AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT

Turkey widens invasion as Syrian army returns to northeast

AKCAKALE, Turkey (AP) — Syrian government troops moved into towns and villages in northeastern Syria on Monday, including the flashpoint region of Manbij, setting up a potential clash with Turkish-led forces advancing in the area as long-standing alliances in the region began to shift or crumble following the pullback of U.S. forces.

The Syrian military’s deployment near the Turkish border came after Syrian Kurdish forces previously allied with the U.S. said they had reached a deal with President Bashar Assad’s government to help them fend off Turkey’s invasion, now in its sixth day.

Assad’s return to the region his troops abandoned in 2012 at the height of the Syrian civil war is a turning point in Syria’s eight-year civil war, giving yet another major boost to his government and its Russian backers and is like to endanger, if not altogether crush, the brief experiment in self-rule set up by Syria’s Kurds since the conflict began.

The rapidly changing situation was set in motion last week, when U.S. President Donald Trump ordered American troops in northern Syria to step aside, clearing the way for an attack by Turkey, which regards the Kurdish fighters as terrorists. Since 2014, the Kurds have fought alongside the U.S. in defeating the Islamic State in Syria, and Trump’s move was decried at home and abroad as a betrayal of an ally.

Faced with unrelenting criticism, Trump said Monday he was putting new sanctions on Turkey, halting trade negotiations and raising steel tariffs in an effort to pressure Ankara to stop its offensive. Vice-President Mike Pence also said Trump was sending him to the Middle East because the president was concerned about instability in the region.

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Trump orders Turkey sanctions; US scrambles for Syria exit

WASHINGTON (AP) — Targeting Turkey’s economy, President Donald Trump announced sanctions Monday aimed at restraining the Turks’ assault against Kurdish fighters and civilians in Syria — an assault Turkey began after Trump announced he was moving U.S. troops out of the way.

The United States also called on Turkey to stop the invasion and declare a ceasefire, and Trump is sending Vice-President Mike Pence and national security adviser Robert O’Brien to Ankara as soon as possible in an attempt to begin negotiations. Pence said Trump spoke directly to Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who promised not attack the border town of Kobani, which in 2015 witnessed the Islamic State group’s first defeat in a battle by U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters.

“President Trump communicated to him very clearly that the United States of American wants Turkey to stop the invasion, implement an immediate ceasefire and to begin to negotiate with Kurdish forces in Syria to bring an end to the violence,” Pence said.

The Americans were scrambling for Syria’s exits, a move criticized at home and abroad as opening the door to a resurgence of the Islamic State group, whose violent takeover of Syrian and Iraqi lands five years ago was the reason American forces came in the first place.

Trump said the approximately 1,000 U.S. troops who had been partnering with local Kurdish fighters to battle IS in northern Syria are leaving the country. They will remain in the Middle East, he said, to “monitor the situation” and to prevent a revival of IS — a goal that even Trump’s allies say has become much harder as a result of the U.S. pullout.

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Texas officer charged with murder, resigns after shooting

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — A white Fort Worth police officer who shot and killed a black woman through a back window of her home while responding to a call about an open front door was charged with murder on Monday evening after resigning from the force.

Aaron Dean, 34, was jailed on $200,000 bond after the police chief said he acted without justification and would have been fired if he hadn’t quit.

Police bodycam video showed Dean approaching the door of the home where Atatiana Jefferson, 28, was caring for her 8-year-old nephew early Saturday. He then walked around the side of the house, pushed through a gate into the fenced-off backyard and fired through the glass a split-second after shouting at Jefferson to show her hands.

Dean was not heard identifying himself as police on the video, and Interim Police Chief Ed Kraus said there was no sign Dean or the other officer who responded even knocked on the front door.

“Nobody looked at this video and said that there’s any doubt that this officer acted inappropriately,” Kraus said.

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Latest deadly police shooting raises questions about tactics

On any given day in the U.S., police respond to thousands of non-emergency calls asking them to check on someone’s home. Most such visits prove uneventful. A few, like one over the weekend in Fort Worth, Texas, end up with someone getting killed by police.

Experts in law enforcement training and tactics say there is a multitude of questions raised by the shooting of 28-year-old Atatiana Jefferson, who was cut down at her home by a bullet fired through a window by an officer responding to a call in the middle of the night about her front door being open.

Among the questions: Did the neighbour who made the call see or hear something that raised alarm bells? What, if anything, happened that made the officer believe there was an imminent threat? Why not just knock on the door and announce that a police officer was there?

Experts say there’s no one correct way for officers to respond to such calls. It can depend on a number of variables. At police academies around the country, recruits spend hours being put through simulations of a variety of calls designed to show them ways to de-escalate situations or prevent unjustified shootings.

In this case, Fort Worth police and the mayor said Monday that there was nothing to justify the officer firing his weapon; the police chief said he was prepared to fire the officer, Aaron Dean, 34, but he resigned first. Dean had been on the force for a year and a half.

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California regulator criticizes utility over power outages

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California’s top utility regulator blasted Pacific Gas and Electric on Monday for what she called “failures in execution” during the largest planned power outage in state history to avoid wildfires that she said, “created an unacceptable situation that should never be repeated.”

