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Capitals’ Alex Ovechkin is stopped by Stars goalie Marty Turco on a first-period scoring chance. (Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)

Preaching a calm approach from behind the bench, Marc Crawford is starting to see the rewards on the ice.

He watched his Dallas Stars overcome a 2-0 deficit Monday night to force overtime in Washington and stand up to the likes of Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom and Alexander Semin in the shootout.

Then, after goalie Marty Turco denied former Star Brendan Morrison in Round 5, Loui Eriksson went forehand to backhand, stopped in the crease and tucked the puck past a fallen Semyon Varlamov for a 2-1 Dallas win.

A Verizon Center gathering of 18,277 went silent as the Capitals’ franchise record 13-game home win streak had come to an end.

Spoiled in Washington’s sixth home loss of the season was a two-goal performance by Ovechkin, now tied for the NHL lead at 44 with rival Sidney Crosby .

More to come

Sarah Palin, pictured in Hong Kong in September, says her family used the Canadian health-care system in the 1960s. (Jeff Topping/CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets/Associated Press)

Sarah Palin’s weekend admission that her family once travelled to Canada to receive treatment under the public health-care system she’s so often demonized prompted skepticism and ridicule Monday among her critics in the U.S.

“My first five years of life, we spent in Skagway, Alaska, right there by Whitehorse,” the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate said Saturday night during a speech in Calgary.

“Believe it or not — this was in the ’60s — we used to hustle on over the border for health care that we would receive in Whitehorse. I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing, and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse, and I think, isn’t that kind of ironic now, zooming over the border, getting health care from Canada.”

Always a popular whipping girl on liberal blogs and news sites, Palin was swiftly derided for the comments Monday as the news reverberated through and beyond the U.S. capital.

A headline on the New York media blog Gawker.com read: “Sarah Palin Supports Government-Run Health Care, Inadvertently Uses ‘Ironic’ Correctly.”

Sam Stein of the Huffington Post suggested Palin was a hypocrite.

“The irony, one guesses, is that Palin now views Canada’s health-care system as revolting, with its government-run administration and ‘death-panel’-like rationing,” Stein wrote.

“Clearly, however, she and her family once found it more alluring than, at the very least, the coverage available in rural Alaska.”

Doubts about story

There were also doubts about the veracity of her story.

In a 2007 report in the Skagway News, Palin said her family travelled south from Skagway by ferry to Juneau, Alaska, so that her brother could get treatment after burning his foot when jumping through a fire.

“All these years later, that’s still what people have to rely on here in some instances,” Palin, who was Alaska governor at the time and pledging to improve Skagway’s ferry system, said at the time.

One Alaska-based political blog, the Mudflats, wondered — tongue firmly planted in cheek — whether Palin’s brother suffered a burned foot on more than one occasion and she was simply mixing up two different but extremely similar incidents.

“Or perhaps the story was simply tweaked to tell people what they want to hear while utilizing the perennial ‘I’m one of you’ meme — a great way to ‘connect to the audience’ while skirting those pesky things known as ‘facts’,” the blog reads.

An email to Palin officials requesting more information about her family’s voyages to Whitehorse for medical treatment wasn’t immediately answered on Monday.

The remarks come in the midst of a furious push by top Democrats on Capitol Hill to meet a deadline imposed by U.S. President Barack Obama to get a health-care bill signed into law in the next two weeks.

Palin attacked Democrats over health care

Palin, the self-styled hockey mom who is being coy about whether she’s considering a run for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, has frequently vilified the Democrats for their health-care overhaul. She has characterized the proposed reform as socialism and accused Obama of conspiring to do away with the elderly and the disabled with “death panels” that would decide who does and doesn’t get treatment.

In November, Palin told Canadian comedian Mary Walsh — in character as Marg Delahunty during an episode of the CBC’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes — that Canada should dismantle its public health-care system and let private enterprise take over.

Republicans battling against health-care reform have long claimed that Canadians flood the U.S. to get health care because of waiting lists north of the border.

But Palin’s experience, if accurate, reflects what some studies suggest is a more common trend: U.S. citizens travelling abroad to get cheaper care.

A report last spring by Deloitte Center for Health Solutions said 750,000 U.S. residents travelled abroad for medical care in 2007 and forecast that number would rise to six million by 2010. That trend far outpaces the number of Canadians coming to the U.S. for medical treatment.

