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

Trump defends decision to abandon Kurdish allies in Syria

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday cast his decision to abandon Kurdish fighters in Syria as fulfilling a campaign promise to withdraw from “endless war” in the Middle East, even as Republican critics and others said he was sacrificing a U.S. ally and undermining American credibility.

Trump declared U.S. troops would step aside for an expected Turkish attack on the Kurds, who have fought alongside Americans for years, but he then threatened to destroy the Turks’ economy if they went too far.

Even Trump’s staunchest Republican congressional allies expressed outrage at the prospect of abandoning Syrian Kurds who had fought the Islamic State group with American arms and advice. It was the latest example of Trump’s approach to foreign policy that critics condemn as impulsive, that he sometimes reverses and that frequently is untethered to the advice of his national security aides.

“A catastrophic mistake,” said Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican leader. “Shot in the arm to the bad guys,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Trump said he understood criticism from fellow GOP leaders but disagreed. He said he could also name supporters, but he didn’t.

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FBI: Inmate is most prolific serial killer in US history

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — The inmate who claims to have killed more than 90 women across the country is now considered to be the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said.

Samuel Little, who has been behind bars since 2012, told investigators last year that he was responsible for about 90 killings nationwide between 1970 and 2005. In a news release on Sunday, the FBI announced that federal crime analysts believe all of his confessions are credible, and officials have been able to verify 50 confessions so far.

Investigators also provided new information and details about five cases in Florida, Arkansas, Kentucky, Nevada and Louisiana.

The 79-year-old Little is serving multiple life sentences in California. He says he strangled his 93 victims, nearly all of them women.

Some of his victims were on the margins of society. Many were originally deemed overdoses, or attributed to accidental or undetermined causes. Some bodies were never found.

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After stumbles, White House aims to hone impeachment defence

WASHINGTON (AP) — As House Democrats fire off more subpoenas, the White House is finalizing a high-stakes strategy to counter the impeachment threat to President Donald Trump: Stall. Obfuscate. Attack. Repeat.

Trump aides are honing their approach after two weeks of what allies have described as a listless and unfocused response to the impeachment probe. One expected step is a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejecting the inquiry because Democrats haven’t held a vote on the matter and moving to all but cease co-operation with Capitol Hill on key oversight matters.

The strategy risks further provoking Democrats in the impeachment probe, setting up court challenges and the potential for lawmakers to draw up an article of impeachment accusing Trump of obstructing their investigations. But as lawmakers seek to amass ammunition to be used in an impeachment trial, the White House increasingly believes all-out warfare is its best course of action.

“What they did to this country is unthinkable. It’s lucky that I’m the president. A lot of people said very few people could handle it. I sort of thrive on it,” Trump said Monday at the White House. “You can’t impeach a president for doing a great job. This is a scam.”

House Democrats, for their part, issued a new round of subpoenas on Monday, this time to Defence Secretary Mark Esper and acting White House budget director Russell Vought. Pelosi’s office also released an open letter signed by 90 former national security officials who served in both Democratic and Republican administrations, voicing support for the whistleblower who raised concerns about Trump’s efforts to get Ukraine to investigate political foe Joe Biden.

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Lam says Chinese military could step in if uprising gets bad

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam warns the Chinese military could step in if an uprising for democratic reforms in the city gets bad, but she reiterates the government still hopes to resolve the crisis on its own.

Lam urges foreign critics to accept the reality that the four months of protests marked by a sharp escalation in violence was no longer “a peaceful movement for democracy.”

After invoking emergency powers to ban people from wearing masks at rallies, Lam wouldn’t rule out other measures including calling for Chinese intervention.

Lam said Tuesday: “I still strongly feel that we should find the solutions ourselves…but if the situation becomes so bad, then no options could be ruled out if we want Hong Kong to at least have another chance.”

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Climate activists block roads, march in global protests

BERLIN (AP) — Activists with the Extinction Rebellion movement blocked roads and staged demonstrations in big cities around the globe Monday, part of a wide-ranging series of protests demanding much more urgent action against climate change.

Demonstrators stopped traffic in European cities including Berlin, London, Paris and Amsterdam. In New York, activists smeared themselves — and emblems of Wall Street — in fake blood and lay in the street.

In some cities, activists chained themselves to vehicles or pitched tent camps and vowed not to budge.

“You might come from a variety of different groups, but we all stand against a system that’s destroying the planet and mankind, and we’re looking to change that because we can’t just have little changes, we want a real big change,” said Pierrick Jalby, a 28-year-old nurse from eastern France who joined the demonstration in Paris. “We don’t want reforms, in fact, we want a revolution.”

