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

Trump was taped talking of paying for Playboy model’s story

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer secretly recorded Trump discussing a potential payment for a former Playboy model’s account of having an affair with him, people familiar with an investigation into the attorney said on Friday.

The recording by attorney Michael Cohen adds to questions about whether Trump tried to quash damaging stories in the run-up to his 2016 election. Trump’s campaign had said it knew nothing about any payment to ex-centerfold Karen McDougal. It could also further entangle the president in a criminal investigation that for months has targeted Cohen, his onetime lawyer and close ally.

Current Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani said the payment was never made and the brief recording shows Trump did nothing wrong.

“The transaction that Michael is talking about on the tape never took place, but what’s important is: If it did take place, the president said it has to be done correctly and it has to be done by check” to keep a proper record of it, Giuliani said.

One of Cohen’s lawyers, Lanny Davis, said “any attempt at spin cannot change what is on the tape.”

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Sheriff: 11 people dead after Missouri tourist boat accident

BRANSON, Mo. (AP) — At least 11 people, including children, died after a boat carrying tourists on a Missouri lake capsized and sank Thursday night, the local sheriff said.

Stone County Sheriff Doug Rader said five people remain missing and seven others were hospitalized after a Ride the Ducks boat sank on Table Rock Lake in Branson.

A spokeswoman for the Cox Medical Center Branson said four adults and three children arrived at the hospital shortly after the incident. Two adults were in critical condition and the others were treated for minor injuries, Brandei Clifton said.

Rader said the stormy weather was believed to be the cause of the capsizing. Another duck boat on the lake was able to safely make it back to shore.

Steve Lindenberg, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Springfield, Missouri, said the agency issued a severe thunderstorm warning for the Branson area Thursday evening. Lindenberg said winds reached speeds of more than 60 mph.

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Tears, then giggles: Honduran baby is back in parents’ arms

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras (AP) — For months, a Honduran couple watched their only son grow up in videos while he was kept in U.S. government custody. That’s where he took his first steps and spoke his first words.

The parents got to embrace the 15-month-old boy again Friday, five months after U.S. immigration officials forcibly separated the baby from his father at the Texas border.

Johan, who grabbed the world’s attention when he appeared in a U.S. courtroom in diapers, at first didn’t recognize his mom and dad after he was flown to San Pedro Sula.

“I kept saying Johan, Johan, and he started to cry,” said his mother, Adalicia Montecinos.

She broke down in tears as she talked about how her son had become a poster child for outrage over the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.

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Liberal icon, new Democratic star wade into GOP-heavy Kansas

KANSAS CITY, Kansas (AP) — The new face of an emerging democratic socialist movement joined its patriarch in the most unlikely place Friday, calling on Kansans unhappy with the direction of the country to get off the sidelines in a pivotal Republican-held congressional district.

“We know that people in Kansas, just like everywhere else in this country, just like families in the Bronx, just want a fair shake,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the surprise winner in a New York House primary last month, told a frenetic crowd of more than 3,000 in a Kansas suburb of Kansas City.

Headlining a rally with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez sought to infuse the final weeks of Democrat Brent Welder’s congressional primary campaign with the enthusiasm that lifted her over 20-year Democratic incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley last month.

In an election year defined by energized Democratic voters seeking to send President Donald Trump a message, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez were betting they could stir up liberals in places where the left rarely competes.

The 28-year-old Latina from New York and the 76-year-old Jewish senator from Vermont struck a stark contrast in the hotel ballroom, though they reflected the range of people in the racially and ethnically mixed crowd, weighted toward millennials but including grey-haired activists and parents with children.

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Dolphins owner says he was keeping options open on anthem

Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross said he hadn’t decided whether to actually discipline players who protest during the national anthem when he formally told the team that the demonstrations could be punishable.

“We were asked to submit a form to the NFL on our overall discipline policy prior to the start of the rookie report date,” Ross said in a statement Friday, explaining why a one-sentence reference to “Proper Anthem Conduct” was included in the team’s official discipline policy. “The one line sentence related to the national anthem was a placeholder as we haven’t made a decision on what we would do, if anything, at that point.”

President Donald Trump, a frequent critic of protesting players, said Friday that players should be suspended for a game for kneeling once, then suspended for the season with no pay if they kneel a second time.

“Isn’t it in contract that players must stand at attention, hand on heart? The $40,000,000 Commissioner must now make a stand,” Trump tweeted, referring to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

Miami’s policy was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press and listed anthem conduct under behaviour that could be found “detrimental to the club.” It was the final bullet point on Miami’s list.

