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

Feb 7, 2017 | 1:00 PM

Highlights from the news file for Tuesday, Feb. 7

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CANADA POSTS TRADE SURPLUS: Statistics Canada says the country posted back-to-back monthly trade surpluses for the first time since September 2014, boosted by higher prices for exports of oil and natural gas in December. But economists say the gain in energy prices hid some troubling weakness in non-energy exports. The overall trade surplus hit $923 million for the final month of 2016 after a surplus the previous month that was revised upward to $1 billion from an initial reading of $526 million. Thomson Reuters says economists had anticipated a surplus of $350 million for December. Jennifer Lee, a senior economist with BMO Capital Markets, says running surpluses will draw unwanted attention from the U.S., where President Donald Trump has made trade a key issue.

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FEDS RESTORE COURT CHALLENGES PROGRAM: The Liberal government is restoring and modernizing a program that gives financial support to those mounting expensive legal battles to clarify and protect their language and equality rights in court. The court challenges program is also expanding to include other sections of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, including religion and freedom of expression, democratic participation and the right to life, liberty and security of the person. An independent body of experts will now oversee the new version of the program, which the government says will help ensure that decisions over who gets funding — and who doesn’t — remain impartial.

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SAJJAN HINTS AT MORE MONEY FOR MILITARY: Canada’s defence minister is hinting at new money for the military following a much-anticipated meeting with his U.S. counterpart in Washington this week. But Harjit Sajjan says what’s equally important is what countries do with their military, a line successive federal governments have used to defend Canada’s paltry defence spending. The comments come one day after Sajjan sat down with U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis in Washington, the first such meeting between a Canadian minister and a member of the Trump administration. President Donald Trump has repeatedly blasted NATO allies for not spending enough on their own defence, a message he repeated Monday even as Sajjan was meeting with Mattis.

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N.B. BUDGET INCREASES PROVINCE’S DEBT: New Brunswick’s government is piling on more debt in its 2017-18 budget as the Liberals opt for targeted spending increases rather than a quicker assault on the deficit. Finance Minister Cathy Rogers’ $9.4 billion budget released Tuesday hikes spending by just under four per cent despite the province’s fiscal challenges. The total debt will rise to $14.4 billion — up almost $1 billion from last year’s net debt — due in part to plans to spend more on highways and other infrastructure as the federal government’s matching funds become available. The government is still projecting to balance the budget by 2020-21.

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FAMILY SEEKS RETURN OF SON’S BODY FROM SYRIA: The mother of a Canadian man killed fighting Islamic State militants in northern Syria is questioning why her son’s body still hasn’t been recovered when the remains of a British fighter who died on the same day were on the way to the United Kingdom. Nazzareno Tassone, 24, was killed on Dec. 21 in the city of Raqqa, while fighting alongside the Kurdish People’s Defense Units, a U.S.-backed group also known as the YPG. His family in Niagara Falls, Ont., only learned of his death in early January, when they received a letter from the YPG, which also said that his body had been seized by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, known as ISIS or ISIL.

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UNIVERSITY WAIVES FEES IN RESPONSE TO TRUMP TRAVEL BAN: A Newfoundland university says the response has been overwhelming after it waived application fees for students from the seven predominantly Muslim countries targeted by a temporary U.S. immigration ban. A spokeswoman for Memorial University of Newfoundland says the school is getting double the number of inquiries it usually gets from students in the United States. The immigration ban order has been suspended by a U.S. court, but the school says the university has no plans to lift its offer, saying the gesture could mean a great deal to students spooked by U.S. President Donald Trump’s decree. The university’s statement says the executive order has affected international studies, and academic conference participation.

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CANADIAN-AMERICAN MAN SENTENCED TO LIFE IN OHIO: A Canadian-American man who fled from Ohio to Quebec after strangling his high school sweetheart with a belt has pleaded guilty to murder and been sentenced to life behind bars. Kyle Sheppard, 33, of Toledo, Ohio, who’d been scheduled to go on trial next month, will have to serve at least 15 years in prison before being eligible for parole. The case arose when Katie Sheppard, 29, who worked for a dry-cleaning business, failed to report to work on Friday, Nov. 2, 2012. That evening, an officer found her body, which police said had been “posed” with the hands folded across each other, on the front porch of her home.

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TOWN SEEKS HELP WITH INFLUX OF ASYLUM SEEKERS: A small community on the border between Manitoba and North Dakota wants federal help for an influx of people seeking asylum. The Municipality of Emerson-Franklin saw 22 people sneak across the border last weekend alone and had to put up 19 of them in a community hall. The municipality’s reeve, Greg Janzen, says volunteers fed the group and kept an eye on everyone while RCMP and border agents did interviews. Janzen says he is sending the federal government a bill to draw attention to the resources his community is using. He says the number of people coming across the border illegally has jumped in recent months.

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REPORT SAYS THOUSANDS HANGED AT SYRIAN PRISON: A new report issued by Amnesty International says Syria’s Saydnaya prison was known to detainees as “the slaughterhouse.” Behind its closed doors, the group says the military police hanged as many as 13,000 people over the course of four years before carting out their bodies by the truckload for burial in mass graves. The report, issued on Tuesday, said that 20-50 people were hanged each week, sometimes twice a week, at the prison in what the organization called a “calculated campaign of extrajudicial execution.” The report covers the period from the start of the March 2011 uprising to December 2015, when Amnesty says between 5,000 and 13,000 people were hanged.

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B.C. MAN USES ZAMBONI TO CLEAR STREET: One man has found a uniquely Canadian way to respond to the unusually large amounts of snow that have fallen on parts of British Columbia by taking his Zamboni out to clear roads in one Vancouver Island community. Cpl. Dan Cottingham of the Central Saanich police says officers were called at about 7:30 p.m. Monday after a local farmer took his Zamboni out on the streets of the district, just outside Victoria. Cottingham says the man had purchased the second-hand Zamboni to spread manure on his field. Victoria and Vancouver are among cities in the province that have had unusually large snowfalls since the weekend, snarling traffic and causing delays on public transit.

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The Canadian Press