AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT

Case opened: Democrats begin public airing of Mueller report

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says it’s “case closed .” But Democrats are just getting started with Robert Mueller .

House Democrats have scheduled a series of hearings this coming week on the special counsel’s report as they intensify their focus on the Russia probe and pick up the pace on an investigative “path” — in the words of Speaker Nancy Pelosi — that some of them hope leads to impeachment of the president.

In doing so, they are trying to draw the public’s attention on the allegations that Trump sought to obstruct a federal investigation and they want to highlight his campaign’s contacts with Russia in the 2016 election.

And they will lay the groundwork for an appearance from Mueller himself, despite his stated desire to avoid the spotlight .

The hearings will focus on the two main topics of Mueller’s report, obstruction of justice and Russian election interference.

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Trump still hangs tariff threat over Mexico despite deal

STERLING, Va. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Sunday dangled the prospect of renewing his tariff threat against Mexico if the U.S. ally doesn’t co-operate on border issues, while some of his Democratic challengers for the White House said the last-minute deal to avert trade penalties was overblown.

In a series of tweets, Trump defended the agreement heading off the 5% tax on all Mexican goods that he had threatened to impose Monday, but he warned Mexico that, “if for some unknown reason” co-operation fails, “we can always go back to our previous, very profitable, position of Tariffs.”

Still, he said he didn’t believe that would be necessary.

The tweets came amid questions about just how much of the deal — announced with great fanfare Friday — was really new. It included a commitment from Mexico, for instance, to deploy its new National Guard to its southern border with Guatemala. Mexico, however, had already intended to do that before Trump’s latest threat and had made that clear to U.S. officials. Mexican officials have described their commitment as an accelerated deployment.

The U.S. also hailed Mexico’s agreement to embrace the expansion of a program implemented earlier this year under which some asylum-seekers are returned to Mexico as they wait out their cases. But U.S. officials had already been working to expand the program, which has led to the return of about 10,000 people to Mexico, without Mexico’s public embrace.

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Lovingly, a family raises an intersex child – again

OGDEN, Utah (AP) — When doctors said her youngest child would be a girl, Amie Schofield chose the name Victoria. Then they said the child would be a boy, so she switched to Victor.

It turned out neither was exactly right. The blue-eyed baby was intersex, with both male and female traits.

And so she and her husband decided to call the infant Victory. The name is a hope for triumph over the secrecy and shame, the pain and discrimination suffered by intersex people.

Amie Schofield knows those sufferings better than most: This was not her first intersex child.

Some two decades earlier, she gave birth to another child whose body did not align with common expectations of boys or girls. Schofield agreed to have that child undergo surgery that tipped the scales of gender to masculine. But the operation did not settle the issue of gender in the child’s mind, or protect them from a savage beating decades later.

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‘Hadestown’ leads Tonys, nets rare female director trophy

NEW YORK (AP) — The arty and original “Hadestown” was leading the Tony Awards with seven wins, including a rare win for a woman director of a musical, while Ali Stroker made history as the first actor in a wheelchair to win a Tony Award.

Stroker, paralyzed from the chest down due to a car crash when she was 2, won for featured actresses in a musical for her work in a dark revival of “Oklahoma!”

“This award is for every kid who is watching tonight who has a disability, who has a limitation or a challenge, who has been waiting to see themselves represented in this arena,” she said. “You are.”

Rachel Chavkin, the only woman to helm a new Broadway musical this season, won the Tony for best director of a musical for “Hadestown.” She told the crowd she was sorry to be such a rarity on Broadway.

“There are so many women who are ready to go. There are so many people of colour who are ready to go.” A lack of strides in embracing diversity on Broadway, she said, “is not a pipeline issue” but a lack of imagination.

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1 killed, 5 injured when crane topples on Dallas apartments

DALLAS (AP) — A construction crane buffeted by high winds during a storm toppled on a Dallas apartment building Sunday, killing one woman in the building and injuring five other people, two of them critically, a fire official said.

Crews searching the Elan City Lights building found the body of a woman inside after the crane collapsed and ripped a large gash into the side of the five-story structure, Dallas Fire-Rescue spokesman Jason Evans said during a press briefing.

“The building itself has suffered multiple collapses in different areas of the building to include residential spaces and the parking garage,” Evans said.

Of those injured, two were listed in critical condition, two suffered serious injuries and one suffered minor injuries and was later discharged from a hospital, Evans said. Earlier, he had said that six people were injured but said the figure would likely change.

First responders searched every apartment they could reach and found no other victims, Evans said. He also said that every resident of an apartment damaged by the crane was either out at the time or was among those taken to hospitals.

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Massive extradition bill protest fills Hong Kong streets

HONG KONG (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of protesters marched through Hong Kong on Sunday to voice their opposition to legislation that would allow people to be extradited to mainland China where they could face politically charged trials.

The massive demonstration took place three days before the semi-autonomous Chinese territory’s government plans to bring the highly contentious bill to the full legislature in a bid to win approval by the end of the month.