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White House rejects Putin idea for Ukraine referendum

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House rejected on Friday a Vladimir Putin-backed effort to hold a referendum in eastern Ukraine on the region’s future, distancing itself from the idea in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s controversial summit with the Russian leader.

Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov, said the two leaders had discussed the possibility of a referendum in separatist-leaning eastern Ukraine during their Helsinki summit.

But Trump’s National Security Council spokesman Garrett Marquis said agreements between Russia and the Ukrainian government for resolving the conflict in the Donbas region do not include any such option and any effort to organize a “so-called referendum” would have “no legitimacy.”

The back-and-forth came as the White House outlined the agenda for a proposed second summit between Trump and Putin — in Washington this fall — that would focus on national security. Moscow signalled its openness to a second formal meeting between the two leaders as criticism of Trump over his first major session with his Russian counterpart kept up in the U.S.

Trump left the White House for his New Jersey golf club for the weekend. Once he got there, he returned to Twitter to complain about news coverage of Monday’s meeting.

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Judge: ‘Great progress’ reuniting families split at border

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A federal judge on Friday applauded Trump administration efforts to meet a deadline to reunite more than 2,500 children with their families after they were separated at the border.

Justice Department attorneys said in federal court in San Diego that 450 children 5 and older had been reunified, up from 364 a day earlier.

“I’m just very impressed with the effort that has been made,” U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw said. “It really does appear that great progress has been made.”

Hundreds of children are still awaiting reunions with their family.

In a court filing Thursday, the administration said about 1,600 parents were believed to be eligible for reunification and about 900 were not eligible or “not yet known to be eligible.”

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Bayer to stop sales of birth control device tied to injuries

WASHINGTON (AP) — The maker of a permanent contraceptive implant subject to thousands of injury reports and repeated safety restrictions by regulators said Friday that it will stop selling the device in the U.S., the only country where it remains available.

Bayer said the safety of its Essure implant has not changed, but it will stop selling the device at the end of the year due to weak sales.

The German company had billed the device as the only non-surgery sterilization method for women. As complaints mounted and demand slipped, it stopped Essure sales in Canada, Europe, South America, South Africa and the United Kingdom.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has placed multiple restrictions on the device following patient reports of pain, bleeding, allergic reactions and cases where the implant punctured the uterus or shifted out of place.

In May, the FDA said doctors must show women a checklist of the device’s risks before implanting it.

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Jamie Lee Curtis hugs an emotional ‘Halloween’ fan

SAN DIEGO (AP) — In Comic-Con’s Hall H, the massive room that holds the highest profile presentations and hosts the biggest movie and television stars, there is still a strict division between the actors on stage and those in the audience. But Jamie Lee Curtis changed that Friday, walking off-stage during the presentation for the new “Halloween” to embrace an emotional fan.

Wiping tears away, the man used his moment at the Q&A microphone to tell a story about a home invasion he experienced. He said that her character saved his life and inspired him to use knitting needles in defence. He said he was a victor not a victim because of her, and that she was the reason he attended the convention.

A stunned audience watched as Curtis, without warning, left her seat on the big stage and walked down to share a quiet moment with the man.

His comments echoed what Curtis had said just moments earlier about how this new iteration of “Halloween” is so important because it allows her character to reclaim her narrative 40 years after the traumatic events with Michael Myers in John Carpenter’s movie.

“This is a woman who has been waiting 40 years to face the person she knows is coming back,” Curtis said. “40 years later Laurie had no real support, had no real help. PTSD is real. Trauma is real.”

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Simpler, one-dose treatment to prevent malaria relapse OK’d

U.S. regulators Friday approved a simpler, one-dose treatment to prevent relapses of malaria.

Standard treatment now takes two weeks and studies show many patients don’t finish taking every dose.

Malaria is caused by parasites that are spread to people through mosquito bites. Antimalarial drugs can cure the initial infection but parasites can get into the liver, hide in a dormant form, and cause recurrences months or years later. A second drug is used to stop relapses.

The new drug, GlaxoSmithKline’s Krintafel (KRIN’-tah-fell), only targets the kind of malaria that mainly occurs in South America and Southeast Asia. Most malaria cases and deaths are in Africa, and they involve another species.

In testing, one dose of Krintafel worked about the same as two weeks of the standard treatment, preventing relapses in about three-quarters of patients over six months, the company said.