Sarah Palin, pictured in Hong Kong in September, says her family used the Canadian health-care system in the 1960s. (Jeff Topping/CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets/Associated Press)

Sarah Palin’s weekend admission that her family once travelled to Canada to receive treatment under the public health-care system she’s so often demonized prompted skepticism and ridicule Monday among her critics in the U.S.

“My first five years of life, we spent in Skagway, Alaska, right there by Whitehorse,” the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate said Saturday night during a speech in Calgary.

“Believe it or not — this was in the ’60s — we used to hustle on over the border for health care that we would receive in Whitehorse. I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing, and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse, and I think, isn’t that kind of ironic now, zooming over the border, getting health care from Canada.”

Always a popular whipping girl on liberal blogs and news sites, Palin was swiftly derided for the comments Monday as the news reverberated through and beyond the U.S. capital.

A headline on the New York media blog Gawker.com read: “Sarah Palin Supports Government-Run Health Care, Inadvertently Uses ‘Ironic’ Correctly.”

Sam Stein of the Huffington Post suggested Palin was a hypocrite.

“The irony, one guesses, is that Palin now views Canada’s health-care system as revolting, with its government-run administration and ‘death-panel’-like rationing,” Stein wrote.

“Clearly, however, she and her family once found it more alluring than, at the very least, the coverage available in rural Alaska.”

Doubts about story

There were also doubts about the veracity of her story.

In a 2007 report in the Skagway News, Palin said her family travelled south from Skagway by ferry to Juneau, Alaska, so that her brother could get treatment after burning his foot when jumping through a fire.

“All these years later, that’s still what people have to rely on here in some instances,” Palin, who was Alaska governor at the time and pledging to improve Skagway’s ferry system, said at the time.

One Alaska-based political blog, the Mudflats, wondered — tongue firmly planted in cheek — whether Palin’s brother suffered a burned foot on more than one occasion and she was simply mixing up two different but extremely similar incidents.

“Or perhaps the story was simply tweaked to tell people what they want to hear while utilizing the perennial ‘I’m one of you’ meme — a great way to ‘connect to the audience’ while skirting those pesky things known as ‘facts’,” the blog reads.

An email to Palin officials requesting more information about her family’s voyages to Whitehorse for medical treatment wasn’t immediately answered on Monday.

The remarks come in the midst of a furious push by top Democrats on Capitol Hill to meet a deadline imposed by U.S. President Barack Obama to get a health-care bill signed into law in the next two weeks.

Palin attacked Democrats over health care

Palin, the self-styled hockey mom who is being coy about whether she’s considering a run for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, has frequently vilified the Democrats for their health-care overhaul. She has characterized the proposed reform as socialism and accused Obama of conspiring to do away with the elderly and the disabled with “death panels” that would decide who does and doesn’t get treatment.

In November, Palin told Canadian comedian Mary Walsh — in character as Marg Delahunty during an episode of the CBC’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes — that Canada should dismantle its public health-care system and let private enterprise take over.

Republicans battling against health-care reform have long claimed that Canadians flood the U.S. to get health care because of waiting lists north of the border.

But Palin’s experience, if accurate, reflects what some studies suggest is a more common trend: U.S. citizens travelling abroad to get cheaper care.

A report last spring by Deloitte Center for Health Solutions said 750,000 U.S. residents travelled abroad for medical care in 2007 and forecast that number would rise to six million by 2010. That trend far outpaces the number of Canadians coming to the U.S. for medical treatment.

Defenceman Jean Labonte, the captain of the defending gold medal sledge hockey team, will be Canada’s flag-bearer during Friday’s opening ceremonies of the Paralympic Games.

Labonte, of Gatineau, Que., has competed in three previous Paralympics, winning gold in 2006 in Turin, Italy, and silver at the 1998 Games in Nagano, Japan. He also has played in five sledge hockey world championships, winning gold in 2000 and 2008, and bronze in 1996 and 2009.

“Jean is a most deserving athlete to not only captain our sledge hockey team, but to also lead our entire Canadian delegation,” Blair McIntosh, chef de mission of the Canadian team, said in making the announcement Monday.

The Paralympic opening ceremonies will be held at B.C. Place Stadium, the same venue that staged the Olympic opening and closing festivities. The closing ceremonies will be March 21 in Whistler.

