The Women and Children’s Unit at the Aberdeen Hospital in New Glasgow will be temporarily closed for labour and deliveries, between 8 a.m. today until 8 a.m. on September 1st.

 Pregnant patients in labour are instructed to present to the Aberdeen Hospital for assessment and may then be transferred to Colchester East Hants Health Centre in Truro or St. Martha’s Regional Hospital in Antigonish. 

 A team will be available at the Aberdeen Hospital to support any emergency or unplanned deliveries.

 

A man from Pictou County is facing more than a dozen new charges of sexual assault and sexual interference.

68-year-old Herbert Allison Best faces seven counts of sexual assault, four counts of sexual interference, four counts of sexual exploitation and one count of indecent assault. 

Best was already facing charges over two counts of sexual assault involving a youth in Pictou County. Police said when those charges were made public, seven more people came forward with allegations of incidents occurring between 1976 and 2021. 

The first two counts related to incidents at an equestrian facility in Plymouth, and RCMP said they think some of the new charges relate to the same facility.

 

The Nova Scotia government’s plan to hire 100 new patient transport operators has hit a delay because of too many  applicants.

The plan announced earlier this summer was to hire non-paramedic staff to handle routine patient transfers and reduce the pressure on Nova Scotia’s paramedics and ambulance system, which is severely understaffed.

An email sent to applicants from Emergency Health Services Operations says recruitment is now delayed but offered no explanation. They said the hiring process for these positions may not resume until sometime in October.

 

Multiple RCMP officers involved in the Nova Scotia mass shooting have been linked to gaps in a 2017 murder case now undergoing a federal civilian review.

The Mass Casualty Commission leading the inquiry into the April 2020 mass shooting where 22 people were killed released new information Monday about the officers involved in the case around Susie Butlin, who was shot and killed by her neighbour Ernie Duggan months after reporting him to the RCMP for sexual assault and harassment.

Her case has been brought up at the inquiry previously, and happened in the same Colchester RCMP district where the mass shooting began in Portapique.

Jennifer Cox from commission counsel, said Monday the inquiry had finally been given a copy of an internal police review of how RCMP handled Butlin’s case with officers’ names visible, when the original version with the officers names redacted.

Const. Stuart Beselt and Const. Greg Wiley were 2 officers involved in both the portapique mass shooting and the case of Susie Butlin.

The Civilian Review and Complaints Commission announced last month it is investigating how the Mounties handled Butlin’s case leading up to her murder.