AFTER U.S. STRIKE ASSAULT EMBASSY IRAQI PROTESTERS · Carlos Ghosn, the deposed chief of the Nissan...
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VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,559 + © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 1, 2020 U(D54G1D)y+"!#!%!?!z BAGHDAD — Protesters broke into the heavily guarded com- pound of the United States Em- bassy in Baghdad on Tuesday and set fires inside in anger over American airstrikes that killed 24 members of an Iranian-backed militia over the weekend. The men did not enter the main embassy buildings and later with- drew from the compound, joining thousands of protesters and mili- tia fighters outside chanting “Death to America,” throwing rocks, covering the walls with graffiti and demanding that the United States withdraw its forces from Iraq. The situation remained com- bustible, with the crowd vowing to camp indefinitely outside the sprawling compound, the world’s largest embassy. Their ability to storm the most heavily guarded zone in Baghdad suggested that they had received at least tacit permission from Iraqi security of- ficials sympathetic to their de- mands. President Trump, faced with scenes of unfolding chaos at an American embassy, lashed out against Iran, which he blamed for the protests. “Iran will be held fully responsi- ble for lives lost, or damage in- curred, at any of our facilities,” he said in a tweet. “They will pay a very BIG PRICE! This is not a Warning, it is a Threat. Happy New Year!” He also spoke with Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi IRAQI PROTESTERS ASSAULT EMBASSY AFTER U.S. STRIKE TRUMP BLAMES TEHRAN 750 Additional American Troops Are Being Sent to the Region This article is by Falih Hassan, Ben Hubbard and Alissa J. Rubin. Stocks? Buy ’em. Bonds? Back up the truck. Gold? Why not? Hogs? Sure! There’s usually a tension across financial markets: If risky bets like stocks or junk bonds are doing well, super-safe assets such as government securities might be terrible investments. Wall Street’s titans and armchair investors alike expend tremendous amounts of time and sweat trying to predict what will be up and what will be down, hoping to beat everyone else with a cleverly con- structed portfolio. This year, however, a simpler strategy would have worked: Buy almost anything. After a 0.3 percent gain on Tues- day, the S&P 500 index ended 2019 up 28.9 percent, its strongest per- formance since 2013 and one of the best in decades. Broad in- dexes of the American bond mar- kets are up nearly 9 percent. Gold jumped 18.7 percent and silver about 15 percent, and other com- modities were also up. (Futures prices for hogs, in case that had been your pick, gained about 17 percent.) It was a remarkable across-the- board rally of a scale not seen in nearly a decade. The cause? Mostly a head-spinning reversal by the Federal Reserve, which went from planning to raise inter- est rates to cutting them and pumping 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 at the 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 and emerging market stocks, Treasur- ies, corporate bonds, commodities and real estate — going back to 1972. In 2019, all eight categories generated profits and — for the first time since 2010 — each rose 5 percent or more. In fact, the gains were much better than that, with a median gain of 21 percent for the eight as- set classes. The Nasdaq composite index is up more than 35 percent, its best showing since 2013. Small-cap stocks are up about 24 percent, their best gains since 2013. A gain of more than 14 percent for high- quality American corporate bonds is the best showing since 2009. Eu- ropean shares, up 23 percent, are likewise having their best year in a decade. Those gains can have a knock- on effect on the economy outside Wall Street, creating a feedback loop that helps encourage more buying. As the Markets Soared Higher, It Was Best Not to Look Down By MATT PHILLIPS Continued on Page A15 A year ago, Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher was wearing drab prison scrubs at a brig near San Diego, facing mur- der charges that could have sent him 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 conservative influencer with close ties to the man who helped clear him — President Trump. Chief Gallagher was acquitted this summer of charges that he shot at civilians and killed a wounded captive with a knife while serving as a platoon leader in Iraq. The punishment for his lone conviction — posing for a grisly trophy photo with the dead captive’s body — was reversed this fall by President Trump, who has repeatedly praised him. At a political rally in Florida, he called him “one of the ultimate fighters.” Now, Chief Gallagher is using his controversial past as a spring- Ex-SEAL Now Pitching Products and President By 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 of Japan had woken up on Tuesday, he was gone. One of the country’s most famous criminal suspects had slipped past the cameras trained on his house, past the po- lice and border guards and the Japanese citizens who for the past year have followed his every move. Carlos Ghosn, the deposed chief of the Nissan and Renault auto empire facing charges of financial wrongdoing, had fled to Lebanon, and no one in Japan — not the au- thorities, the media or even the auto executive’s own lawyer — could explain how it had hap- pened. “I want to ask him, ‘How could you do this to us?’” Mr. Ghosn’s lawyer in Tokyo, Junichiro Hiron- aka, told a crush of 40 reporters outside his office on Tuesday. It was a cinematic escape, car- ried out just before New Year’s Day, Japan’s most important holi- day, when government agencies and most businesses close for as long as a week. The escape appeared to have been planned in Lebanon. A law- yer for Mr. Ghosn in Beirut played a lead role putting the plan togeth- er and acted as the go-between with the Lebanese government, one person familiar with the mat- ter said. An official in Beirut said Mr. Ghosn had entered the country using a French