WASHINGTON — A senior American diplomat has written a highly critical assessment of the Trump administration’s abrupt withdrawal of troops from northeast Syria last month, a decision that paved the way for an attack on U.S.-allied forces in the area, officials said Thursday.

In an internal memo, William Roebuck, the top American diplomat in northern Syria, takes the Trump administration to task for not doing more to prevent Turkey’s invasion or protect the Kurds, who fought alongside U.S. forces in the battle against the Islamic State group, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

One of the officials described the memo, which was obtained and first revealed by The New York Times, as “lengthy and harsh.” The officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

Roebuck’s memo highlights how President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the troops was deeply divisive, even within his own administration. The move was widely criticized by Democrats and Republicans as abandoning a key ally in the fight against the Islamic State.

Turkey invaded days after Trump ordered the U.S. special forces to leave.

In the memo quoted by the Times, Roebuck said there was no way to know if more pressure on Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, would have stopped the operation.

“It’s a tough call, and the answer is probably not. But we won’t know because we didn’t try,” the Times quoted Roebuck as writing.

Trump’s ordered withdrawal from the northeast has been somewhat tempered by the deployment of forces to protect oil fields in Kurdish-held areas.

GM selling shuttered factory

in Ohio to electric truck maker

TOLEDO, Ohio — General Motors is selling a massive assembly plant it shut down earlier this year in Ohio, a closing that drew threats and scolding from President Donald Trump, to a newly formed company that said Thursday it intends to begin making electric trucks by late 2020.

The company called Lordstown Motors Corp. plans to hire 400 production workers at the outset, but said it still needs more investors before manufacturing can begin.

GM had employed 4,500 people at the factory near Youngstown just two years ago before it began cutting production and eventually in March ended more than 50 years of car manufacturing there, part of a major restructuring plan.

Terms of the sale and the investors who are behind the deal weren’t disclosed by the privately held Lordstown Motors.

French leader laments NATO’s ‘brain death’ due to US actions

BRUSSELS — French President Emmanuel Macron claimed that a lack of U.S. leadership is causing the “brain death” of the NATO military alliance, insisting in an interview published Thursday that the European Union must step up and start acting as a strategic world power.

Macron’s public criticism of the state of the world’s biggest military alliance was rejected by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, setting the scene for a possible showdown in London next month when NATO leaders meet.

“What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO,” Macron told The Economist magazine. He said the United States under President Donald Trump appears to be “turning its back on us.”

North Carolina no longer an outlier on sex and consent

GREENSBORO, N.C. — North Carolina’s governor has signed a sexual assault bill that says women can revoke consent during sex.

Gov. Roy Cooper said in a news release Thursday that he had signed the bill, which undoes a 1979 court decision that made North Carolina the only state where women can’t revoke consent.

The law also undoes a court ruling from 2008 that said sexual assault laws don’t apply to people who were incapacitated because of their own action as victims, such as by taking drugs or alcohol. It also increases penalties for child abusers.

The law goes into effect Dec. 1.

Both houses of the legislature approved the bill unanimously last week. Cooper says the bipartisan legislation “will help more people seek justice against abusers.”

Okla. woman in failure-to-protect case to be freed

OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma woman who has served 15 years in prison for failing to report her boyfriend, who served just two years for abusing her children, is scheduled to be released from custody.

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections says Gov. Kevin Stitt has signed the commutation sentence of Tondalao Hall and she is to be released Friday.

Her release comes about after the state Pardon and Parole Board voted unanimously to recommend that Stitt commute her sentence to time served.

Hall’s ex-boyfriend, Robert Braxton, pleaded guilty to abusing the children and was released on probation after two years in jail.

The disparity of the sentences outraged women’s rights groups and brought further attention to Oklahoma’s high rate of incarceration, particularly of women.

Governor of Texas to open homeless camp in Austin

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas’ Republican governor said Thursday that he is creating a homeless campsite on 5 acres of state land of the outskirts of downtown in the capital of Austin, escalating a battle with the city’s liberal leaders over people living on the streets.

Greg Abbott’s announcement was met with a mix of muted welcoming and accusations of political posturing from Democrats who run the state capital around the Texas Governor’s Mansion, where Abbott has spent months lashing out at the city’s homelessness problem on Twitter.

Abbott spokesman John Wittman said the campsite will have portable restrooms and hand-washing stations. He said it will also provide access to homeless case workers and health care providers until permanent sheltering opens.

In China: A court sentenced nine fentanyl traffickers Thursday in a case that is the culmination of a rare collaboration between Chinese and U.S. law enforcement.

Liu Yong was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, while Jiang Juhua and Wang Fengxi were sentenced to life in prison. Six other members of the operation received lesser sentences, ranging from six months to 10 years. Death sentences are almost always commuted to life in prison after the reprieve.

Working off a 2017 tip from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security about an online drug vendor who went by the name Diana, Chinese police busted the drug ring based in the northern Chinese city of Xingtai.