Monday, Dec 30, 2019 | View in browser

Good morning.

We’re covering the aftermath of an attack at a rabbi’s home in suburban New York and Representative John Lewis, who announced that he has cancer. We’re also looking ahead to the N.F.L. playoffs.

By Chris Stanford

On Sunday at the home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg, where five people were wounded in an attack. Yana Paskova for The New York Times

Jews fought back against an armed intruder

People attending a Hanukkah celebration in the New York suburbs over the weekend said they had used furniture to defend themselves against a man who burst in wielding a machete and yelled, “I’ll get you!”

Five Hasidic Jews were wounded in the attack, which occurred at a rabbi’s home in Monsey, N.Y. One of them remains hospitalized.

The suspect, Grafton Thomas, was arrested in Harlem, covered in blood. He pleaded not guilty on Sunday, when his family and friends said that he had struggled with mental illness.

Background: Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the attack an “act of domestic terrorism.” It followed a string of anti-Semitic episodes in the New York region in recent weeks, including a deadly mass shooting at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, N.J.

How big companies won new tax breaks

The Trump administration’s overhaul of the federal tax law in 2017 reduced the tax burden for big companies in an effort to coax them to invest more in the U.S. and to discourage them from stashing profits overseas.

Then, a fierce lobbying effort by those companies after the law was passed led the Treasury Department to carve out exceptions, resulting in tax bills that were even smaller than anticipated. Companies were effectively let off the hook for tens if not hundreds of billions of taxes that they would have been required to pay.

“It is largely the top 1 percent that will disproportionately benefit,” a tax law professor at the University of Houston said of the loopholes.

Another angle: Stocks are on the verge of having their best year since 1997. In looking to 2020, our columnist advises ignoring forecasts and investing in diversified index funds.

Inside the freeze on U.S. aid to Ukraine

A prisoner swap between Ukraine and Russia on Sunday was a result of peace talks this month that otherwise failed to resolve the five-year war in eastern Ukraine involving Russian-backed separatists.

Winning American support for those talks was a major reason that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine — who has said that ending the conflict is his top priority — had sought a White House meeting with President Trump. But Mr. Trump withheld $391 million in military aid and asked for investigations into his political rivals.

Now, three of our Washington-based reporters have the inside story of how and why Mr. Trump pursued the aid freeze over the objections of his national security advisers.

How we know: Interviews with dozens of people, including current and former administration officials and congressional aides; previously undisclosed emails and documents; and a close reading of thousands of pages of impeachment testimony provide the most complete account yet of the 84 days from when Mr. Trump first inquired about the money to his decision in September to release the aid.

The Bay Bridge between Oakland and San Francisco. Aaron Wojack for The New York Times

California is booming. It’s also a mess.

The state has a thriving $3 trillion economy with record low unemployment, and is home to several of the world’s most valuable corporations, including Apple, Facebook and Google.

But California also has the nation’s highest poverty rate, based on its cost of living, and a crippling housing shortage, with a median home value of $550,000, about twice that of the country at large. That helps explain why the state has lost more than a million residents to other states since 2006.

Quotable: “What’s happening in California right now is a warning shot to the rest of the country,” said Jim Newton, a journalist and lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s a warning about income inequality and suburban sprawl, and how those intersect with quality of life and climate change.”

Another angle: A California data privacy law set to take effect on Wednesday has national implications, because many companies say they’ll apply the changes to all users in the U.S. But experts and companies disagree about the law’s potential effects.

If you have 7 minutes, this is worth it

Sweethearts forever. Then came Alzheimer’s.

Alma and Richard Shaver, above, knew each other since childhood and were happily married for 60 years. In June, he fatally shot her and killed himself.

A Times reporter wanted to better understand the couple, whom a former neighbor described as “absolutely soul mates.” It’s a tragic story of love and dementia.

Here’s what else is happening

Texas church shooting: A gunman killed two people near Fort Worth before a member of the church’s volunteer security team fatally shot him, the authorities said.

Congressman’s cancer diagnosis: Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia and a leader of the civil rights movement, announced that he had advanced pancreatic cancer.

Sentence for Chinese scientist: The researcher who shocked scientists last year when he claimed that he had created the first genetically edited babies was sentenced today to three years in prison for “illegal medical practices.”

Retaliatory strikes in Middle East: U.S. airstrikes on an Iranian-backed paramilitary group in Iraq and Syria followed a rocket attack that killed an American contractor.

Erik Freeland for The New York Times

Snapshot: Above, off the coast of Bonaire, an island in the Caribbean Sea. It’s one of more than 39,000 photographs that were filed this year for The Times’s Travel desk. Here are 22 of our favorites.

In memoriam: Lee Mendelson was an Emmy Award-winning producer who was instrumental in bringing “A Charlie Brown Christmas” to TV in 1965 and wrote the lyrics to the song “Christmas Time Is Here.” He died on Christmas Day at 86.

N.F.L. results: The playoffs are set, and the Eagles and Titans are in. Here’s what we learned in the final week of the regular season.

Metropolitan Diary: In this week’s column, icy windshields, an accidental limo ride and more reader tales of New York City.

What we’re reading: Variety’s list of the 10 most overrated films of the past decade. “Fodder for some excellent party arguments,” writes the briefings editor, Andrea Kannapell. “I mean, ‘Paddington 2’?”

Now, a break from the news

Julia Gartland for The New York Times

Cook: Start the week with lentils diavolo.

Read: A collection of long-lost Zora Neale Hurston stories and a novel about a migrant’s journey across Mexico are among 10 books to watch for in January.

Listen: “Wozzeck,” a 1925 work about war and inequality, is infused with new life in a production at the Metropolitan Opera. Read our critic’s review.

Smarter Living: Whether you’re into resolutions or not, our Styles desk has a few recommendations for 2020. Among them is one your briefing writer notes with envy: Sleep until at least 6 a.m.

And now for the Back Story on …

Fireworks

It appears that we’re at peak fireworks. Giant displays are planned for New Year’s in Dubai, London, Moscow, New York and many other cities.

The booms and starbursts have often prompted your Back Story writer to wonder: What if wars were decided by fireworks shows rather than gunpowder? Plenty of awe, and, if handled carefully, no deaths.

My assumption was that fireworks had evolved from weaponry, but I had it backward.

Bamboo fireworks still exist. This was set off at a Shinto shrine in Japan in 2018. Yasuyoshi Chiba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Chinese are credited with the first fireworks, discovering that roasting bamboo caused its closed cells to explode. The early use was to ward off evil spirits.

China is also thought to be where the first gunpowder was mixed, enhancing bamboo’s explosive power with a blend of mainly potassium nitrate (a food preservative also known as Chinese snow or saltpeter), charcoal and sulfur. Military use followed within a few centuries.

When the technology spread to Europe, development accelerated. Germany took the lead on arms, Italy on fireworks.

China is still the world’s leading exporter of fireworks, but its own biggest displays come at the Lunar New Year. That will be in a few weeks, starting Jan. 25.

That’s it for this briefing. See you next time.

— Chris

Thank you
Mark Josephson and Raillan Brooks provided the break from the news. Andrea Kannapell, the briefings editor, wrote today’s Back Story. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

P.S.
• We’re listening to “The Daily.” Today’s episode checks in with a Times critic who wrestled this year with the abuse allegations against Michael Jackson.
• Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Buddy (three letters). You can find all our puzzles here.
• Our list of the most-read Times stories of 2019 has options to exclude politics or focus only on fun reads.