VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,559 + © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 1, 2020

C M Y K Nxxx,2020-01-01,A,001,Bs-4C,E2_+

U(D54G1D)y+"!#!%!?!z

BAGHDAD — Protesters brokeinto the heavily guarded com-pound of the United States Em-bassy in Baghdad on Tuesday andset fires inside in anger overAmerican airstrikes that killed 24members of an Iranian-backedmilitia over the weekend.

The men did not enter the mainembassy buildings and later with-drew from the compound, joiningthousands of protesters and mili-tia fighters outside chanting“Death to America,” throwingrocks, covering the walls withgraffiti and demanding that theUnited States withdraw its forcesfrom Iraq.

The situation remained com-bustible, with the crowd vowing tocamp indefinitely outside thesprawling compound, the world’slargest embassy. Their ability tostorm the most heavily guardedzone in Baghdad suggested thatthey had received at least tacitpermission from Iraqi security of-ficials sympathetic to their de-mands.

President Trump, faced withscenes of unfolding chaos at anAmerican embassy, lashed outagainst Iran, which he blamed forthe protests.

“Iran will be held fully responsi-ble for lives lost, or damage in-curred, at any of our facilities,” hesaid in a tweet. “They will pay avery BIG PRICE! This is not aWarning, it is a Threat. HappyNew Year!” He also spoke withPrime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi

IRAQI PROTESTERSASSAULT EMBASSYAFTER U.S. STRIKE

TRUMP BLAMES TEHRAN

750 Additional AmericanTroops Are Being Sent

to the Region

This article is by Falih Hassan,Ben Hubbard and Alissa J. Rubin.

Stocks? Buy ’em. Bonds? Backup the truck. Gold? Why not?Hogs? Sure!

There’s usually a tension acrossfinancial markets: If risky betslike stocks or junk bonds are doingwell, super-safe assets such asgovernment securities might beterrible investments. Wall Street’stitans and armchair investorsalike expend tremendousamounts of time and sweat tryingto predict what will be up andwhat will be down, hoping to beateveryone else with a cleverly con-structed portfolio.

This year, however, a simplerstrategy would have worked: Buyalmost anything.

After a 0.3 percent gain on Tues-day, the S&P 500 index ended 2019up 28.9 percent, its strongest per-formance since 2013 and one ofthe best in decades. Broad in-dexes of the American bond mar-kets are up nearly 9 percent. Goldjumped 18.7 percent and silverabout 15 percent, and other com-modities were also up. (Futuresprices for hogs, in case that hadbeen your pick, gained about 17percent.)

It was a remarkable across-the-board rally of a scale not seen innearly a decade. The cause?Mostly a head-spinning reversalby the Federal Reserve, whichwent from planning to raise inter-est rates to cutting them andpumping fresh money into the fi-

nancial markets.“Rarely in my career has every-

thing worked simultaneously,”said Mark Vaselkiv, chief invest-ment officer for fixed income atthe asset management firm T.Rowe Price.

Analysts at Ned Davis Re-search tracked eight types of in-vestments — large and small do-mestic stocks, developed andemerging market stocks, Treasur-ies, corporate bonds, commoditiesand real estate — going back to1972. In 2019, all eight categoriesgenerated profits and — for thefirst time since 2010 — each rose 5percent or more.

In fact, the gains were muchbetter than that, with a mediangain of 21 percent for the eight as-set classes.

The Nasdaq composite index isup more than 35 percent, its bestshowing since 2013. Small-capstocks are up about 24 percent,their best gains since 2013. A gainof more than 14 percent for high-quality American corporate bondsis the best showing since 2009. Eu-ropean shares, up 23 percent, arelikewise having their best year ina decade.

Those gains can have a knock-on effect on the economy outsideWall Street, creating a feedbackloop that helps encourage morebuying.

As the Markets Soared Higher,It Was Best Not to Look Down

By MATT PHILLIPS

Continued on Page A15

A year ago, Navy SEAL ChiefPetty Officer Edward Gallagherwas wearing drab prison scrubs ata brig near San Diego, facing mur-der charges that could have senthim to prison for the rest of his life.Now he is modeling his own life-style clothing brand, endorsing

nutrition supplements and posi-tioning himself as a conservativeinfluencer with close ties to theman who helped clear him —President Trump.

