lags far behind most wealthy nations in restricting tobacco advertising -- a situation widely blamed on hefty lobbying by some of the world's biggest tobacco companies headquartered in the country.
Currently, most tobacco advertising is legal at a national level, except for ads on television and radio, and ones that specifically target minors.
Some Swiss cantons have introduced stricter regional legislation and a new national law is pending but campaigners gathered enough signatures to spur a vote towards a significantly tighter country-wide law.
- 'Kills half of all users' -
Opponents of the initiative, which include the Swiss government and parliament, had argued that it goes too far.
"This initiative is extreme," said Patrick Eperon, a lobbyist with an employer organisation and a spokesman for the "No" campaign.
By banning basically all tobacco advertising in the name of protecting children, "it infantilises adults", he told AFP before the vote.
His concerns echo those voiced by Philip Morris International (PMI), the world's largest tobacco company, which, like British American Tobacco and Japan Tobacco, is headquartered in Switzerland and has helped fund the "No" campaign.
"This is a slippery slope as far as individual freedom is concerned," a spokesman for PMI's Swiss section told AFP.
"(It) paves the way for further advertising bans on products such as alcohol or sugar," he said.
Jean-Paul Humair, who heads a Geneva addiction prevention centre and serves as a spokesman for the "Yes" campaign, flatly rejected that comparison.
"There is no other consumer product that kills half of all users," he told AFP.
Campaigners say lax advertising laws have stymied efforts to bring down smoking rates in the Alpine nation of 8.6 million people, where more than a quarter of adults consume tobacco products. There are around 9,500 tobacco-linked deaths each year.
- Animal testing -
While they backed the effort to ban most tobacco advertising, Swiss voters were not convinced by a number of other issues on the ballot Sunday as part of the country's direct democratic system.
Partial results showed they had flatly rejected a bid for a blanket ban on all animal testing, with nearly 80 percent opposed.
All political parties, parliament and the government had opposed the initiative, arguing it went too far and would have dire consequences for medical research.
Switzerland has rejected three similar initiatives by large margins since 1985.
Researchers say medical progress is impossible without experimentation, and even the Swiss Animal Protection group has warned against the initiative's "radical" demands.
Swiss authorities say the country already has among the world's strictest laws regulating animal testing.
As the laws have tightened, the number of animals used has fallen in recent decades, from nearly two million per year in the early 1980s to around 560,000 today.
In another animal-themed vote, first results indicated that inhabitants in the northern Basel-Stadt canton have massively rejected a bid to afford non-human primates some of the same basic fundamental rights as their human cousins, with over 75 percent opposed.
Among the other issues on Sunday's slate, partial results also showed that some 56 percent of voters had rejected a government plan to provide additional state funding to media companies, which have seen their advertising revenues evaporate in recent years.
C.Garcia--AMWN