National briefs 7/26/17

Driver of hot truck had license issues

A long-haul truck driver arrested for driving a tractor-trailer so hot and so crammed with immigrants that 10 people died had his license to drive commercial trucks rescinded three months earlier. Florida disqualified James Matthew Bradley Jr.'s commercial-driving privileges April 12 after he failed to provide the state with a current medical card, which federal law requires commercial drivers to submit to show they are fit for the road. Alexis Bakofsky, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, said it would have been illegal for him to have had an additional license from another state.

Mic captures senator ripping Trump

WASHINGTON -- Republican Sen. Susan Collins got caught Tuesday at the end of a hearing with a microphone that was still hot -- and captured her ripping President Donald Trump and making fun of a fellow lawmaker who had been critical of her on health care. Collins, a moderate from Maine, can be overheard complaining about Trump and his 2018 budget. "Whenever there was a grant, they just X-ed it out, with no metric, no thinking about it, no nothing," she tells Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island. "It's just incredibly irresponsible." Collins also was snagged making unflattering remarks about Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, a day after he blamed "some female senators from the Northeast" for blocking health care legislation. Collins said, "I don't mean to be unkind, but he's so unattractive, it's unbelievable." Collins then mentions a widely circulated picture of Farenthold wearing baby-blue pajamas with yellow ducks on them as he poses with a big grin next to a scantily clad young woman.

Man allegedly kept cobras in chip cans

LOS ANGELES -- A man was arrested on federal smuggling charges Tuesday after customs officers intercepted a shipment with three live king cobras hidden in potato-chip canisters that were being mailed to his California home, U.S. prosecutors said. Rodrigo Franco, 34, was arraigned Tuesday afternoon in Los Angeles on a charge of illegally importing merchandise. The three king cobra snakes -- each about 2 feet long -- were found in March when Customs and Border Protection officers inspected a package mailed from Hong Kong, prosecutors said. There also were three albino Chinese soft-shelled turtles in the package, authorities said.

Rebel statue moved from courthouse

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- A statue of a Confederate cavalryman was removed from outside a courthouse in Maryland and placed near where a privately run Potomac River ferry named for a Confederate general docks. Montgomery County executive Ike Leggett said the statue was moved Saturday. The bronze soldier cost about $100,000 to relocate. County officials struck a deal in February with White's Ferry in Dickerson to take the 13-ton statue. The United Daughters of the Confederacy donated the statue to the county in 1913. Leggett issued an order in 2015 to remove it from government property.

-- From wire reports