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

US and Mexico tentatively set to replace NAFTA with new deal

WASHINGTON (AP) — Snubbing Canada, the Trump administration reached a preliminary deal Monday with Mexico to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement — a move that raised legal questions and threatened to disrupt the operations of companies that do business across the three-country trade bloc.

President Donald Trump suggested that he might leave Canada, America’s No. 2 trading partner, out of a new agreement. He said he wanted to call the revamped trade pact “the United States-Mexico Trade Agreement” because, in his view, NAFTA had earned a reputation as being harmful to American workers.

But first, he said, he would give Canada a chance to get back in — “if they’d like to negotiate fairly.” To intensify the pressure on Ottawa to agree to his terms, the president threatened to impose new taxes on Canadian auto imports.

Canada’s NAFTA negotiator, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, is cutting short a trip to Europe to fly to Washington on Tuesday to try to restart talks.

“We will only sign a new NAFTA that is good for Canada and good for the middle class,” said Adam Austen, a spokesman for Freeland, adding that “Canada’s signature is required.”

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Under pressure, Trump tersely recognizes McCain, lowers flag

WASHINGTON (AP) — Glowering in public and near-silent for two days, President Donald Trump relented under pressure Monday by tersely recognizing Sen. John McCain’s “service to our country” and re-lowering the White House flag.

While much of the nation remembered McCain’s record as a war hero, longtime senator and presidential nominee over the weekend, Trump had nursed his grievances. McCain had been an infuriating foil in a long-running feud over style and policy that did not end with the senator’s illness and death.

Trump’s reluctance to participate in the national remembrance was awkward and uncomfortable, even by the standards of a leader who acknowledges he doesn’t act like a typical president. The episode highlighted the outsider president’s impulse to harbour personal resentments regardless of political repercussions.

Before Trump’s Monday afternoon statement, his only commentary on McCain’s death had been a perfunctory tweet Saturday. The lack of a formal statement — combined with the fact that White House flags were flown at half-staff only briefly — drew strong criticism from Republicans and veterans’ groups as well as Democrats.

When he finally did comment, in a printed statement, Trump was sparing with his praise for the six-term senator: “Despite our differences on policy and politics, I respect Senator John McCain’s service to our country.”

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Shooting killed gamers seeking money for college, family

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — A California man who played video games to earn money for college and a West Virginian whose e-sports winnings helped support his young family were slain at a Florida tournament where a gunman specifically targeted fellow gamers, authorities said Monday.

David Katz, 24, of Baltimore fatally shot himself after killing the two men and wounding 10 others Sunday inside a pizzeria and bar that were hosting a “Madden NFL 19” tournament. Katz was among about 130 gamers attending the competition at a mall in Jacksonville.

Court records in Maryland reviewed by The Associated Press show Katz had previously been hospitalized for mental illness. Divorce filings from his parents say that as an adolescent he was twice hospitalized in psychiatric facilities and was prescribed antipsychotic and antidepressant medications.

Katz carried two handguns, including one equipped with a laser sight, into the tournament venue but only fired one of them, Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams told a news conference Monday. He said surveillance video revealed Katz was the only shooter, but his motive remains unknown.

“The suspect clearly targeted other gamers who were in the back room” of the pizzeria, Williams said. “The suspect walked past patrons who were in other parts of the business and focused his attention on the gamers.”

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Officials cite ‘terrorist attack’ document in compound case

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A hand-written document called “Phases of a Terrorist Attack,” was seized from a remote New Mexico desert compound where authorities found 11 children living in wretched conditions, and later a dead 3-year-old boy, prosecutors said.

The document, cited in a court filing Friday by state prosecutors, included vague instructions for “the one-time terrorist” and mentioned an unnamed place called “the ideal attack site.”

Prosecutors wrote that new interviews with some of the children taken from the site revealed that one of the adults, Lucas Morton, stated he wished to die in jihad as a martyr, and that defendants Jany Leveille and defendant Subhannah Wahhaj joked about dying in jihad.

Morton’s attorney did not respond immediately to requests for comment. Megan Mitsunaga, who represents Subhannah Wahhaj, said the she has not seen any evidence to support the accusation against her client. Leveille’s attorney could not be reached.

The document was filed Friday as part of the prosecutors’ fight to keep all five adults found at the compound jailed. They are challenging a judge’s ruling earlier this month that would release the adults to house arrest with ankle bracelets. They remain in custody amid death threats against the judge and concerns for the defendants’ own security.

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Pope’s alleged coverup pivots on when, if sanctions imposed

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The archbishop of Washington on Monday “categorically denied” ever being informed that his predecessor had been sanctioned for sexual misconduct, undercutting a key element of a bombshell allegation that Pope Francis covered up clergy abuse.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl issued a statement after the Vatican’s former ambassador to the United States accused Pope Francis of effectively freeing ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick from the sanctions in 2013 despite knowing of McCarrick’s sexual predations against seminarians.