passport, while at least one Lebanese outlet re- ported, without offering proof, that the former Nissan chairman had been spirited out inside a box meant for musical equipment. He chose refuge in Lebanon, where he grew up and has been treated as a folk hero since his 2018 arrest in Japan. A Lebanese newspaper reported that Mr. Ghosn had arrived in Beirut on a private plane from Turkey. After landing there, he released a state- ment assailing the “rigged Japa- nese justice system where guilt is presumed, discrimination is rampant, and basic human rights are denied.” In the statement, he said he was ready to tell his story to the media “starting next week.” A public re- lations professional has been dis- patched from the United States to Beirut to help organize a news conference, the person familiar with the matter said. Government officials in Japan were still trying to piece together the facts of the escape, as the ag- gressive local media scrambled for clues. Lebanon has no extradi- tion treaty with Japan. Some poli- ticians in Japan wondered whether shadowy figures or even 3 Passports and a Plan Hatched in Lebanon: Ghosn’s Escape Act By BEN DOOLEY and MICHAEL CORKERY Houdini-Like Flight of Detained Executive Staggers Japanese Continued on Page A6 A THREAT The president said Tehran 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 was the largest and most diverse yet, but a handful of names stood out. PAGE A12 NATIONAL A10-16 A Year on the Trail Melissa Clark has been cutting down on her steaks and lamb chops lately. It all has 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. reflected on judicial independence, a subtext that seemed aimed at the president. PAGE A11 A Chief Justice’s Message North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, said his country no longer felt bound by a moratorium on nuclear tests. PAGE A5 INTERNATIONAL A4-9 Kim Hints at New Missile Tests A state law meant to protect workers at companies like Uber and Lyft may limit the 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 panel of government-appointed scien- tists, many of them hand-selected by the Trump administration, said on Tuesday that three of President Trump’s most far-reaching and scrutinized proposals to weaken major environmental regulations are at odds with established sci- ence. Draft letters posted online Tues- day by the Environmental Protec- tion Agency’s Scientific Advisory Board, which is responsible for evaluating the scientific integrity of the agency’s regulations, took aim at the Trump administration’s rewrite of an Obama-era regula- tion of waterways, an Obama-era effort to curb planet-warming ve- hicle tailpipe emissions and a plan to limit scientific data that can be used to draft health regulations. In each case, the 41 scientists on a board — many of whom were ap- pointed by Trump administration officials to replace scientists named by the Obama administra- tion — found the regulatory changes flew in the face of sci- ence. A forthcoming rule on water pollution “neglects established science” by “failing to acknowl- edge watershed systems,” the sci- entists said. They found “no scien- tific justification” for excluding certain bodies of water from pro- tection under the new regulations. They saw “significant weak- nesses in the scientific analysis of the proposed rule” to roll back ve- hicle emission standards, a cen- terpiece of the Obama administra- tion’s effort to combat climate change. As for the proposal to limit sci- entific data in health regulations, the scientists wrote that “key con- siderations that should inform the proposed rule have been omitted from the proposal or presented without analysis.” The letters come as the Trump E.P.A. Policies Scorn Science, Panel Reports Trump Plans Critiqued by Trump Appointees By CORAL DAVENPORT and LISA FRIEDMAN Continued on Page A15 Best known as the most feared and brutally cold outpost of the Soviet gu- lag, Magadan struggles to keep its residents from fleeing. PAGE A4 Tired of the Frigid in Russia Sonny Mehta could spot great books and had no qualms about aggressively marketing them. He was 77. PAGE B10 OBITUARIES B10-11 Knopf’s Guru of the Shelves The historian Gertrude Himmelfarb argued for the influence of Victorian morals in policy. She was 97. PAGE B11 A Bastion of Conservatism Greta Gerwig onstage, Jack London on film and an opera celebrating the 19th Amendment are among the events our reviewers can’t wait to see. PAGE C4 ARTS C1-8 For 2020, Our Critics’ Dozen Continued on Page A8 The Trump administration is expected to announce this week that it will ban mint-, fruit- and dessert-flavored e-cigarette car- tridges popular with teenagers, but allow menthol and tobacco fla- vors to remain on the market. Flavored liquid nicotine used in open tank systems can continue to be sold, according to two adminis- tration officials who have been briefed on the plan. It is an impor- tant concession to vape shops that have thrived alongside the boom- ing e-cigarette business in recent years. President Trump acknowl- edged late Tuesday that the ban would be announced “very shortly.” But he indicated that it might be short-lived and he didn’t say which flavors were involved. “We think we are going to get back in the market very, very quickly,” Mr. Trump said at a New Year’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 is a partial retreat from a commit- ment it made in September to quickly devise a ban of all flavors except those that tasted like to- bacco. Its plan to exempt menthol U.S. Set to Ban Vaping Flavors Teens Use Most By SHEILA KAPLAN and MAGGIE HABERMAN Continued on Page A16 Democrats are hailing the elimination of most cash bail in New York, but law enforcement officials are worrying about consequences. PAGE A20 NEW YORK A17, 20 Unease Over New Bail Rules Late Edition Today, 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
Transcript of AFTER U.S. STRIKE ASSAULT EMBASSY IRAQI PROTESTERS · Carlos Ghosn, the deposed chief of the Nissan...
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
