AP News in Brief at 12:04 a.m. EDT

Trump threatens Canada with 10% extra import tax for not pulling down anti-tariffs ad sooner

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (AP) — President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he plans to hike tariffs on imports of Canadian goods by an extra 10% because of an anti-tariff television ad aired by the province of Ontario.

The ad used the words of former President Ronald Reagan to criticize U.S. tariffs, angering Trump who said he would end trade talks with Canada. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he would pull the ad after the weekend, and it ran Friday and Saturday during the first two games of the World Series.

“Their Advertisement was to be taken down, IMMEDIATELY, but they let it run last night during the World Series, knowing that it was a FRAUD,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform as he flew aboard Air Force One to Malaysia.

“Because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act, I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are paying now.”

It was unclear what legal authority Trump would use to impose the additional import taxes. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on when the 10% hike would come into effect, and whether it would apply to all Canadian goods.

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June Lockhart, beloved mother figure from ‘Lassie’ and ‘Lost In Space,’ dies at 100

LOS ANGELES (AP) — June Lockhart, who became a mother figure for a generation of television viewers whether at home in “Lassie” or up in the stratosphere in “Lost in Space,” has died. She was 100.

Lockhart died Thursday of natural causes at her home in Santa Monica, family spokesman Lyle Gregory, a friend of 40 years, said Saturday.

“She was very happy up until the very end, reading the New York Times and LA Times everyday,” he said. “It was very important to her to stay focused on the news of the day.”

The daughter of prolific character actor Gene Lockhart, Lockhart was cast frequently in ingenue roles as a young film actor. Television made her a star.

From 1958 to 1964, she portrayed Ruth Martin, who raised the orphaned Timmy (Jon Provost), in the popular CBS series “Lassie.” From 1965 to 1968, she traveled aboard the spaceship Jupiter II as mother to the Robinson family in the campy CBS adventure “Lost in Space.”

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Russian missile and drone attacks kill 4 in Ukraine as Zelenskyy pleads for air defense

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine overnight into Saturday killed at least four people and wounded 20, officials said, and prompted fresh pleas from Ukraine’s president for Western air defense systems.

In the capital, Kyiv, two people were killed and 13 were wounded in a ballistic missile attack in the early hours of Saturday, Kyiv’s police said.

A fire broke out in a non-residential building in one location, while debris from intercepted missiles fell in an open area at another site, damaging windows in nearby buildings, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service wrote on the message app Telegram.

“Explosions in the capital. The city is under ballistic attack,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram during the onslaught.

In the Dnipropetrovsk region, two people were killed and seven wounded, acting regional Gov. Vladyslav Haivanenko said, adding that apartment buildings and private homes were damaged in the strikes.

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Trump aims to start his Asia trip with dealmaking in Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — President Donald Trump plans to burnish his reputation as an international dealmaker on Sunday by solidifying a trade agreement with Malaysia and overseeing the signing of an expanded ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand, two nations that skirmished along their disputed border earlier this year.

The accords could be finalized while Trump attends the annual summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which is being hosted in Kuala Lumpur. It’s the first stop of a three-country swing across the continent, with visits to Japan and South Korea and a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The Republican president touched down shortly before 10 a.m. local time and will attend a ceremony marking the agreement between Cambodia and Thailand, which he said he had been proud to broker.

Trump had threatened to withhold trade agreements from the two countries after five days of combat in July that killed dozens of people and displaced hundreds of thousands. Cambodia and Thailand have competing territorial claims, and violence periodically flares along their border.

Trump’s display of economic leverage has been credited with spurring negotiations. A shaky truce has persisted since then.

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Melissa grows into a Category 3 hurricane while unleashing torrential rain in the north Caribbean

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Hurricane Melissa strengthened into a major Category 3 hurricane late Saturday, unleashing torrential rain and threatening to cause catastrophic flooding in the northern Caribbean, including Haiti and Jamaica.

Melissa became a hurricane on Saturday and then intensified rapidly into a major storm. U.S. forecasters have issued a hurricane warning for Jamaica and say Melissa could further strengthen into a Category 4 storm.

“Life-threatening and catastrophic flash flooding and landslides are expected in portions of southern Hispaniola and Jamaica into early next week,” the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

Melissa was centered about 125 miles (200 kilometers) south-southeast of Kingston, Jamaica late Saturday night, and about 280 miles (455 kilometers) west-southwest of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. It had maximum sustained winds of 115 mph (185 kph) and was moving west at 3 mph (6 kph), the hurricane center said.