Chief Gallagher was acquittedthis summer of charges that heshot at civilians and killed awounded captive with a knifewhile serving as a platoon leaderin Iraq. The punishment for his

lone conviction — posing for agrisly trophy photo with the deadcaptive’s body — was reversedthis fall by President Trump, whohas repeatedly praised him. At apolitical rally in Florida, he calledhim “one of the ultimate fighters.”

Now, Chief Gallagher is usinghis controversial past as a spring-

Ex-SEAL Now Pitching Products and PresidentBy DAVE PHILIPPS

Continued on Page A16

MATTHEW ABBOTT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

An inferno in Australia, where wildfires have driven some residents all the way to the sea. Page A7.Nowhere Else to Run

TOKYO — By the time most ofJapan had woken up on Tuesday,he was gone. One of the country’smost famous criminal suspectshad slipped past the camerastrained on his house, past the po-lice and border guards and theJapanese citizens who for the pastyear have followed his everymove.

Carlos Ghosn, the deposed chiefof the Nissan and Renault autoempire facing charges of financialwrongdoing, had fled to Lebanon,and no one in Japan — not the au-thorities, the media or even theauto executive’s own lawyer —could explain how it had hap-pened.

“I want to ask him, ‘How couldyou do this to us?’” Mr. Ghosn’slawyer in Tokyo, Junichiro Hiron-aka, told a crush of 40 reportersoutside his office on Tuesday.

It was a cinematic escape, car-ried out just before New Year’sDay, Japan’s most important holi-day, when government agenciesand most businesses close for aslong as a week.

The escape appeared to havebeen planned in Lebanon. A law-yer for Mr. Ghosn in Beirut playeda lead role putting the plan togeth-er and acted as the go-betweenwith the Lebanese government,one person familiar with the mat-ter said.

An official in Beirut said Mr.Ghosn had entered the countryusing a French passport, while at

least one Lebanese outlet re-ported, without offering proof,that the former Nissan chairmanhad been spirited out inside a boxmeant for musical equipment.

He chose refuge in Lebanon,where he grew up and has beentreated as a folk hero since his2018 arrest in Japan. A Lebanesenewspaper reported that Mr.Ghosn had arrived in Beirut on aprivate plane from Turkey. Afterlanding there, he released a state-

ment assailing the “rigged Japa-nese justice system where guilt ispresumed, discrimination isrampant, and basic human rightsare denied.”

In the statement, he said he wasready to tell his story to the media“starting next week.” A public re-lations professional has been dis-patched from the United States toBeirut to help organize a newsconference, the person familiarwith the matter said.

Government officials in Japanwere still trying to piece togetherthe facts of the escape, as the ag-gressive local media scrambledfor clues. Lebanon has no extradi-tion treaty with Japan. Some poli-ticians in Japan wonderedwhether shadowy figures or even

3 Passports and a Plan Hatched in Lebanon: Ghosn’s Escape ActBy BEN DOOLEY

and MICHAEL CORKERYHoudini-Like Flight of

Detained ExecutiveStaggers Japanese

Continued on Page A6

A THREAT The president saidTehran would “be held fully re-sponsible” for the attack. PAGE A9

CALLA KESSLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Revelers in Times Square embraced the new decade — and each other — and with temperatures in the 40s, gloves were optional.Kisses and Confetti

The Democrats’ presidential field wasthe largest and most diverse yet, but ahandful of names stood out. PAGE A12

NATIONAL A10-16

A Year on the TrailMelissa Clark has been cutting down onher steaks and lamb chops lately. It allhas to do with climate change. Above,maple roasted tofu. PAGE D1

FOOD D1-8

A Guide to Eating Less Meat

A report by John G. Roberts Jr. reflectedon judicial independence, a subtext thatseemed aimed at the president. PAGE A11

A Chief Justice’s Message

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, saidhis country no longer felt bound by amoratorium on nuclear tests. PAGE A5

INTERNATIONAL A4-9

Kim Hints at New Missile Tests

A state law meant to protect workers atcompanies like Uber and Lyft may limitthe prospects of others. PAGE B1

BUSINESS B1-5

Freelance Jitters in California

Nancy L. Cohen PAGE A19

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A18-19

WASHINGTON — A top panelof government-appointed scien-tists, many of them hand-selectedby the Trump administration, saidon Tuesday that three of PresidentTrump’s most far-reaching andscrutinized proposals to weakenmajor environmental regulationsare at odds with established sci-ence.

