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The key takeaways from Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford’s hearings

Blasey Ford testified. Kavanaugh called her allegation part of an “orchestrated political hit.” And a number of Republicans, including the President, said they still supported the Supreme Court nominee. The Senate judiciary committee is now set to vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation today, and if that passes, the GOP will seek to hold a larger Senate vote as early as this weekend. Here’s what happened, and what comes next:

Blasey Ford’s testimony: Fighting back tears, Blasey Ford delivered an opening statement where she recounted the alleged sexual assault by Kavanaugh at a party in 1982. “I am not here because I want to be. I am terrified,” she said. “I am here because I believe it is my civic duty.” She said she is “100-per-cent” sure Kavanaugh is the person who assaulted her.

Kavanaugh’s testimony: Alternating between shouting and crying, Kavanaugh categorically denied the allegations (two other women have levelled accusations) and said the confirmation process was a “national disgrace.” He said the accusation was a “calculated and orchestrated political hit” from the Democrats as “revenge on behalf of the Clintons.”

What politicians said: Donald Trump said Kavanaugh’s testimony was “powerful, honest, and riveting” and slammed Democrats for what he called a “search and destroy strategy.” GOP senator John Cornyn told Kavanaugh not to “give up” because he would “come out on the right side of this.” Democrats told Ford they believed her testimony and criticized Republicans for pushing ahead with the nomination.

What comes next: The big question marks, if it gets to a wider Senate vote, are how three GOP senators will vote. Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins and Jeff Flake all remained on the fence and it would only take two of them voting with the Democrats to block Kavanaugh’s nomination. The Republicans face a tight deadline to confirm a nominee because they could lose control of the Senate after the November midterm elections.

What our columnists are saying

Elizabeth Renzetti writes that Blasey Ford’s testimony felt like a turning point: “It now feels as if a dam has burst. As if women who have been holding in all this rage and humiliation for decades are so exhausted with the effort that it can no longer be contained.”

John Doyle argues that the televised hearings were a brutal and cruel contest of strength: “That is how Trump will see it and that is what matters. To him, his supporters and Republican senators. The second half had a strong, forceful, comeback running play from Justice Kavanaugh. It was deny, deny, deny and raise your voice to drown out the accuser.”

Denise Balkissoon says Republicans “decried the lack of corroboration, as though they weren’t the ones refusing to publicly question the one person who could confirm – or disprove – Blasey Ford’s story. That would be Mark Judge, who became friends with Justice Kavanaugh when both were students at the elite Georgetown Prep high school.”

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Nova Scotia’s health authority is pushing back against calls to address abortion

The health authority says it’s acceptable for women to wait a week for an ultrasound before terminating a pregnancy and that there’s no need for the province’s only abortion clinic to conduct its own scans. The department of diagnostic imaging at a Halifax hospital can accommodate all the women who want to end pregnancies, director Kim Munroe said, adding that the average waiting time for an ultrasound is a week. But experts say same-day or next-day appointments at abortion clinics, the standard in major Canadian urban centres, would prevent potential issues like nausea and surpassing the nine-week limit for using the abortion pill. The province has deferred to the health authority to make any recommendations for changes to abortion services.

B.C. is launching two reviews into the proliferation of money laundering in the province

One investigation will look into how the practice has infiltrated the real estate and financial service market. The government had promised to take action after a Globe investigation found people connected to the deadly fentanyl trade are parking illicit gains in the Vancouver housing market. The other review is set to examine specific cases of questionable activity and will be chaired by a former deputy RCMP commissioner. “We are letting them know we will follow wherever they are attempting to launder their profits,” said Attorney-General David Eby, who will lead the second review. But IntegrityBC director Dermod Travis said the government needs to go a step further and re-establish a police task force to lay charges against those who have committed crimes.

The House of Commons has agreed to strip Aung San Suu Kyi of her honorary citizenship

The unprecedented move came one day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was open to Parliament reconsidering the honour given to Myanmar’s de-facto leader. Suu Kyi has come under scrutiny for failing to do more to address the military violence against Rohingya Muslims in her country. Last week, the House of Commons declared the Rohingya crisis a genocide. Suu Kyi will no longer be part of a group of only five honourary Canadians: Nelson Mandela, Malala Yousafzai, the Dalai Lama, Raoul Wallenberg and the Aga Khan.

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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

The SEC has accused Elon Musk of fraud and is seeking to remove him from Tesla

The U.S. securities regulator is alleging that the Tesla CEO made a series of “false and misleading” tweets last month about taking the electric car company private. The lawsuit filed by the SEC is a direct response to a tweet from Musk in August that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at US$420 per share. When news of the SEC probe became known late last month, Musk said Tesla would stay public due to investor resistance. The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk nearly reached a settlement with the regulator, but it fell apart at the last minute.