Police estimated the crowd at 240,000, but organizers said more than 1 million took part.

The protest was one of the largest in recent Hong Kong history, underscoring fears over China’s broadening footprint in the former British colony. It appeared to be even bigger than a massive pro-democracy demonstration in 2003 against a proposed national security law, according to Associated Press journalists who covered both events.

Late Sunday night, a group of demonstrators broke through barriers at government headquarters, where the march had ended. The crowd briefly pushed its way into the lobby, but police in riot gear used batons and pepper spray to push the protesters outside. Most had dispersed by 1 a.m., but police continued pushing protesters away for kilometres over a period of two to three hours.

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Brush fire sets off evacuation at California amusement park

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. (AP) — A fast-moving brush fire erupted near a huge amusement and water park in Southern California on Sunday, sending hundreds of visitors to the exit to escape clouds of smoke and ash before fire officials asked them to stay put while they worked to contain the blaze.

Six Flags Magic Mountain and Hurricane Harbor announced the evacuation shortly after noon, citing concern for the safety of park visitors and employees. About a half-hour later, the park said on its Twitter account that fire officials asked guests to shelter in place due to nearby road closures.

Park visitors were asked to move to the back of the 260-acre property, away from firefighting activity near the entrance, said Rachel Gallat, who was visiting a friend who works at the park.

“I was getting iced coffee and when I walked outside, ash was raining down on me,” Gallat said. “There was a big cloud of smoke. I saw people around me panicking; they didn’t know where they were supposed to go.”

A Los Angeles County Fire Department dispatcher told the Los Angeles Times the park voluntarily evacuated visitors.

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Jimmy Carter, after hip surgery, back teaching Sunday school

ATLANTA (AP) — Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter talked about his recent health setback and his conversation with President Donald Trump, as he returned to teaching Sunday school in Georgia for the first time since breaking his hip.

Carter told people gathered at the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains that he and his wife, Rosalynn, have nursing care at home and are doing fine. He thanked those present for their prayers and good wishes.

The 94-year-old Carter broke his hip last month at his home when he fell while leaving to go turkey hunting. He subsequently had hip replacement surgery.

The former first lady also was hospitalized around the same time for what Carter said was initially thought to be a stroke, but turned out to be less serious.

A devout Christian, Carter regularly teaches Sunday school in Plains, drawing hundreds of visitors for each session. But he had to cancel plans to teach after hip surgery.

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Sex abuse crisis the focus as US Catholic bishops convene

As the Roman Catholic church’s sex abuse scandal grows ever wider in scope in the U.S., bishops convene for a national meeting in Baltimore on Tuesday under heavy pressure to acknowledge their oversight failures and give a larger role to lay Catholics and secular authorities in confronting the crisis.

The pressure comes not only from longtime critics of the church’s response to clergy sex abuse, but also from insiders who now voice doubts that the bishops are capable of handling the crisis on their own. Among them is Francesco Cesareo, chairman of a national sex-abuse review board set up by the bishops.

“My biggest concern is that it’s going to end up being bishops overseeing bishops,” Cesareo told Catholic News Service, the news agency of the U.S. bishops’ conference. “If that’s the case, it’s going to be very difficult for the laity to feel any sense of confidence that anything has truly changed.”

Sex-abuse scandals have beset the Catholic church worldwide for decades, but events of the past year have created unprecedented challenges for the U.S. bishops. Many dioceses have become targets of state investigations since a Pennsylvania grand jury report in August detailed hundreds of cases of alleged abuse. In February, former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was expelled from the priesthood for sexually abusing minors and seminarians, and investigators are seeking to determine if some Catholic VIPs covered up his transgressions. Another investigative team recently concluded that Michael Bransfield , a former bishop in West Virginia, engaged in sexual harassment and financial misconduct over many years.

Even the president of the bishop’s conference, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of the Galveston-Houston archdiocese, has been entangled in controversies. On June 4, The Associated Press reported on a Houston woman’s allegations that DiNardo mishandled her case alleging sexual and financial misconduct by his deputy.

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Democratic rivals take only veiled swipes at Biden in Iowa

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — Joe Biden was not in the banquet hall for the Iowa Democratic Party’s blockbuster fundraiser on Sunday where 19 of his party’s presidential candidates spoke. But he was present in the veiled criticism from several of his rivals.

In five-minute chunks of speaking time, the candidates got the chance to make their case before 1,400 of the most influential Democrats in the leadoff caucus state. Some chose to nudge the national front-runner, and leader in a new Iowa poll, without naming him.

The sharpest jabs came from Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who painted Biden as too cautious at a time he argued demands stark change.

Sanders, who trails only Biden in the polls, described a “well-intentioned” candidate pursuing “a middle-ground strategy that antagonizes no one, that stands up to nobody and that changes nothing.”

“In my view that approach is not just bad public policy but it is a failed political strategy that I feel could end up with the re-election of Donald Trump,” Sanders said.