The agency ordered a series of corrective actions, including a goal of restoring power within 12 hours, not the utility’s current 48-hour goal.

“The scope, scale, complexity, and overall impact to people’s lives, businesses, and the economy of this action cannot be understated,” California Public Utilities Commission President Marybel Batjer wrote in a letter to PG&E CEO Bill Johnson.

PG&E last week took the unprecedented step of cutting power to more than 700,000 customers, affecting nearly 2 million Californians. The company said it did it because of dangerous wind forecasts but acknowledged that its execution was poor.

Its website frequently crashed, and many people said they did not receive enough warning that the power was going out.

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Former White House adviser objected to ambassador’s ouster

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fiona Hill, a former White House adviser on Russia, told House impeachment investigators behind closed doors Monday that she had strongly and repeatedly objected to the ouster earlier this year of former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, according to a person familiar with the testimony.

Yovanovitch testified Friday that President Donald Trump pressured the State Department to fire her.

Hill made the remarks as she testified for more than 10 hours in the Democratic inquiry, which is probing Trump’s pleas to Ukrainian officials for investigations into political rival Joe Biden’s family and into the country’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election. The person requested anonymity to discuss the confidential interview.

The interview is one of what could eventually become dozens of closed-door depositions in the impeachment probe. There are five more scheduled this week, mostly with State Department officials, though it is unclear if they will all appear after Trump declared he wouldn’t co-operate with the probe.

While interviews have focused on the interactions with Ukraine, the probe could broaden as soon as next week to include interviews with White House budget officials who may be able to shed light on whether military aid was withheld from Ukraine as Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, pushed for the investigations.

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More victims, more damage found in Japan typhoon aftermath

NAGANO, Japan (AP) — More victims and more damage have been found in typhoon-hit areas of central and northern Japan, where rescue crews are searching for people still missing.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told a parliamentary session Tuesday that typhoon-related deaths have risen to 53, with 20 others missing. Lawmakers prayed in silence for the victims before starting the session.

Typhoon Hagibis hit Japan’s main island Saturday, unleashing strong winds and dumping historic rainfall that caused more than 200 rivers in central and northern Japan to overflow, leaving thousands of homes flooded, damaged or without power.

Businesses appeared nearly back to normal in central Tokyo but paralyzed in Nagano and other hard-hit areas still inundated. Residents elsewhere started cleaning their houses.

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Protests erupt as Spain convicts leading Catalan separatists

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Riot police engaged in a running battle with angry protesters outside Barcelona’s airport Monday after Spain’s Supreme Court convicted 12 separatist leaders of illegally promoting the wealthy Catalonia region’s independence and sentenced nine of them to prison.

Officers fired foam bullets and used batons against thousands of protesters who converged on the airport after the verdict was announced in Madrid. Protesters fought back by throwing objects, spraying dark clouds with fire extinguishers, and breaking windows during clashes that lasted into the night.

Regional emergency service SEM said 75 people were treated for injuries at Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport. Spain’s airport operator, AENA, said at least 108 flights were cancelled.

Police also clashed with angry crowds late Monday night in downtown Barcelona. They used batons, and sounds similar to the firing projectiles were heard.

Nine of the 12 Catalan politicians and activists were found guilty of sedition and given prison sentences of nine to 13 years. Four of them were additionally convicted of misuse of public funds.

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‘Nothing-burger’: US-China truce leaves big issues for later

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump heralded a breakthrough in U.S.-China trade talks, and markets rallied in relief over a de-escalation in tensions between the world’s two biggest economies.

But closer inspection suggests there isn’t much substance, at least not yet, to the temporary truce Trump announced Friday at the White House after the U.S. and China wrapped up their 13th round of trade talks.

Yes, Trump agreed to suspend a tariff hike scheduled for Tuesday on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports. And the president said the Chinese agreed to buy $40 billion to $50 billion in U.S. farm products.

But nothing’s on paper and details are scarce. China’s state-run media hasn’t even mentioned the promise to buy all those soybeans and other agricultural products.

And the negotiators have delayed dealing with the toughest issues for future talks. Meanwhile, the U.S. is still scheduled to target another $160 billion in Chinese goods Dec. 15, a move that would extend Trump’s tariffs to virtually everything China ships to the United States.

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Los Angeles fire began under power lines, cause not known

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A destructive fire that exploded on the edge of Los Angeles began beneath a high-voltage transmission tower owned by Southern California Edison, fire officials said Monday.

Los Angeles Fire Department arson investigators determined the origin of the Saddle Ridge Fire was beneath power lines on a dry, steep hillside above the city’s Sylmar neighbourhood, Capt. Erik Scott told The Associated Press. The cause remained under investigation.

The fire that started Thursday night burned more than 12 square miles (31 square kilometres), destroyed 17 structures and damaged dozens more. One man died of a heart attack during the fire in the Porter Ranch neighbourhood, officials said.

The fire department had said Friday that a witness saw sparks or flames coming from a power line near where the fire was believed to have started. At least two people told LA TV stations that they saw fire near power lines above Saddle Ridge Road around the time the blaze broke out.

After several deadly blazes in the past two years have been blamed on trees and vegetation hitting power lines and other causes involving electrical equipment, utilities have been given authority to shut off power when fire risk is extremely high.