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Iraq, Markets, Environment: Your Wednesday Evening Briefing

Jean Rutter and

(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.)

Good evening. Here’s the latest.

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Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times

1. President Trump made a surprise visit to U.S. troops in Iraq.

It was his first visit to troops stationed abroad in a combat zone.

The trip, shrouded in secrecy, came in the midst of a partial government shutdown and less than a week after Mr. Trump announced plans to withdraw all troops from Syria and about half of those stationed in Afghanistan.

The president’s decision on Syria led to the resignation of his defense secretary, Jim Mattis.

Mr. Trump told reporters on the ground at Joint Base al Asad that he had no plans to withdraw troops from Iraq. Instead, he said, the U.S. may use Iraq as a military base to carry out operations on Syria and fight the Islamic State.

Separately, the partial government shutdown was triggered by a stalemate over the president’s demand for funding to build a wall along the southern border. Here’s what you need to know about it.

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Credit...Richard Drew/Associated Press

2. Stocks snapped their losing streak.

Early reports of a strong holiday season for retailers and reassuring news from Washington and Moscow pulled Wall Street from the brink of a bear market. Above, the New York Stock Exchange.

Stocks posted their best day since 2009, as sales data showed spending by U.S. consumers remains vibrant and Russia signaled that it was willing to help keep oil prices higher.

Investors were also reassured by a White House official’s statement that Jerome H. Powell’s job as Federal Reserve chairman was “100 percent” safe.

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Credit...Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

3. President Trump’s retreat on the environment is unfolding in consequential ways.

In two years, Mr. Trump has unleashed a large-scale rollback of environmental regulations, promoting the changes as creating jobs, freeing business from government intervention and helping the economy grow.

Our journalists examined the many ways regulatory changes are affecting communities across the nation.

The impact of the changes is being felt across the U.S., imperiling progress in cleaning up the air and water.

In California, farm workers are being sickened by a pesticide that the Obama administration tried to ban. In the heart of West Virginia’s coal country, the state’s largest inland waterway is being contaminated with a pollutant that can wipe out aquatic life. In Houston, a coal-burning power plant is getting a free pass to continue spewing harmful levels of sulfur dioxide into the air. Above, a pipeline in North Dakota.

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Credit...Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi for The New York Times

4. New Ebola treatments often fail to reach those who need them, The Times has found.

In eastern Congo, violence and clashes between government forces and a militia group are hampering efforts to contain the lethal virus.

Our correspondent followed a team of health workers to a militia-controlled village in Congo where a woman had died from Ebola. Their quest: to persuade the insurgents to allow health workers in to treat the villagers. Above, in the Kanyihunga district.

“We’re afraid they might kill us,” one health worker said.

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Credit...Paulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York Times

5. An imaginary boundary may soon become real.

For the past 20 years, people, goods and livestock have been able to come and go as they pleased between Britain and the Republic of Ireland, because both are members of the E.U.

But Britain’s looming exit from the European bloc, known widely as Brexit, threatens to make the old border real again.

The result: trade disruptions, tariffs and friction that could reinvigorate conflict between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

“It would be a real backward step,” one Irish dairy farmer told us. “Back to the Dark Ages.”

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Credit...Cesare Abbate/ANSA, via Associated Press

6. Archaeologists uncovered a horse frozen in time.

Saddled and ready to go, a purebred that perished centuries ago near Pompeii has been uncovered.

The petrified horse, wearing a bronze-plated military saddle, is the latest discovery at the site near Mount Vesuvius, which erupted and buried the area in lava and ash in A.D. 79.

Other finds this year include a shrine with wall paintings that hint at Roman life in the first century; the skeleton of a man who had fled the eruption only to be buried by a rock; and a well-preserved fresco on the wall of a house.

Archaeologists are excavating the surroundings of a prestigious villa, with plans to open it to the public.

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Credit...Matt Kennedy/Annapurna Pictures

7. Movie makeup is evolving.

Artists who transformed Christian Bale into a startling likeness of Dick Cheney for “Vice,” above, relied on advances in materials and technology for creating prosthetics.

For the biography of the former vice president, artists pored over photos and videos, paying particular attention to Mr. Cheney’s most prominent features, like the silhouette of his nose and the dimple on his chin. (Read our review of “Vice.”)

We take a look at the process, and at the evolution of movie makeup, from “Frankenstein” through “The Elephant Man.”

“The most successful makeups aren’t the ones where you’re trying to completely hide the actor,” one artist told us.

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Credit...Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

8. Cheese tea. Celtuce stems. Khachapuri.

Our Food writer checked dozens of lists and interviewed consumer behavior experts to handicap the next big food trends. Above, three varieties of cheese tea.

She shares some of the most intriguing guesses at what and how we will be eating in 2019. (Khachapuri, by the way, is a Georgian cheese-filled bread topped with a runny egg.)

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Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

9. The Year in Pictures 2018, at first glance, is indeed a retrospective of the year we are about to leave behind.

But if many of the photographs seem, on closer inspection, like a recurring nightmare, it’s because they are. Most of the crises, conflicts and natural disasters they capture aren’t new, but have dragged on from previous years.

And if we look even more closely, we realize these are in fact photographs about the future. Above, competing in the 2018 Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

Take a look for yourself.

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Credit...Caitlin Ochs for The New York Times

10. Finally, evidence that the pen is mightier than pixels.

The fountain pen has been imperiled by disposable ballpoints, and the keyboard seemed positioned to kill it off entirely.

But reformulated inks and redesigned pens, above, are finding a new audience among writers who are rediscovering the tactile pleasure of paper. Hands don’t cramp. Thoughts promise to pour out easily.

“People describe drawing ink into their pen from an ink bottle and wiping the nib as a Zenlike experience,” one aficionado told us.

Have a free-flowing evening.

Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern.

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Want to catch up on past briefings? You can browse them here.

What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes.com.

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