Canada town gets new shock with dead player misidentified
HUMBOLDT, Saskatchewan — Families and friends already stunned by the deaths of 15 players and team personnel for Humboldt’s youth hockey club got a new shock Monday when authorities announced that one of the dead had been misidentified.
The Ministry of Justice for Saskatchewan province said the mistake occurred partly because all the Broncos players had dyed their hair blond for the team’s appearance in the playoffs and because all the young men had similar builds.
The ministry said the body of Parker Tobin had been mistakenly identified as that of Xavier Labelle. It said Labelle was actually one of the 14 injured when the team bus was hit by a semitrailer truck Friday night.
Drew Wilby, spokesman for the ministry, Wilby and the Office of the Chief Coroner apologized.
“To find who they had thought was their loved one wasn’t their loved one I can’t even fathom,” Wilby said. “I don’t know enough could ever be said. All I could do is offer our sincerest apologies.”
Prosecutor says Cosby paid accuser nearly $3.4M
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — Bill Cosby paid nearly $3.4 million to the woman he is charged with sexually assaulting, a prosecutor revealed to jurors Monday, answering one of the biggest questions surrounding the case as the comedian’s retrial got underway.
District Attorney Kevin Steele highlighted the 2006 civil settlement during his opening statement, in an apparent attempt to suggest Cosby wouldn’t have paid out so much money if the accusations against him were false. Cosby’s lawyers have signaled they intend to use the settlement to argue that Andrea Constand falsely accused the former TV star in hopes of landing a big payoff.
The amount had been confidential — and was kept out of the first trial — but a judge ruled that both sides could discuss it at this one.
“This case is about trust,” Steele told the jury. “This case is about betrayal and that betrayal leading to the sexual assault of a woman named Andrea Constand.”
Cosby, 80, is charged with drugging and molesting Constand, a former employee of Temple University’s basketball program, at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. Constand says he gave her pills that made her woozy, then penetrated her with his fingers as she lay incapacitated, unable to tell him to stop.
Amid trade fight, Trump says he’ll ‘make it up’ to farmers
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump acknowledged Monday that farmers could be adversely affected by the escalating tariff dispute with China, but promised to make it up to them, saying they “will be better off than they ever were.”
Speaking at a Cabinet meeting, Trump addressed the Chinese threat to slap tariffs on soybeans and other agriculture staples grown in rural America, a move that could hit Midwestern farmers, many of whom are strong supporters of the president.
“If during the course of the negotiation they want to hit the farmers because they think that hits me. I wouldn’t say that’s nice, but I tell you our farmers are great patriots,” Trump said. “They understand that they’re doing this for the country. We’ll make it up to them. In the end they’re going to be much stronger than they are right now.”
China is threatening the tariffs in response to Trump moving to enact protectionist measures as punishment for Chinese theft of U.S. intellectual property. The U.S. bought more than $500 billion in goods from China last year and now is planning or considering penalties on some $150 billion of those imports. The U.S. sold about $130 billion in goods to China in 2017 and faces a potentially devastating hit if China responds in kind.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump was working with his team “to determine how best to respond to China’s attack on American farmers” and had asked the Agriculture Department to provide him with a plan to protect U.S. farmers.
GOP Republicans return to work with Trump wish list in mind
WASHINGTON — The Republican majority in Congress was on a glide path to the midterms, having passed tax cuts into law and backed off budget battles with a year-end funding package. But President Trump was not impressed.
Trump has been picking apart some GOP accomplishments, including the big budget bill, and complaining that others, namely his border wall, remained undone.
Congress returned Monday scrambling over a to-do list that will satisfy a president Republicans desperately need to be promoting their achievements, not undermining them, as they prepare to hit the campaign trail.
“A lot of members would prefer to spend the rest of the year focusing on getting re-elected, but there’s pressure from the White House … to deliver more policy wins before facing voters,” said Alex Conant, a GOP strategist.
On Monday, the Senate swore in its newest member, Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi. Hyde-Smith was tapped by the Mississippi governor as the first woman in Congress to represent the state, filling the seat after longtime GOP Sen. Thad Cochran resigned.
Duckworth has baby; 1st US senator to give birth in office
CHICAGO — Sen. Tammy Duckworth has given birth to a baby girl, making her the first U.S. senator to give birth while in office.
The Illinois Democrat announced she delivered her second daughter, Maile (MY-lee) Pearl Bowlsbey, on Monday. Her office says Duckworth is recovering well and asked for privacy.
Duckworth, a 50-year-old veteran who lost her legs in the Iraq War, is one of only 10 lawmakers who have given birth while in Congress. Her first daughter, Abigail, was born in 2014.
Duckworth says Maile’s middle name is in honor of Duckworth’s husband’s great aunt, Pearl Bowlsbey Johnson, who was an Army officer and nurse in World War II.
She says she’s grateful to friends and family and “our wonderful medical teams for everything they’ve done to help us in our decades-long journey to complete our family.”