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

Debate rivals assail Warren as she joins Democrats’ top rank

Elizabeth Warren repeatedly came under attack during Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate as rivals accused the Massachusetts senator of ducking questions about the cost of Medicare for All and her signature “wealth tax” plan.

The pile-on was the clearest sign yet that Warren has a new status in the crowded Democratic primary: a front-runner in the contest to take on President Donald Trump next year.

The night’s confrontations were mostly fought on familiar terrain for Democrats, who have spent months sparring over the future of health care with moderates pressing for a measured approach while Warren and Bernie Sanders call for a dramatic, government-funded overhaul of the insurance market. But unlike Sanders, Warren refused to say whether she would raise taxes on the middle class to pay for Medicare for All — a stance that’s increasingly difficult to maintain given her more prominent status.

Her rivals seized on the opportunity to pounce.

“I appreciate Elizabeth’s work but, again, the difference between a plan and a pipe dream is something you can actually get done,” said Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

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AP FACT CHECK: Claims from the Democratic debate

WASHINGTON (AP) — Twelve Democrats seeking the presidency tussled Tuesday night in a wide-ranging debate featuring the largest number of qualifying candidates on the same stage.

Here’s a look at how some of their claims from Westerville, Ohio, stack up with the facts:

KAMALA HARRIS: “Five million assault weapons are on the streets of America today.”

THE FACTS: The California senator’s statistic on the number of AR- and AK-style firearms is not accurate. Even the gun industry estimates there are now 16 million “assault weapons” in circulation in the United States today. In 1994, President Bill Clinton enacted an assault weapons ban, at a time when there were an estimated 1.5 million of them in circulation. Current owners were allowed to keep them, however, and once the ban expired a decade later, sales resumed and boomed.

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Vivid details emerge on Ukraine as impeachment quickens

WASHINGTON (AP) — The impeachment inquiry is revealing vivid new details about the high-level unease over President Donald Trump’s actions toward Ukraine, and those of his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, as the swift-moving probe by House Democrats showed no signs Tuesday of easing.

The testimony from the witnesses, mainly officials from the State Department and other foreign policy posts, is largely corroborating the account of the government whistleblower whose complaint first sparked the impeachment inquiry, according to lawmakers attending the closed-door interviews.

One witness, former White House aide Fiona Hill, testified that national security adviser John Bolton was so alarmed by Giuliani’s back-channel activities in Ukraine that he described him as a “hand grenade who is going to blow everybody up.”

Another, career State Department official George Kent, testified Tuesday he was told by administration officials to “lay low” on Ukraine as “three amigos” tied to the White House took over U.S. foreign policy toward the Eastern European ally.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, despite intensifying calls from Trump and Republicans to hold a formal vote to authorize the impeachment inquiry, showed no indication she would do so. She said Congress will continue its investigation as part of the Constitution’s system of checks and balances of the executive.

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Fearing US abandonment, Kurds kept back channels wide open

WASHINGTON (AP) — When Syria’s Kurdish fighters, America’s longtime battlefield allies against the Islamic State, announced over the weekend that they were switching sides and joining up with Damascus and Moscow, it seemed like a moment of geopolitical whiplash.

But in fact, the move had been in the works for more than a year. Fearing U.S. abandonment, the Kurds opened a back channel to the Syrian government and the Russians in 2018, and those talks ramped up significantly in recent weeks, American, Kurdish and Russian officials told The Associated Press.

“We warned the Kurds that the Americans will ditch them,” Russia’s ambassador to the European Union, Vladimir Chizhov, told Russia’s Tass news agency on Monday.

The switch in allegiances is a stark illustration of how American foes like Russia and Syria are working steadily to fill the vacuum left by President Donald Trump’s retreat in the region. It also betrays the anxiety that U.S. allies across the globe now feel in the face of Trump’s seemingly impulsive foreign policy decisions, which often come as a surprise to allies and critics alike.

When Trump announced Oct. 6 that he was pulling American troops back from northeastern Syria, paving the way for an assault by Turkey, the Kurds knew exactly where to turn.

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Catalan protesters, police clash for second straight night

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Violent clashes erupted for a second night in Barcelona between police and protesters angry about the conviction of a dozen Catalan separatist leaders, as Spain launched an investigation Tuesday into an activist group organizing the demonstrations.

Thousands of people held vigils near the Spanish government offices in Catalonia’s four provinces. But the gatherings turned into melees, with protesters hurling firecrackers and other objects at anti-riot officers and kicking temporary fences around the official buildings.

In Barcelona, protesters sang the Catalan anthem and shouted “The streets will always be ours” and “Independence,” while they called Spanish police “occupying forces” and urged them to leave Catalonia. Demonstrators erected improvised barricades with trash bins, fences and piles of cardboard that they set on fire.

The greatly outnumbered riot police went in with shields and batons striking protesters in their path. They hit people on the legs mostly and fired foam-type anti-riot bullets that dispersed the crowds.

There were also clashes in Girona, Lleida and Tarragona as well as smaller towns across Catalonia.

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Felicity Huffman starts serving prison time in college scam

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — “Desperate Housewives” star Felicity Huffman — aka inmate No. 77806-112 — reported Tuesday to a federal prison in California to serve a two-week sentence in a college admissions scandal that underscored the lengths some wealthy parents will go to get their children into top universities.