Members of Extinction Rebellion, a loose-knit movement also known as XR that started last year in Britain, have staged a series of flashy protests this year to demand action on manmade climate change, often featuring marchers in white masks and red costumes and copious amounts of fake blood.

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Judge says she couldn’t refuse convicted ex-cop a hug

DALLAS (AP) — The judge who gave a hug and Bible to a former Dallas police officer after she was sentenced to 10 years in prison for killing her neighbour said Monday that she watched the woman change during her trial and wants her to live a purposeful life.

Judge Tammy Kemp said she had never previously acknowledged her Christian faith to a defendant or given one a Bible, but Amber Guyger said she didn’t have one at the end of her trial for the September 2018 killing of her upstairs neighbour, Botham Jean.

In her first interview since the jury convicted Guyger of murder last week, Kemp said she felt her actions were appropriate since the trial was over and the former officer told her she didn’t know how to begin seeking God’s forgiveness.

“She asked me if I thought that God could forgive her and I said, ‘Yes, God can forgive you and has,’” Kemp told The Associated Press.

“If she wanted to start with the Bible, I didn’t want her to go back to the jail and to sink into doubt and self-pity and become bitter,” she said. “Because she still has a lot of life ahead of her following her sentence and I would hope that she could live it purposefully.”

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Judge says New York prosecutors can see Trump’s tax returns

NEW YORK (AP) — With President Donald Trump under siege on Capitol Hill, a federal judge dealt him a setback on another front Monday and ruled that New York City prosecutors can see his tax returns for an investigation into matters including the payment of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels and a Playboy centerfold.

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero emphatically rejected Trump’s attempt to keep his financial records under wraps, calling the president’s broad claim of immunity from all criminal proceedings “extraordinary” and “an overreach of executive power” at odds with the Constitution.

For now, at least, the tax returns remain beyond the reach of prosecutors. The president’s lawyers appealed the judge’s ruling to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which put the matter on hold while it considers the case on an expedited basis.

At issue is a request from Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. that Trump’s accounting firm turn over eight years’ worth of his business and personal tax returns dating back to 2011.

Vance, a Democrat, is investigating payments made to buy the silence of Daniels and model Karen McDougal, both of whom claimed to have had affairs with the president.

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Officials release IDs of 3 of the Chinatown homeless victims

NEW YORK (AP) — Eighty-three-year-old Chuen Kok, one of the four homeless victims bludgeoned to death with a metal rod as he slept on a Chinatown street, was remembered as a gentle” and “kind” man.

Other homeless men in the neighbourhood who knew Kok told The Associated Press he was quiet, kind and well-known to people in the neighbourhood.

Stephen Miller, 28, said he would try to give him a pork bun every day, or as often as he could.

“This guy never did anything, just had a life to live. It sucks that he’s out here in the rain and everything but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a life to live.”

Shirley Ng, 52, told the New York Post during a vigil in Chinatown that Kok was an immigrant from Hong Kong and only spoke Cantonese.

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3 win Nobel Prize for showing how cells sense low oxygen

NEW YORK (AP) — Two Americans and a British scientist won a Nobel Prize on Monday for discovering details of how the body’s cells sense and react to low oxygen levels, providing a foothold for developing new treatments for anemia, cancer and other diseases.

Drs. William G. Kaelin Jr. of Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Gregg L. Semenza of Johns Hopkins University and Peter J. Ratcliffe at the Francis Crick Institute in Britain and Oxford University won the prize for advances in physiology or medicine.

The scientists, who worked largely independently, will share the 9 million kronor ($918,000) cash award, said the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

They “revealed the mechanism for one of life’s most essential adaptive processes,” the Nobel committee said.

Cells can encounter lowered oxygen not only from situations like living at high altitudes, but also from things like a wound that interferes with local blood supply. Their response triggers reactions that include producing red blood cells, generating new blood vessels and fine-tuning the immune system.

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Dunkfest: Zion shows high-flying skills in preseason debut

ATLANTA (AP) — Zion Williamson may not be quite as tall as billed.

He still soared in his first NBA preseason game Monday night.

Showing off the high-flying talents that made him one of the most anticipated rookies in years, Williamson turned in a ferocious slam less than 2 minutes into his debut with the New Orleans Pelicans and dunked it two more times before the first half was done against the Atlanta Hawks.

It was quite the close-range repertoire.

One with the right hand.