The indictment says Barkau began training the girl in 2000 when she was 12, and forced her to engage in sex acts with him and with other men. According to the indictment, he also had the girl watch pornography on the Internet as a teaching tool.

Barkau is accused of creating a business out of the couple’s Missouri home when the girl was 14 and marketing her as a 19-to-20-year-old dominatrix on the Internet for about two years.

The mother is charged with encouraging and participating in the venture, the indictment says.

Prosecutors will seek $80,000 the couple is accused of having made through sex trafficking, Wood said. (CNN)

David Nonis will make his way east to meet with the Toronto Maple Leafs about their vacant general manager portfolio on Monday.

The Vancouver resident, who was fired as the Vancouver Canucks’ GM last month, won’t exactly know what the Leafs intentions are when he convenes with Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment president Richard Peddie and his search committee partner, Gordon Kirke, but he’s eager to find out.

Are the Leafs prepared to make him an offer? Is this simply an interview? Or do the Leafs want to measure his interest in a lesser position with the struggling NHL franchise, which hasn’t won the Stanley Cup since 1967?

The MLSE brass should know they are not the only interested party in Nonis, who will turn 42 on May 25. The Atlanta Thrashers definitely have Nonis’s attention and have made contact with him. (news)

Two VIA Rail employees who attended to a 43-year-old woman before she died on a train last Friday were denied a request to be excused from work the following day, say two union representatives.

Dave Kissack, a Canadian Auto Workers executive who worked on the train, said he asked management that the employees who were with the passenger when she died “be relieved from service and immediately debriefed. This did not happen. Instead they were told that they were not allowed to book off as no replacement employees were available. They then had to go back to work for two days until the train returned to Winnipeg …”

The woman’s sudden death caused the train to be quarantined for 10 hours in the northern Ontario town of Foleyet because of fears of an infectious disease outbreak. Several passengers had earlier contracted flu-like symptoms.

The Ontario coroner’s office said yesterday a pulmonary embolism caused the death of Brenda Buckley, a South African tourist. (news)

Calgary Zoo staff were in shock Monday after the sudden deaths of nearly all of the zoo’s stingrays over the weekend.

The zoo’s new stingray exhibit was closed Sunday afternoon after the ray keeper noticed some of the creatures were swimming erratically and seemed distressed. The stingrays began dying suddenly, and by Monday morning 34 of the cownose rays were dead.

The remaining nine rays were being closely monitored by zoo officials.

“Our staff and volunteers are shocked and deeply saddened by this tragedy,” said Cathy Gaviller, director of conservation, research and education, in a release. “There is always a deep connection to the animals we care for, and those who have worked with the rays hands-on are devastated.” (news)

Tom Smith is the smiling Dapper Dan from Scottsdale, Ariz., who makes and markets Tasers, and who must therefore leave his office and defend them. Not a pleasant task, one might think; these days, the conducted energy weapon is the object of scorn and fear.

Were they still alive, gunsmiths Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson would face less criticism, fewer accusations about their gear. But Mr. Smith of Taser fame was barely tested yesterday, at a provincial inquiry examining the use of his products in British Columbia.

The young chairman of Taser International Inc. cruised through a 55-minute presentation — one, he admitted afterwards, that he delivers a lot, dozens of times a year in fact.

He’s got it down pat and it showed. He spoke so rapidly and with such force that the commissioner of the inquiry, retired judge Thomas Braidwood, had to interject and suggest he slow down.

“This is not an endurance competition,” he said. (news)

A controversial goal by Ville Koistinen sparked a huge comeback as Team Finland rallied with three unanswered goals in the third period to edge the United States 3-2 in the qualifying round at the 2008 IIHF World Championship.

The win puts Finland just one point back of Canada for first place in Group F and the two teams will go head-to-head on Monday (TSN and TSN.ca, 3:20pm et/12:20pm pt).

With goals by Tom Gilbert and Phil Kessel and stellar goaltending by Robert Esche, the Americans had 2-0 lead after 40 minutes of play.

But an officiating gaffe provided plenty of momentum for Finland in the third. With a five-on-three power play, Koistinen’s marker appeared to go through the side of the net. The disputed goal was reviewed and eventually allowed, despite the fact that numerous video replays showed otherwise. (news)

A popular guy. That was how Pittsburgh Penguins head coach Michel Therrien described injured forward Maxime Talbot Sunday morning.

After Sunday night’s 4-2 win against the Philadelphia Flyers, the 24-year-old’s popularity is likely to increase both in and outside the dressing room.

After missing the previous three games with a broken foot, Talbot returned to the lineup and scored the game-winning goal in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference final. His goal at 8:51 in the third period gave the Penguins a commanding 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.

“This morning I was just happy to be back in the lineup,” said Talbot. “To get the game-winning goal is extra special.” (news)

Some 900 people are being evacuated Sunday from a First Nation’s community along the coast of James Bay due to fears of flooding.

The continued threat of flooding has prompted the leaders of Attawapiskat to broaden the evacuation of their community, located about 500 kilometres north of Timmins.

Some 300 of the area’s most at-risk residents including the sick, elderly and infants have already been airlifted out of the region to Kapuskasing and Hearst.

About 600 other community members were expected to be airlifted to Thunder Bay and Greenstone by the end of the day. (news)

A short-lived pandemic scare, one that caused a train to be quarantined last Friday, actually resulted from a sedentary passenger’s fatal blood clot, police have told The Globe and Mail.

Brenda Buckley, a 43-year-old South African tourist travelling alone on a cross-Canada rail journey, died from a pulmonary embolism, authorities say. The condition, the worst-case outcome of a lesser malady known to travellers as deep-vein thrombosis, can result from protracted periods of sitting.

The condition has been known to arise on long-haul flights, but many observers are surprised it is being linked to rail travel. “This is not a condition Via [Rail] has ever encountered on any of its trains,” Catherine Kaloutsky, a spokeswoman for the company, said last night. She said Via Rail doesn’t warn passengers about the risk of thrombosis, but will review practices. (news)

Patient advocates are calling on governments across the country to force hospitals to tell the public about the outbreak of a highly contagious superbug that claimed the lives of 62 patients at one Ontario health-care institution.

The province has the highest incidence of Clostridium difficile, commonly known as C. difficile, according to a study of 44 Canadian hospitals done by the Public Health Agency of Canada. But Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman was forced to acknowledge yesterday that he has no idea how many of the province’s 157 hospitals are grappling with C. difficile.

Amid this week’s news that a severe outbreak of the so-called Quebec strain of the disease led to 62 deaths at Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital in Burlington, Mr. Smitherman vowed to introduce mandatory reporting of such infections by the end of the year.

“I believe that moving forward with mandatory reporting will prove to be a very, very powerful enhancement to patient safety in the province,” Mr. Smitherman told reporters. (news)