Canada will send a 55-member team to the Paralympics, which feature athletes with physical disabilities. The competition will attract 1,350 athletes and team officials from 44 countries.

Canada’s goal is to win enough gold medals to finish among the top three countries. The International Paralympic Committee ranks countries on their gold medal performance.

At the 2006 Paralympics in Turin, Canada was ranked sixth after earning 13 medals, including five gold, three silver and five bronze.

The Russian Federation led the medals race with 13 gold and 33 total medals. Germany was next with eight of its 18 medals being gold.

Ukraine, France and the U.S. each had seven gold medals.

The alpine skiing, biathlon and cross-country skiing competitions will be held in Whistler. Sledge hockey and wheelchair curling will be staged in Vancouver.

The Paralympics will receive 50 hours of television coverage, split between English and French.

Bruins centre Marc Savard met with club doctor Peter Asnis and a concussion specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital after travelling back to Boston.

Savard stayed in a Pittsburgh hospital Sunday as a result of a blindside hit he received from Penguins forward Matt Cooke during Boston’s 2-1 loss Sunday.

The veteran forward was able to eat on Monday, which is a good sign, according to a team spokesman.

The spokesman added Savard would remain under the care of Bruins medical staff until further notice, with no timetable set for his return.

Savard, who suffered a concussion, released a shot in the offensive zone with 5:37 remaining in the third period. As he leaned forward in the slot, Cooke charged in from his right, blindsiding the Bruins playmaker.

Cooke’s shoulder made clear and hard contact with Savard’s head, sending him down. Savard was on the ice for several minutes before being wheeled off by the team’s medical staff.

No penalty was called on the play.

“It should have been cracked down on a little while ago, I think, because you never want to see anybody hurt from anything like that,” said Bruins defenceman Johnny Boychuk of hits to the head. “Everybody’s got their guy on their team who’s going to police for your players.

“But there should be something done [by the NHL] about certain situations like that.”

Boychuk exchanged text messages with Savard on Sunday night to make sure he was OK and said “he seems to be fine.”

“He’s a well-liked guy in our room and you want to make sure he’s OK,” Boychuk added. “It’s a scary scene to have a guy go down like that.”

Cooke denied after the game that he was head-hunting, saying: “It felt like shoulder on shoulder to me. I don’t know. You don’t want to see anyone get hurt. I said sorry to him the best I could.”

The Bruins host Cooke and the Penguins on March 18.

The concussion is the latest injury in what has been a difficult year for Savard, who was earlier sidelined by a broken foot and a partial tear of the medial collateral ligament in his knee.

With files from The Canadian Press

Ricky Romero delivers a pitch in Monday’s 4-1 Blue Jays win. (Rob Carr/Associated Press)

Toronto manager Cito Gaston thinks Ricky Romero is a much improved pitcher now that he has some experience.

The 25-year-old left-hander pitched three shutout innings, allowing four hits and striking out two, in the Blue Jays’ 4-1 win over the Houston Astros in Kissimmee, Fla., on Monday.

Romero went 13-9 in 29 starts as a rookie last season. He strained an oblique muscle and missed 24 games early in the year but still pitched 178 innings, second on the team to ace Roy Halladay. With Halladay traded to Philadelphia, the more mature Romero could be the front-runner to take over the No. 1 spot in the rotation.

“He’s got experience,” Gaston said. “It doesn’t matter who you are, you’re going to be a little bit nervous when you’re pitching in the big leagues for the first time or playing or going up to this.

“Now’s he’s got some experience behind him. He’s been successful and he just gets better all the time.”

J.P. Arencibia hit a solo homer off Houston starter Bud Norris in the first inning, and Lyle Overbay and Brad Emaus had run-scoring doubles off left-handed reliever Tim Byrdak for Toronto.

Norris, expected to fill the No. 4 spot in the Astros’ rotation, allowed two hits and struck out two in two innings in his first start of the spring.

“You’re just trying to get the cobwebs out,” Norris said. “I’ve been doing this for a few years.

“I know what I’m doing pitching, and you just keep going through your routine. You’re just trying to get your routine back in order.”

John McDonald drove in a run with a single in the sixth off Houston lefty Gustavo Chacin. Houston’s J.R. Towles, trying to win the starting role at catcher, drove in the Astros’ lone run in the eighth off Chad Jenkins.

Romero allowed 79 walks in 2009, second in the American League. He hasn’t allowed a single walk in two starts and five total innings this spring.

