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| Good morning. |
| The U.S. says it's leaving Syria, an attorney general sues Facebook and Der Spiegel fires a writer for deception. Here's the latest: |
 Lt. Gen. Paul Funk, second from the left, spoke to a Special Forces soldier outside the northern Syrian city of Manbij earlier this year.
Mauricio Lima for The New York Times |
| President Trump orders a full withdrawal from Syria |
| All 2,000 U.S. ground troops were ordered out of Syria, suddenly ending a military campaign that largely vanquished the Islamic State but ceding a strategically vital country to Russia and Iran. |
| "We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency," the president said in a Twitter post. The White House did not provide a timetable or other specifics for the pullout. |
| Lawmakers and Pentagon officials argued that the move would betray Kurdish allies who have fought alongside American troops in Syria, and who could now be vulnerable to an attack by Turkey. |
| Analysis: Mr. Trump believes that U.S. forces cannot alter the strategic balance in the Middle East and should not be there — a view that Barack Obama fundamentally shared, our national security correspondent writes. |
| Another angle: The abrupt withdrawal is seen by analysts as an abandonment of key U.S. allies in Syria and a boon for the Islamic State, which still controls territory in the country's southeast. |
| ______ |
 Minh Uong/The New York Times |
| Facebook is sued over Cambridge Analytica |
| The lawsuit brought by the attorney general of the District of Columbia, Karl Racine, is a first step by a state attorney general to punish the social media giant for privacy violations. |
| The New York Times and other news organizations reported in March that Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm based in London, had improperly obtained the data of as many as 87 million Facebook users. |
| In Mr. Racine's lawsuit, he said that roughly half of Washington's residents had been exposed by Cambridge Analytica's data harvesting. He also said Facebook had misled people about the security of their data. |
| Another angle: If being overwhelmed by the scale of all these online privacy scandals seems familiar, it should. It's a lot like climate change. |
| What you can do: If you've had enough, here are six steps you can take to break up with Facebook for good. |
| ______ |
 Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman, dismissed President Trump's warnings to stop raising rates.
Samuel Corum for The New York Times |
| U.S. Federal Reserve raises interest rates |
| The widely expected quarter-point increase signaled confidence in the health of the U.S. economy. |
| The Fed's chairman, Jerome H. Powell, said the choppy global economy and the recent sell-off in stocks had gotten the Fed's attention, but he called the move "appropriate." |
| U.S. stocks erased early gains after the announcement, which also indicated that rates would continue to be raised next year. |
| Markets were well prepared for a rate increase, but policymakers had also been expected to calm jittery investors by emphasizing that further increases in 2019 would depend on sustained economic growth. |
| What it means for you: Rising interest rates have consequences for savers and spenders alike. |
| ______ |
 A Der Spiegel article by Juan Moreno and Claas Relotius. Mr. Moreno was the first to raise concerns about his colleague, the magazine said.
Alexander Becher/EPA, via Shutterstock |
| Der Spiegel fires an award-winning journalist |
| The German magazine said the writer, Claas Relotius, had engaged in fabrication "on a grand scale," weaving invented quotations and characters into more than a dozen major articles. |
| Mr. Relotius, 33, had written for Der Spiegel since 2011. He admitted to making up parts of at least 14 articles, the magazine said, adding that the figure could rise. |
| The details: In one article, about Fergus Falls, Minn., Mr. Relotius told of a coal plant employee who did not exist, related an anecdote about a restaurant employee to whom he gave a fictional illness and a misnamed son, and described the view of a power plant from a cafe whose windows provided no such view, according to two residents of the town who researched his claims. |
| More fabrications: Other articles with false or manipulated material included several that were nominated for prizes, including stories about Iraqi children kidnapped by the Islamic State, a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay and Syrian orphans forced to work in a Turkish sweatshop. |
| ______ |
| Here's what else is happening |
| Catholic Church: The Church in Illinois withheld the names of at least 500 priests accused of sexual abuse of minors, the state's attorney general said. And Pope Francis accepted the resignation of a Los Angeles bishop after an investigation into an accusation of misconduct with a minor. |
| Italy budget: The country reached a deal with the E.U. after months of defiance, agreeing to drastically reduce its debt to avoid financial penalties. |
 The city of Katowice, in the heart of southwestern Poland's coal-mining region, hosted United Nations talks on weaning the world off fossil fuels.
Karolina Jonderko for The New York Times |
| Covering COP24: When our reporter traveled to the heart of Polish coal country for the U.N. climate talks, he discovered that the setting was an apt one. |
| Diplomatic crisis: China detained a third Canadian, escalating tensions with the U.S. over the arrest of a top Chinese technology executive. |
| "I can English understand": Switzerland's new economics minister is facing widespread criticism of his language skills. |
| "Stupid woman": Did Britain's Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, call Prime Minister Theresa May names in the House of Commons? Amateur lip readers are poring over a video clip, and lawmakers are demanding an apology. |
| Russian whistle-blower: Alexander Perepilichny, who died jogging near his home in a London suburb six years ago, probably died of natural causes, a British coroner ruled. |
| Christmas surprise: A man in Wales opened his front door and found 14 years' worth of presents for his young daughter, given by his recently deceased neighbor. |
| The things they carried: A photographer documented the journey of migrants who crossed the Evros River between Turkey and Greece. He discovered that many of them perish, dying in limbo, and are never identified. |
| Genoa bridge: The Italian city will get a new bridge by Renzo Piano, its most famous architect, to replace a viaduct that collapsed last summer. |
| Petty crime: Last week, our reporter asked London residents to share their experiences with minor crimes. The Twitter post caught fire; here are some of the responses. |
| No parking: Oslo, Norway, is eliminating 700 street parking spots in its city center by the end of the year as part of a plan to make the area more pedestrian-friendly. |
| If Brexit were a restaurant: It might look like Bluebird London, which serves English food and Long Island burrata in Manhattan, our restaurant critic writes. |
| Secret Prague: A new wave of off-the-radar art spaces are opening in former factories, military barracks and other historic structures in the Czech capital. |
| ______ |
| Smarter Living |
| Tips for a more fulfilling life. |
 Constantine Poulos for The New York Times |
| Recipe of the day: For a fast pasta dinner, try broccoli, peppers and sweet Italian sausage. |
| Be an ethical tech consumer with these tips. |
| 5 cheap(ish) necessities for cold-weather running. |
| Back Story |
| Clare Macdonald, a reader from Keene, N.H., asked us when the first electric lights were used on a Christmas tree. |
| It was in 1882, just three years after Thomas Edison filed a patent for his light bulb. The tree became a fixture in the experiment-filled home of an executive at his company. |
 The tree in Rockefeller Center sparkled after its 7,500 bulbs were lit for the first time in 1949.
Tom Fitzsimmons/Associated Press |
| Eighty walnut-size red, white and blue bulbs covered the tree, which sat on a revolving box. A newspaper article described it: "As the tree turned, the colors alternated, all the lamps going out and being relit at every revolution. The result was a continuous twinkling of dancing colors, red, white, blue, white, red, blue, all evening." |
| President Grover Cleveland popularized electric Christmas lights in the 1890s by installing them on the White House tree. |
| But it was not until (relatively) inexpensive strings of Christmas lights began to be sold a few years later that the tradition really caught on. |
| Albert Sun wrote today's Back Story. |
| ______ |
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