MORNING MARKETS

Stocks tumble

The euro fell on Friday to its lowest in nearly two weeks while Italy’s bond yields hit their highest in three after the government agreed to set a higher than expected budget deficit target that could put Rome on a collision course with Brussels. Tokyo’s Nikkei gained 1.4 per cent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng 0.3 per cent, and the Shanghai Composite 1.1 per cent. In Europe, London’s FTSE 100, Germany’s DAX and the Paris CAC 40 were down by between 0.2 and 0.4 per cent by about 5:55 a.m. ET. Italian stocks were down 2.9 per cent. New York futures were also down. The Canadian dollar was above 76.5 US cents.

WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT

Zimbabwe’s cholera outbreak is a sign of state failure

“Dictators kill, and do so mercilessly. The hundreds of Zimbabweans dying this month from easily preventable bouts of cholera can blame the past 20 years of ex-president Robert Mugabe’s reign for their fatal misfortune. By the middle of September, more than 5,000 people had been infected and 30 killed in the outbreak. Typhoid, another disease stemming from bad water, is also raging in Harare. … Cholera outbreaks are one telling sign of state failure – of the breakdown of the governance institutions that in more modern and robust nation states provide essential services such as protection, roads, schools, health clinics and adequate supplies of drinking water to residents. They also signify the neglect that Mr. Mugabe and his ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front party visited upon Harare and other cities.” – Robert Rotberg, founding director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Program on Intrastate Conflict

It’s time to examine the way we vote in Canadian elections

“Quebec will hold an election on Monday and, if the polls are accurate, the result will be a minority government. … That election will take place as New Brunswick’s legislature grapples over who will lead the next government, thanks to an election on Monday in which the Liberal Party won 37.8 per cent of the vote in a five-party race, but took one less seat than the Progressive Conservative Party, even though the PCs won only 31.9 per cent of the vote. … Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself promised on the night he was elected in 2015 that he would put an end to first-past-the-post, but then reneged for reasons that have never really been made clear. His flip-flopping on the issue has now been overtaken by what is happening in the provinces. They are living laboratories in the emergence of a modern political reality that is characterized by a fracturing of the centre, and which is testing the limits of our majoritarian democratic institutions.” – Globe editorial

Canada’s feminist foreign policy cannot include nuclear weapons

“Nuclear weapons are indiscriminate weapons of mass killing that were created specifically to target cities and civilians, and disproportionately affect women. They are inhumane and against the principles of international human-rights laws. A foreign policy that respects human rights must work to eliminate and legally ban such weapons. A foreign policy that promotes women’s rights must recognize that the testing and use of nuclear weapons specifically harms women, who are more acutely affected by nuclear fallout than men. Women in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had nearly double the risk of developing and dying from solid cancer due to ionizing radiation exposure. Robust findings from Chernobyl indicate that girls are considerably more likely than boys to develop thyroid cancer from nuclear fallout.” – Beatrice Fihn, executive director of ICAN, the 2017 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

LIVING BETTER

As we head into the weekend, three First Person essays from Globe readers

Breann Kirincich: “When I was pregnant, people warned me I would never sleep again, but I brushed these harbingers aside. As it turns out, sleep deprivation is something no one can prepare you for until you experience it yourself.”

Daryl Elliott: “'You can’t go home again.' ... was the first thing my neighbour said to me when I announced that I was moving ‘back home’ – back to the place where I was born and spent my childhood and young adult years. ‘But isn’t this your home' she asked? 'You’ve been here for over 30 years!’”

Shannon E. Wall: “For as long as I can remember, my husband and I dreamed about taking our kids on a trip around the world. ... In the blink of the eye and 14 years later, we have three delightful boys who are growing up faster by the day. It was time to make good on those plans.”

MOMENT IN TIME

World Series broadcast in colour for the first time

Open this photo in gallery:

(Hy Peskin/Getty Images)Hy Peskin/Getty Images

Sept. 28, 1955: The Brooklyn Dodgers will forever be known as the first Major League Baseball team to break the sport’s racial barrier when Jackie Robinson played for them on April 15, 1947. But the team’s reputation as pioneers in the sport extends beyond that, albeit in a different way. In 1939, the Dodgers featured in the first televised MLB game and eight years later took part in the first such World Series. In 1951, Brooklyn hosted the league’s first colour broadcast and, on this day in 1955, took the field at the original Yankee Stadium in NBC’s first full-colour World Series broadcast. Not that many fans would have seen it. Electronics company RCA Corp. only started mass production of its Victor colour television a year earlier, and it retailed for US$1,000, roughly the price of a Chevrolet. Still, for those who could afford one, they saw a series for the ages. Led by Robinson, who famously stole home in Game 1, the “Brooklyn Bridegrooms,” as they were known after losing in their previous 10 World Series, beat the New York Yankees in seven games for the team’s first and only championship before it left for Los Angeles three years later. – Paul Attfield

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