“He didn’t throw a lot of balls, period,” Gaston said of Monday’s outing. “He just went out and pitched well here again.”

‘They threw the ball real well’

Towles accounted for three of Houston’s seven hits. The Astros averaged more than seven runs in their first four spring games before Romero and Dana Eveland limited them to five hits through six scoreless innings.

“You’d like to see us be able to string some things together,” Houston manager Brad Mills said. “Their two left-handers — Romero and Eveland — they kind of shut us down a little bit.

“They threw the ball real well.”

Zach Stewart pitched a scoreless ninth for Toronto to earn his first save of the spring.

A Quebec Superior Court judge began deliberations Monday on a lawsuit filed by the son of Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi against the Iranian government.

Stephan Hashemi, right, is accompanied at the Montreal courthouse by supporters wearing T-shirts bearing the image of his mother, photojournalist Zahra Kazemi. (CBC)Judge Robert Mongeon must decide whether Stephen Hashemi’s $17-million civil suit against Iran and three Iranian officials should go ahead.

Hashemi launched the civil suit in 2006 against the Iranian government, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Saeed Mortazavi, Iran’s prosecutor general, and Mohammad Bakhshi, a prison official, after the Iranian courts failed to convict anyone of the crime.

Kazemi was arrested in Iran on June 23, 2003, while covering a protest outside Evin prison in Tehran. She died in captivity less than a month later. Iranian authorities reported her death as accidental, but the attending physician reported Kazemi showed signs of torture, severe beating, head trauma and rape before her death.

The Iranian government must be held responsible for Kazemi’s death, said Hashemi.

“My life has changed really since my mothers death,” said Hashemi. “This is always on my mind, my mother’s torturing — especially the injustice.”

The fact that the final hearing took place on International Women’s Day holds special significance, said Hashemi.

“She is still alive,” he said. “And she represents I think all of us who are repressed and who are victims of this regime.”

Governments granted immunity

Since December, lawyers for the Iranian government have claimed Hashemi’s lawsuit violates Canada’s State Immunity Act, which doesn’t allow for civil cases against governments except for commercial reasons.Zahra Kazemi, the Iranian-Canadian photojournalist killed in Iran in 2003, was the subject of a court hearing in Montreal on Monday. Her son asked that his lawsuit against Iran and several officials be allowed to go forward.
(Canadian Press)

The case has also placed Canadian government lawyers in the awkward position of having to defend Iran’s immunity.

But lawyers for Hashemi, the Canadian Centre for International Justice and Amnesty International Canada argued the case must be allowed to go forward in the interest of justice.

“When acts of torture are being cloaked with immunity, that is simply wrong,” said Hashemi’s lawyer, Kurt Johnson. “It amounts to impunity.”

Should Hashemi succeed, the case would set an international precedent and send a powerful message that Canada “will not recognize the immunity of states who commit torture,” said Amnesty International lawyer Francois Larocque.

The judge is expected to take several weeks to issue his ruling — and should he side with Hashemi, the case is expected to be appealed.

Afghan police guard a prison in Kabul in 2004. A new document obtained by CBC News suggests the government had a plan to deal with accusations that prisoners transferred by Canadians into Afghan custody were being tortured months before such allegations were made publicly. (Musadeq Sadeq/Associated Press)

The Canadian government began formulating a plan for how to deal with accusations of torture of prisoners in Afghanistan as early as March 2007 — months before such allegations first came up in the media — a document obtained by CBC News suggests.

A memorandum drafted by officials at the Department of Foreign Affairs says that if “NGOs, relatives, media or otherwise make credible allegations that detainees transferred by CF [Canadian Forces] to Afghan authorities have been potentially abused following their transfer,” officials must inform the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Red Cross.

They must also “follow up separately to address potential concerns with the conditions of detention,” the memo says.

First drafts of the document were written in March 2007, months before the Globe and Mail reported that 30 prisoners handed over to Afghan authorities by the Canadian military were “beaten, whipped, starved, frozen, choked and subjected to electric shocks during interrogations.”

The timing of the memorandum shows the government was concerned about the possibility that detainees were being abused while in Afghan custody long before such revelations became public.

More to come

Const. Vu Pham, 37, of the Ontario Provincial Police was fatally shot Monday near Seaforth, Ont.

An Ontario Provincial Police officer has died after a shootout Monday morning near Seaforth, Ont., north of London.

