Thursday’s top story: Turkish troops begin offensive as Trump washes his hands of the Kurds. Plus, Why Nixon loyalists won’t discuss today’s White House crisis

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

Trump deserts Kurdish allies: ‘They didn’t help us in Normandy’

Turkish troops began in earnest their offensive in north-eastern Syria on Wednesday as Donald Trump made plain the US would abandon its Kurdish allies in the region, justifying his controversial decision by arguing that the Kurds “didn’t help us in the second world war, they didn’t help us with Normandy”. Despite a looming humanitarian catastrophe, resigned civilians fled remarkably calmly from the border town of Ras al-Ayn as the Turkish military claimed to have hit 181 “militant targets”.

Detention centre. Women and children at the Kurdish-controlled al-Hawl camp, home to 60,000 people with links to Isis, expect to be freed amid the Turkish assault, claiming Isis sleeper cells will attack their Kurdish guards in the coming days.

Isis Britons. Two British Isis members being held in north-eastern Syria, accused of involvement in the beheading of western hostages, have been transferred from Kurdish to US custody.

German gunman livestreamed shooting at synagogue

Play Video 1:21 Halle: Eyewitness describes shooting in Germany - video

The suspected perpetrator of an antisemitic shooting at a synagogue in the German city of Halle livestreamed his attack on Twitch. Two people died and two others were severely injured in the attempted mass shooting, as the gunman, wearing a military-style uniform, tried to force his way into the synagogue during a Yom Kippur celebration on Wednesday. He recorded the attacks on a head-mounted camera and uploaded some 35 minutes of footage online, accompanied by an antisemitic and rightwing extremist rant.

Homemade weapons. The footage shows the suspect becoming increasingly frustrated and calling himself a “loser” as his homemade weapons repeatedly malfunctioned, likely preventing a much higher death toll.

Suspect named. German media have identified the killer as Stephan Balliet, a 27-year-old German citizen from the town of Eisleben in Saxony-Anhalt.

Biden and Pelosi hit back at Trump in impeachment fight

Facebook Twitter Pinterest On Wednesday, for the first time, the Democratic 2020 frontrunner called for Trump to be impeached. Photograph: Mary Schwalm/Reuters

Joe Biden has for the first time called for Trump to be impeached over his abuse of presidential power to smear the Democratic frontrunner and secure his own re-election. Speaking at a campaign event on Wednesday, Biden said Trump was “shooting holes in the constitution”, claiming the president had “picked a fight with the wrong guy”. Meanwhile, the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, insisted White House attempts to stymie the impeachment inquiry would prove futile, warning Trump: “You are not above the law.”

‘Leaker’ charged. Henry Kyle Frese, a counter-terrorism analyst with the US Defense Intelligence Agency, has been charged with leaking classified materials to journalists, including one with whom he was romantically involved.

Diplomatic immunity. The US diplomat’s wife who fled the UK following a road accident in which a 19-year-old motorcyclist was killed will not return to Britain for trial, according to briefing notes seen in Trump’s hand at a Wednesday press conference.

US sends migrants to Mexican border towns despite violence

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Migrants at a makeshift encampment on the southern side of the US-Mexican border. Photograph: Loren Elliott/Reuters

The US has returned more than 51,000 asylum seekers to Mexico to await the outcome of their cases under the Trump administration’s new “Remain in Mexico” program, despite advising its own citizens to avoid Mexican border towns due to an increased threat of violent crime. A report by the group Human Rights First has found at least 340 instances of rape, kidnapping, torture and other violent attacks against people sent back to Mexico under the so-called Migration Protection Protocols.

‘Torn Apart’. The filmmaker Ellen Goosenberg Kent talked to Adrain Horton about her new HBO documentary, which tells the story of two mothers separated from their children by the authorities as they sought a better life in the US.

Cheat sheet

Schools and businesses are closed and hospitals running on generators across a swath of northern California after the country’s largest utility company cut power to the region for up to a week as a preventive measure against wildfires.

Johnson & Johnson says it will appeal a US jury’s demand that it pay $8bn in punitive damages over a side-effect of its antipsychotic drug Risperdal, which the plaintiff’s lawyers say is linked to the abnormal growth of female breast tissue in boys.

Apple has pulled a new iPhone app, HKmap.Live, which protesters in Hong Kong had been using to track the movements of police amid the ongoing unrest in the territory, after the company came under pressure from China.

Sesame Street is set to tackle the issue of the opioids crisis by introducing a new character: Karli, a bright green, yellow-haired friend of Elmo’s whose mother is battling addiction.

Must-reads

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nixon announces he will turn over transcripts of the White House tapes amid the Watergate crisis of 1974. Photograph: AP

Nixon loyalists stay silent on Trump impeachment

Since the House of Representatives started formally investigating Trump two weeks ago, one group of politicos has been unusually silent on the issue, reports Andrew Gumbel: veterans of the Nixon administration and Nixon Foundation – who might have been expected to sympathise with a president under fire.

Jeff Bridges on his portrait of George Clooney

The actor Jeff Bridges is also an accomplished photographer. As a new book of his work is published, he talks about his favourite shot: a portrait of George Clooney on set. “For me and a lot of actors, even being around a camera changes something in your chemistry.”

How foraging for mushrooms got hip

There are more than 90 local mushroom clubs in North America but, until recently, mycology retained something of an old-world mystique. Now, writes Kelli María Korducki, a new generation of environmentally conscious foragers are appreciating the wonder of edible fungi.

Why vaping is harder to quit than cigarettes

Kari Paul made it to the age of 25 without becoming a smoker, but less than a year after trying her first Juul, she was vaping more than a pack of cigarettes worth of nicotine per day. In other words, she says: “I had unwittingly become the face of what the FDA has called ‘an epidemic of addiction’.”

Opinion

As a judge for the 2019 Booker Prize, Afua Hirsch plowed through 151 books in just six months. And it was the books she would never have otherwise read that really showed her the power of fiction.

Like so many of us, I filter my book choices to reflect the world I already know. Reading stories that I would never have chosen, mistakenly believing them to be uninteresting or too remote from my concerns, reading them intensely, fast, sacrificing social and family commitments to make sure I gave them the time that they deserved: this slowly began to change me.

Sport

The LA Dodgers have not won a World Series since 1988 and they will have to go without for at least one more season after the Washington Nationals snatched away their spot in the NL Championship Series with a late rally on Wednesday night, which left the Dodgers on the wrong end of a 7-3 scoreline.

The Guardian’s soccer writers have made their selection of the brightest young stars in the sport, picking 20 of the most promising teenagers in the Premier League, and 60 from the rest of the world.

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