Wuerl’s denial corresponds with the public record, which provides ample evidence that McCarrick lived a life completely devoid of ecclesiastic restriction after the sanctions were said to have been imposed in 2009 or 2010. That suggests that Pope Benedict XVI either didn’t impose sanctions or never conveyed them in any official way to the people who could enforce them — or that McCarrick simply flouted them and Benedict’s Vatican was unwilling or unable to stop him.

The claims of the former Vatican ambassador, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, have thrown Francis’ papacy into crisis, undermining once again his insistence that he is intent on ridding the church of sex abuse and coverup.

His record has taken several hits of late, including his extraordinary misjudgment involving a Chilean bishop, for which he has apologized and taken measures to address. But the McCarrick case is something else entirely, implicating the powerful U.S. hierarchy and the Vatican itself.

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Tropical Storm Lane damage assessment under way

HONOLULU (AP) — Hawaii officials on Monday continued assessing damage from Tropical Storm Lane, which ranked as the No. 3 rainmaker from a tropical cyclone in the United States since 1950.

It’s still too early to quantify the extent of the damage, but it runs the gamut from flooded homes to washed-out roads, said Kelly Wooten, spokeswoman for the Hawaii County Civil Defence Agency.

“We don’t really have any numbers or statistics back yet,” she said. Assessment teams began surveying the damage Sunday.

The storm caused damage, mostly on the Big Island, where rivers raged near Hilo and nearly 40 people had to be rescued from homes.

There were no deaths from the storm, which had the potential to cause much more destruction.

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Plans on making untraceable 3D guns can’t be posted online

A U.S. judge in Seattle blocked the Trump administration Monday from allowing a Texas company to post online plans for making untraceable 3D guns, agreeing with 19 states and the District of Columbia that such access to the plastic guns would pose a security risk.

The states sued to stop an agreement that the government had reached with Austin, Texas-based Defence Distributed, saying guidelines on how to print undetectable plastic guns could be acquired by felons or terrorists.

U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik extended a temporary restraining order, and his new decision will last until the case is resolved. He said Cody Wilson, owner of Defence Distributed, wanted to post the plans online so that citizens can arm themselves without having to deal with licenses, serial numbers and registrations.

Wilson has said that “governments should live in fear of their citizenry.”

“It is the untraceable and undetectable nature of these small firearms that poses a unique danger,” Lasnik said. “Promising to detect the undetectable while at the same time removing a significant regulatory hurdle to the proliferation of these weapons — both domestically and internationally — rings hollow and in no way ameliorates, much less avoids, the harms that are likely to befall the states if an injunction is not issued.”

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AP-NORC Poll: Few Democrats favour liberal cry to abolish ICE

WASHINGTON (AP) — The rallying cry from some liberals to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement isn’t a likely winner this election year, as a new poll finds only a quarter of Democrats support eliminating the agency that carried out the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant children from their parents.

But even as they don’t want to fully dismantle ICE, 57 per cent of Democrats view the agency negatively, including nearly three-fourths of those who describe themselves as liberal, according to a poll released Monday by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The findings demonstrate tension among Democrats about how to address the crisis at the border that intensified in June when the Trump administration instituted a family separation policy to deter illegal immigration.

Some potential Democratic presidential contenders, such as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, backed getting rid of ICE in response to the separations. Others, including Sen. Kamala Harris of California, urged a rethinking of the agency, but stopped short of calling for its abolition.

President Donald Trump has seized on the Democratic criticism of ICE to paint the party as weak on immigration and national security. The administration reversed its separation policy amid an international outcry, but hundreds of children remain separated from their families.

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1, done: Halep 1st No. 1 to lose 1st Open match; Serena wins

NEW YORK (AP) — Some players, like top-ranked Simona Halep, freely acknowledge they don’t deal well with the hustle-and-bustle of the U.S. Open and all it entails.

Others, like 44th-ranked Kaia Kanepi, take to the Big Apple and its Grand Slam tournament.

Put those two types at opposite ends of a court at Flushing Meadows and watch what can happen: Halep made a quick-as-can-be exit Monday, overwhelmed by the power-based game of Kanepi 6-2, 6-4 to become the first No. 1-seeded woman to lose her opening match at the U.S. Open in the half-century of the professional era.

On a Day 1 that featured the major tournament debut of 25-second serve clocks, Halep blamed opening-round jitters, a recurring theme throughout her career. The reigning French Open champion has now lost her first match at 12 of 34 career major appearances, a stunningly high rate for such an accomplished player.

“It’s always about the nerves,” said Halep, who was beaten in the first round in New York by five-time major champion Maria Sharapova in 2017. “Even when you are there in the top, you feel the same nerves. You are human.”

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Goodman guessing he’s ‘mopey’ widower in ‘Roseanne’ spinoff

LOS ANGELES (AP) — John Goodman is speculating that this fall’s “Roseanne” spinoff will mean curtains for the matriarch played by Roseanne Barr.

In an interview with the Sunday Times of London, Goodman said he wasn’t sure how the new series, titled “The Conners,” will be structured.

But he guessed that his character will be “mopey and sad” because his wife has died.

Goodman played husband Dan Conner to Barr’s character on ABC’s original “Roseanne” and last season’s revival.

The network fired Barr after she posted a racist tweet, which she apologized for but has said was misinterpreted.