Draft letters posted online Tues-day by the Environmental Protec-tion Agency’s Scientific AdvisoryBoard, which is responsible forevaluating the scientific integrityof the agency’s regulations, tookaim at the Trump administration’srewrite of an Obama-era regula-tion of waterways, an Obama-eraeffort to curb planet-warming ve-hicle tailpipe emissions and a planto limit scientific data that can beused to draft health regulations.

In each case, the 41 scientists ona board — many of whom were ap-pointed by Trump administrationofficials to replace scientistsnamed by the Obama administra-tion — found the regulatorychanges flew in the face of sci-ence.

A forthcoming rule on waterpollution “neglects establishedscience” by “failing to acknowl-edge watershed systems,” the sci-entists said. They found “no scien-tific justification” for excludingcertain bodies of water from pro-tection under the new regulations.

They saw “significant weak-nesses in the scientific analysis ofthe proposed rule” to roll back ve-hicle emission standards, a cen-terpiece of the Obama administra-tion’s effort to combat climatechange.

As for the proposal to limit sci-entific data in health regulations,the scientists wrote that “key con-siderations that should inform theproposed rule have been omittedfrom the proposal or presentedwithout analysis.”

The letters come as the Trump

E.P.A. PoliciesScorn Science,

Panel Reports

Trump Plans Critiquedby Trump Appointees

By CORAL DAVENPORTand LISA FRIEDMAN

Continued on Page A15

Best known as the most feared andbrutally cold outpost of the Soviet gu-lag, Magadan struggles to keep itsresidents from fleeing. PAGE A4

Tired of the Frigid in Russia

Sonny Mehta could spot great booksand had no qualms about aggressivelymarketing them. He was 77. PAGE B10

OBITUARIES B10-11

Knopf’s Guru of the Shelves

The historian Gertrude Himmelfarbargued for the influence of Victorianmorals in policy. She was 97. PAGE B11

A Bastion of Conservatism

Greta Gerwig onstage, Jack London onfilm and an opera celebrating the 19thAmendment are among the events ourreviewers can’t wait to see. PAGE C4

ARTS C1-8

For 2020, Our Critics’ Dozen

Continued on Page A8

The Trump administration isexpected to announce this weekthat it will ban mint-, fruit- anddessert-flavored e-cigarette car-tridges popular with teenagers,but allow menthol and tobacco fla-vors to remain on the market.

Flavored liquid nicotine used inopen tank systems can continue tobe sold, according to two adminis-tration officials who have beenbriefed on the plan. It is an impor-tant concession to vape shops thathave thrived alongside the boom-ing e-cigarette business in recentyears.

President Trump acknowl-edged late Tuesday that the banwould be announced “veryshortly.” But he indicated that itmight be short-lived and he didn’tsay which flavors were involved.

“We think we are going to getback in the market very, veryquickly,” Mr. Trump said at a NewYear’s Eve news conference dur-ing a party at his Mar-a-Lago re-sort. “We have a very big industry.We’re going to take care of the in-dustry.”

The administration’s decision isa partial retreat from a commit-ment it made in September toquickly devise a ban of all flavorsexcept those that tasted like to-bacco. Its plan to exempt menthol

U.S. Set to BanVaping FlavorsTeens Use Most

By SHEILA KAPLANand MAGGIE HABERMAN

Continued on Page A16

Democrats are hailing the eliminationof most cash bail in New York, but lawenforcement officials are worryingabout consequences. PAGE A20

NEW YORK A17, 20

Unease Over New Bail Rules

Late EditionToday, periodic clouds and sunshine,brisk, chilly, high 43. Tonight,mainly clear, low 34. Tomorrow,sunny, a bit milder in the afternoon,high 49. Weather map, Page C8.

$3.00