The slow-moving storm was expected to drop torrential rain, up to 25 inches (64 centimeters), on Jamaica, according to the hurricane center. Up to 35 inches (89 centimeters) of rain could pound the Tiburon peninsula in southwestern Haiti.

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Russia faces a shrinking and aging population and tries restrictive laws to combat it

For a quarter century, President Vladimir Putin has faced the specter of Russia’s shrinking and aging population.

In 1999, a year before he came to power, the number of babies born in Russia plunged to its lowest recorded level. In 2005, Putin said the demographic woes needed to be resolved by maintaining “social and economic stability.”

In 2019, he said the problem still “haunted” the country.

As recently as Thursday, he told a Kremlin demographic conference that increasing births was “crucial” for Russia.

Putin has launched initiatives to encourage people to have more children — from free school meals for large families to awarding Soviet-style “hero-mother” medals to women with 10 or more children.

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Virginia gubernatorial candidates debate trans youth rights as LGBTQ+ voters weigh a fraught moment

SALEM, Va. (AP) — René Harvey and her wife arrived at a Roanoke Valley pride celebration in October carrying deep-seated worries about all that could go wrong.

The couple had been to the region’s annual pride festival before, but this year felt different. Harvey keeps up with the news, and the headlines describing political violence and LGBTQ+ hate linger with her. She’s been following Virginia’s statewide elections, including a race for governor that has heavily focused on trans youth.

“It’s scary, the way things are heading,” said Harvey, sitting at a booth for her LGBTQ-friendly parish. “We had a fear coming here today.”

It turns out Harvey had nothing to worry about. The festival was peaceful, even celebratory. Her interactions with residents in the area were friendly. Festival-goers from all over Virginia weren’t dwelling on gender identity and how it’s handled in the public schools.

But the topic matters to Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican nominee for governor, who has said in her campaign that trans girls should be banned from bathrooms and sports teams. Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee, has largely avoided the subject, saying only that statewide political leaders should not be meddling in local school matters.

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Shutdowns began as a way to enforce federal law. Now Trump is using it to take more power

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government shutdown, already the second-longest in history, with no end in sight, is quickly becoming a way for President Donald Trump to exercise new command over the government.

It wasn’t always this way. In fact, it all started with an attempt to tighten Washington’s observance of federal law.

The modern phenomena of the U.S. government closing down services began in 1980 with a series of legal opinions from Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti, who was serving under Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Civiletti reached into the Antideficiency Act of 1870 to argue that the law was “plain and unambiguous” in restricting the government from spending money once authority from Congress expires.

In this shutdown, however, the Republican president has used the funding lapse to punish Democrats, tried to lay off thousands of federal workers and seized on the vacuum left by Congress to reconfigure the federal budget for his priorities.

“I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity,” Trump posted on his social media platform at the outset of the shutdown.

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New Jersey officer stopped at ATM and pizzeria instead of investigating double-murder

FRANKLIN TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) — A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors say he didn’t quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead stopping at an ATM and pizzeria.

Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 60 miles (96 kilometers) from Manhattan in central New Jersey, according to Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office.

But rather than responding immediately, prosecutors say GPS data and surveillance video show Bollaro drove nearly two miles in the opposite direction of the caller’s location to a bank ATM.

Dispatchers relayed other calls from concerned neighbors as Bollaro proceeded towards their locations without activating his police vehicle’s emergency lights and sirens, they said.

When he arrived at the location of the first caller, the officer told the dispatcher he didn’t hear anything and said he would continue to the locations of the other callers. But Robeson’s office said GPS data shows he never visited those locations before he asked the dispatcher to clear him from the scene.

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East Timor formally admitted to ASEAN in the group’s first expansion since the 1990s

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — East Timor’s prime minister told leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that it was a “dream realized” for his nation to be admitted to the bloc and an opportunity as it seeks to boost its struggling economy.

“Today, history is made,” Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao told the other leaders as the flag of East Timor, also known as Timor Leste, was added to the other 10 on the stage at a formal ceremony in Kuala Lumpur.

It was ASEAN’s first expansion since the 1990s and was more than a decade in the making.

“For the people of Timor Leste this is not only a dream realized, but a powerful affirmation of our journey — one marked by resilience, determination and hope,” he said.

The ceremony marked the opening of ASEAN’s annual summit, followed by two days of high-level engagements with key partners including China, Japan, India, Australia, Russia, South Korea and the U.S.