Huffman’s husband, actor William H. Macy, dropped her off at the Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin, a low-security prison for women in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to TASC Group, which represents Huffman.

The prison has been described by media as “Club Fed,” making its way onto a Forbes list in 2009 of “America’s 10 Cushiest Prisons.” It has housed well-known inmates in the past, including “Hollywood Madam” Heidi Fleiss.

Once inside the prison, Huffman will share a room and open toilet with three other inmates, according to a TASC Group publicist who declined to be named in accordance with company policy. The person said the actress will be subjected to five bed checks a day while having access to a gym, library and TV room.

Sally Swarts, a spokeswoman for the prison, said she could not provide specific information on Huffman but noted that everything in the inmate handbook would apply to the actress.

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Owl vs. owl: Should humans intervene to save a species?

CORVALLIS, Ore. (AP) — As he stood amid the thick old-growth forests in the coastal range of Oregon, Dave Wiens was nervous. Before he trained to shoot his first barred owl, he had never fired a gun.

He eyed the big female owl, her feathers streaked brown and white, perched on a branch at just the right distance. Then he squeezed the trigger and the owl fell to the forest floor, its carcass adding to a running tally of more than 2,400 barred owls killed so far in a controversial experiment by the U.S. government to test whether the northern spotted owl’s rapid decline in the Pacific Northwest can be stopped by killing its aggressive East Coast cousin.

Wiens is the son of a well-known ornithologist and grew up fascinated by birds, and his graduate research in owl interactions helped lay the groundwork for this tense moment.

“It’s a little distasteful, I think, to go out killing owls to save another owl species,” said Wiens, a biologist who still views each shooting as “gut-wrenching” as the first. “Nonetheless, I also feel like from a conservation standpoint, our back was up against the wall. We knew that barred owls were outcompeting spotted owls and their populations were going haywire.”

The federal government has been trying for decades to save the northern spotted owl, a native bird that sparked an intense battle over logging across Washington, Oregon and California decades ago.

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EU: Brexit deal in sight but UK must still do more

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union officials hoped to sketch out a Brexit deal with Britain within hours, but negotiations stretched into early Wednesday in the latest effort at producing an agreement in more than three years of false starts and sudden reversals.

The bloc said it might be possible to strike a divorce deal by Thursday’s EU leaders’ summit, which comes just two weeks before the U.K’s scheduled departure date of Oct. 31. One major proviso: The British government must make more compromises to seal an agreement in the coming hours.

Britain and the EU have been here before — within sight of a deal only to see it dashed — but a surge in the British pound Tuesday indicated hope that this time could be different. The currency rose against the dollar to its highest level in months.

Even though many questions remain, diplomats made it clear that both sides were within touching distance of a deal for the first time since a U.K. withdrawal plan fell apart in the British House of Commons in March.

Still, talks that first lingered into Tuesday night turned into negotiating past midnight as no deal materialized between experts from both sides holed up at EU headquarters in a darkened Brussels.

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Cole pitches Astros past Yankees 4-1 for 2-1 lead in ALCS

NEW YORK (AP) — Gerrit Cole is making his pitch to own this October.

A gritty Cole held the New York Yankees scoreless without his sharpest stuff, Jose Altuve sparked Houston at the plate and the Astros locked down a 4-1 victory Tuesday to take a 2-1 lead in the AL Championship Series.

Altuve and Josh Reddick homered early off Luis Severino, who laboured into the fifth while keeping the Yankees close. But they never broke through against Cole, who grinded through seven innings to win his 19th straight decision despite walking five batters for the second time in his career.

“Just boiled down to making some good pitches under pressure,” he said.

Cole escaped a bases-loaded jam in the first and stranded nine runners through five, improving to 3-0 with a 0.40 ERA in three playoff outings this year. Poised to become a prized free agent who could command more than $200 million, he’s putting together a dominant run that’s beginning to rival some of baseball’s greatest post-season pitching performances.

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Russia seeks to cement its role as power broker in Syria

CEYLANPINAR, Turkey (AP) — Russia moved to fill the void left by the United States in northern Syria on Tuesday, deploying troops to keep apart advancing Syrian government forces and Turkish troops. At the same time, tensions grew within NATO as Turkey defied growing condemnation of its invasion from its Western allies.

Now in its seventh day, Turkey’s offensive against Kurdish fighters has caused tens of thousands to flee their homes, has upended alliances and is re-drawing the map of northern Syria for yet another time in the 8-year-old war.

Russia moved quickly to further entrench its role as a power broker after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the pullout of American forces in northeastern Syria. The American move effectively abandoned the Kurdish fighters who were allied with the U.S. and cleared the way for Turkey’s invasion aimed at crushing them.

Desperate for a new protector, the Kurdish administration struck a deal with the Russia-backed government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose forces on Sunday began moving into Kurdish-administered areas to shield them against Turkey.

Syrian troops waved flags after they rolled into Manbij, a flashpoint town west of the Euphrates River that Turkey had been aiming to capture and wrest from Kurdish control. Video by Russian journalists with the troops showed what appeared to be an abandoned outpost where U.S. forces had been stationed.