Const. Vu Pham, 37, a father of three, died of his injuries in hospital, police said in a news release Monday afternoon.

“I am deeply saddened by the loss of this young brave officer, who was committed to protecting the citizens of Ontario,” OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino said.

A cruiser blocks a road near the scene of a shootout Monday that claimed the life of a 15-year veteran of the OPP and wounded a man about 70 years old. (CBC)

Pham’s wife, Heather, and other family were with him when he died, Fantino said at a news conference. Fantino hailed Pham as “one of our heroes.”

Born in Vietnam, Pham was a 15-year member of the OPP, working out of the Bruce County detachment. He had also served in the Cochrane and West Parry Sound detachments.

Earlier, Fantino said police were called at 10:18 a.m. ET to the North Line in Huron County. When the officer attempted to stop a vehicle, he was confronted by an armed man, shot and immediately incapacitated.

“The suspect was also shot in the incident and he too is presently in hospital,” said Fantino, who added that then man was about 70 years old.

No other police officers were injured.

Reports suggested the officer exchanged 15 to 20 shots with the unidentified man

Faith Weber, a resident of Brussels, Ont., was a witness to the shooting. She told radio station CKNX that the officer and another man fired at each other across a road.

An Ontario Provincial Police with the Bruce County detachment officer died Monday after a shootout near Seaforth, Ont., north of London. (CBC)“The guy [was] laying in the ditch and the police officer was on the other side of the road in the ditch but he was standing up and they were both shooting back and forth at each other,” she said. “When I was there, there was probably about five, six shots that already went off, and then we had to move back farther and then there was more shots going off.”

She said the gunfire ended after more police officers arrived at the scene.

“There are still many loose ends to deal with,” Fantino said.

The province’s Special Investigations Unit and the OPP’s criminal investigation branch are investigating the shooting. The SIU investigates cases of serious injury or death involving police and civilians.

The unit has sent six investigators and three forensic investigators to the scene. They are looking into witness accounts and are asking people with information to call 1-800-622-2342.

With the latest death, 104 OPP officers have been killed in the line of duty.

Before Pham, the last OPP officer to die in the line of duty was Const. Alan Hack of the Elgin County detachment. On July 6, 2009, Hack and his partner were trying to arrest a suspect when a transport truck hit their cruiser. Hack died of his injuries in hospital in Newbury, Ont.

Funeral details for Pham will be provided at a later time, Fantino said.

With files from The Canadian Press

Inderjit Singh Reyat was supposed to go on trial Monday on charges of lying at the Air India bombing trial.
(Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)

The perjury trial of the only person ever convicted in the Air India bombing 25 years ago was suddenly delayed Monday just before it was to get underway in B.C. Supreme Court.

Justice Mark McEwan dismissed the jury before any evidence had been heard. Under the terms of a publication ban, the reason for the jury’s dismissal cannot be reported.

A new jury will be chosen at a later date.

The jury was chosen last week in a rigorous selection process the Crown attributed to the high-profile nature of the Air India case.

The jury pool consisted of about 150 people who waited several hours Wednesday before eight women and four men were finally chosen.

Inderjit Singh Reyat has been accused of lying 27 times at the trial of Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, who were acquitted in 2005 of first-degree murder and conspiracy for the bombing of Air India Flight 182.

The Crown alleges Reyat lied when claiming not to remember details of the 1985 bomb plot or the name of one of the men involved — prompting B.C. Supreme Court Justice Ian Josephson to call him “an unmitigated liar.”

‘Yes, time has passed, but a crime should not go unpunished.’—Bal Gupta, husband of Air India bombing victim Ramurthy Gupta

Reyat served more than 20 years for manslaughter and making the bombs used in the plot that is considered the largest mass murder in Canadian history.

Three hundred and twenty nine people died when the Air India flight exploded off the coast of Ireland. Among the victims were 280 Canadian citizens, mostly born in India or of Indian descent. Two baggage handlers at Japan’s Narita airport were also killed by a second bomb tied to the plot.

Bal Gupta, who lost his wife Ramurthy in the bombing, said he welcomes the start of the trial and rejects any notion Reyat’s perjury trial is too little, too late.

“It’s the right step.…Yes, time has passed, but a crime should not go unpunished,” said Gupta.

Reyat was let out on bail in July 2008 while awaiting trial on the perjury charges.