Monday’s top story: US to allow Turkish offensive in northern Syria, abandoning longtime Kurdish allies. Plus, what is the point of a Nobel prize?

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Good morning, I’m Tim Walker with today’s essential stories.

Abrupt policy shift follows Trump call with Turkish president

The White House has made a sudden shift in its Syria policy, withdrawing US troops in the north of the country to make way for a Turkish military offensive – and in effect abandoning the Kurds, Washington’s long-term allies in the region. The abrupt change happened on Sunday, after a call between Donald Trump and the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Kurdish-led forces said on Monday morning that their US partners had already begun withdrawing troops from the Turkish border area.

Regional tensions. Without the US providing a buffer between Turkish forces and the Kurds, existing tensions between the two longtime rivals in the complex regional conflict are likely to rise.

Flailing Trump losing control of impeachment narrative

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A second whistleblower has come forward in the Trump-Ukraine scandal. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

An increasingly erratic Trump is battling the building threat of impeachment, after a second whistleblower came forward to describe the president’s scheme to leverage dirt on his political rival, Joe Biden, from the Ukrainian leadership. Two prominent Republican senators, Mitt Romney and Susan Collins, have broken ranks to criticise Trump’s behaviour, while his GOP defenders largely fell silent over the weekend.

Gordon Sondland. On Tuesday, Congress will hear testimony from the wealthy hotelier and major Trump donor who was made US ambassador to the European Union, and who is now implicated in the Ukraine scandal.

Philippines president says he has autoimmune disease

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rodrigo Duterte on official visit to Russia last week. Photograph: Yuri Kadobnov/POOL/EPA

Rodrigo Duterte, the controversial president of the Philippines, has revealed he is suffering from the autoimmune disease myasthenia gravis, a condition that could cause serious health complications for the 74-year-old leader. Duterte’s health has been subject to speculation ever since he became the country’s oldest elected leader in 2016. “One of my eyes is smaller. It roams on its own,” he said during a visit to Russia this weekend. “That’s myasthenia gravis. It’s a nerve malfunction. I got it from my grandfather.”

Prison deaths. A Filipino prison hospital chief has claimed that 20% of the inmates at the national Bilibid prison near Manila, a total of more than 5,000, die each year due to infectious diseases and prison violence.

Drummer Ginger Baker, master and monster, dies at 80

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Baker onstage in London in 1975. Photograph: Colin Fuller/Redferns

Ginger Baker, the drummer whose private life was as turbulent as the sound he pioneered, has died aged 80. A jazz-trained drummer, his work with the band Cream helped build the foundations of modern rock, while he was also one of the first western musicians to embrace Afrobeat, establishing his own recording studio in Lagos, Nigeria. Yet Baker’s relationships with his family were strained, and even his close friend and former bandmate Eric Clapton described him as “scary, threatening” and “difficult”.

Musical tributes. Among those who paid tribute to Baker after his death at the weekend were the two surviving Beatles, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and Sir Mick Jagger, who called Baker “fiery but extremely talented and innovative”.

Cheat sheet

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has given his UK counterpart Boris Johnson until the end of this week to come up with a revised Brexit plan, while in an interview the American businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri has refused to rule out claims that she and Johnson had an affair.

A 24-year-old man has been arrested and charged with the murder of four homeless men, who were bludgeoned to death with a metal pipe as they slept on the streets of New York.

The 95-year-old former US president Jimmy Carter suffered a black eye and 14 stitches after a fall at his home in Georgia on Sunday, but still made it to a charity concert that evening.

The consumer goods giant Unilever, which owns more than 400 household brands, has pledged to halve the amount of new plastics it uses per year – currently 700,000 tonnes – by 2025.

Must-reads

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Steve Coogan as Sir Richard ‘Greedy’ McCready in Michael Winterbottom’s Greed. Photograph: Sony Pictures

How Sony censored Michael Winterbottom’s Greed

The prolific British film-maker Michael Winterbottom’s new movie, Greed, is a satire of the fashion industry, starring Steve Coogan as a fictional tycoon in the mould of Sir Philip Green. But when Winterbottom wanted to add some real and shocking facts to the end credits, the studio pushed back, as he tells Catherine Shoard.

Which way will Obama-Trump voters swing in 2020?

For the first in the Guardian’s new series about swing voters, Chris McGreal travels to white, working-class Monroe County, Michigan, to find out whether the former Obama voters who swung behind Trump in 2016 intend to stay loyal to the president in 2020.

And the winners are …

For some they are the pinnacle of recognition, for others they reek of western bias and sexism. Ian Sample and Hannah Devlin examine the history of the Nobel prizes and how they may change in future. Early on Monday morning the Nobel prize for medicine was split three ways between researchers who have delved into how cells sense oxygen availability and adapt in response to that.

Life as a Latino in Trump’s America

Hate crimes have risen steadily since Trump’s election in 2016, but the mass shootings in Gilroy, California, and El Paso, Texas, in August marked a shocking escalation in violence against Latinos – one that left families across the US living in fear, as Dani Anguiano discovers.

Opinion

A recent New York Times report found Americans are not nearly so polarised as they appear on Twitter, Fox News or MSNBC. John Harris finds the same is true of Brexit Britain, where towns such as Milton Keynes show few symptoms of the culture war.

We are in danger of making the classic postmodern mistake of taking spectacle and skewed representation for reality.

Sport

The Miami Dolphins have already suffered a string of embarrassing losses in this young season. And yet, writes Melissa Jacobs, they’re not the most dismal team in the NFL. Unlike the Jets, Washington, Bengals and Falcons, at least the Dolphins have a plan for the future.

Several Premier League giants struggled this weekend, with Manchester City, United and Tottenham all going down to theoretically weaker teams. Liverpool were disappointing, too, but managed to scrape out a win against Leicester that puts them eight points clear at the top.

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