The Wednesday news briefing: An at-a-glance survey of some top stories

Highlights from the news file for Wednesday, May 10:

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GHOMESHI APOLOGIZES: Former CBC radio star Jian Ghomeshi has apologized in court to a former colleague who accused him of sexually assaulting her at work. Ghomeshi signed a peace bond and the sexual assault charge was withdrawn. “I regret my behaviour at work with all of my heart and I hope that I can find forgiveness from those for whom my actions took such a toll.” The former host of the acclaimed CBC show “Q” described his behaviour toward the complainant, Kathryn Borel, as thoughtless, sexually inappropriate, demeaning, and an abuse of his power as a star. Outside court, Borel, 36, pulled no punches in her assessment of Ghomeshi or the public broadcaster, saying over a three-year period he “made it clear to me that he could do what he wanted to me and my body.” The judge said the signing of the peace bond was not an admission of guilt to any criminal offence and Ghomeshi’s lawyer also said the conclusion of the case was not an admission.

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ASSISTED DYING APPEAL: Senators have heard an emotional appeal to reject the federal government’s restrictive approach to medical assistance in dying from the wife of an acclaimed doctor who starved himself to death to an end his suffering from brain cancer. Maureen Taylor says senators are the last hope of people who are suffering intolerably but won’t qualify for an assisted death under the proposed new law, which would require a person’s natural death to be “reasonably foreseeable.” She’s begging them to insist upon at least one amendment, to delete the foreseeable death provision. Taylor’s husband was Dr. Donald Low, a microbiologist credited with steering Toronto through the SARS crisis in 2003.

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RED CROSS AID FOR FIRE EVACUEES: The Red Cross is providing an immediate payment of $50 million to evacuees of the Fort McMurray forest fire to add to emergency funds the Alberta government is providing. CEO Conrad Sauve says each adult is to receive $600 and each child will get $300. The money is to be electronically transferred within the next two days. “This is the most important cash transfer we have done in our history and the fastest one,” he said at a news conference with Alberta Premier Rachel Notley.

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GOVERNMENT OPEN TO ELECTORAL REFORM ALTERNATIVES: The Trudeau government was accused of stacking the deck in the Liberal party’s favour as it finally made good on a promise to create a special parliamentary committee on electoral reform. Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef insisted the government remains open to considering any and all alternatives to the existing first-past-the-post voting system. But with the committee to be dominated by Liberals, opposition parties suspect it’s geared to propose a ranked ballot system — an alternative favoured by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and which critics maintain would primarily benefit the Liberals.

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GELDOF SAYS TRUDEAU UNAMBITIOUS ON AID: Bob Geldof is criticizing the prime minister’s claim that spending 0.7 per cent of Canada’s gross national income on foreign aid is too ambitious. The musician and international activist says that Canada can do much more to help finance aid projects around the world, notably on the African continent. Geldof is reacting to Justin Trudeau’s comments earlier in the week that the 0.7-per-cent goal endorsed by the United Nations is not realistic for this year or the next. The world body has long urged rich countries to devote more to what’s known as Official Development Assistance, although few hit the UN target.

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ACCUSED KILLER TESTIFIES: One of the men accused of killing Tim Bosma says it was his co-accused who fatally shot the Hamilton man and later dumped his body into an animal incinerator dubbed “The Eliminator.” Mark Smich testified it was Dellen Millard who killed Bosma, who he saw slumped over the dash of his truck after taking Millard for a test drive of the vehicle on May 6, 2013. Smich says there was blood everywhere in the truck and that he helped Millard take Bosma’s body to Millard’s farm near Waterloo, Ont., where it was put in the incinerator. Smich, 28, of Oakville, Ont., and Millard, 30, of Toronto, have pleaded not guilty in the death of Bosma, who vanished after taking two strangers on a test drive.

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BELL TO COMPLY WITH INTERNET RULING: Bell Canada says it will comply with a federal cabinet decision that supports a CRTC ruling forcing big Internet service providers to sell space on their high-speed infrastructure to smaller rivals at wholesale prices. The company had asked the Liberal government to overrule a decision in July 2015 by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission that requires it and other telecom giants to give independent Internet providers access to their advanced networks at a reduced cost. The rates have not yet been determined. The CRTC will set the prices based partly on cost studies provided by the major telecoms, commission spokeswoman Patricia Valladao said.

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DONATION BIN OPERATORS WARNED: The Competition Bureau is tackling misleading practices involving clothing bin collections in Canada by warning two commercial operators in the Montreal area to stop giving the false impression that all or part of the proceeds are destined for charities. The federal agency, acting under the deceptive marketing provisions of the Competition Act, sent warning letters to the two companies, which it did not identify, requiring them to correct the information on their bins. Some of the bins often found in parking lots give donors the impression they are collecting for charity while others even imitate the donation bins of real charitable organizations, it said.

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SCIENTISTS MAP LIFE IN DEEP WATERS: A humble, star-shaped creature that crawls across the floors of the seabed has helped a group of scientists that includes two Nova Scotian researchers come up with a map predicting surprising amounts of life in some of the world’s deepest, darkest oceans. The maps linking biodiversity to thousands of samples of the brittle star from around the globe came out on Wednesday in the journal Nature. They suggest that deep waters such as those off of Canada’s continental shelves – once thought to be barren deeps – can have a greater density of some species than shallower and warmer waters. Derek Tittensor, a biologist at Halifax’s Dalhousie University, says the team collected 165,000 records from museums around the world over a 15-year period.

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