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A new bipartisan bill introduced in both the House of Representatives and the Senate seeks to address the criminal activities of the Islamic Republic of Iran on U.S. territory. The draft bill proposes enhancing criminal penalties for individuals who engage in unlawful actions on behalf of the Iranian government or other adversaries of the United States.

See the full story here.
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New York — U.S. stocks rose Monday, with those benefiting the most from lower interest rates and a stronger economy leading the way. 

The S&P 500 climbed 0.3% to pull closer to its all-time high set two weeks ago. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 440 points, or 1%, to its own record set on Friday, while the Nasdaq composite rose 0.3%. 

Treasury yields also eased in the bond market amid what some analysts called a “Bessent bounce” after President-elect Donald Trump said he wants Scott Bessent, a hedge fund manager, to be his treasury secretary. 

Bessent has argued for reducing the U.S. government’s deficit, which is how much more it spends than it takes in through taxes and other revenue. Such an approach could soothe worries on Wall Street that Trump’s policies may lead to a much bigger deficit, which in turn would put upward pressure on Treasury yields. 

After climbing above 4.44% immediately after Trump’s election, the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell back to 4.26% Monday, down from 4.41% late Friday. That’s a notable move, and lower yields make it cheaper for all kinds of companies and households to borrow money. They also give a boost to prices for stocks and other investments. 

That helped stocks of smaller companies lead the way, and the Russell 2000 index of smaller stocks jumped 1.5%. It finished just shy of its all-time high, which was set three years ago. Smaller companies can feel bigger boosts from lower borrowing costs because of the need for many to borrow to grow. 

The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks the market’s expectations for what the Federal Reserve will do with overnight interest rates, also eased sharply. 

The Fed began cutting its main interest rate just a couple months ago from a two-decade high, hoping to keep the job market humming after bringing inflation nearly all the way down to its 2% target. But immediately after Trump’s victory, traders had reduced bets for how many cuts the Fed may deliver next year. They were worried Trump’s preference for lower tax rates and higher spending on the border would balloon the national debt. 

A report coming on Wednesday could influence how much the Fed may cut rates. Economists expect it to show that an underlying inflation trend the Fed prefers to use accelerated to 2.8% last month from 2.7% in September. Higher inflation would make the Fed more reluctant to cut rates as deeply or as quickly as it would otherwise. 

Goldman Sachs economist David Mericle expects that to slow by the end of next year to 2.4%, but he said inflation would be even lower if not for expected tariff increases on imports from China and autos favored by Trump. 

In the stock market, Bath & Body Works jumped 16.5% after delivering stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The seller of personal care products and home fragrances also raised its financial forecasts for the full year, even though it still sees a “volatile retail environment” and a shorter holiday shopping season this year. 

Much focus has been on how resilient U.S. shoppers can remain, given high prices across the economy and still-high interest rates. Last week, two major retailers sent mixed messages. Target tumbled after giving a dour forecast for the holiday shopping season. It followed Walmart, which gave a much more encouraging outlook. 

Another big retailer, Macy’s, said Monday that its sales for the latest quarter were in line with its expectations, but that it would delay the release of its full financial results. It found a single employee had intentionally hidden up to $154 million in delivery expenses, and it needs more time to complete its investigation. 

Macy’s stock fell 2.2%. 

Among the market’s leaders were several companies related to the housing industry. Monday’s drop in Treasury yields could translate into easier mortgage rates, which could spur activity for housing. Builders FirstSource, a supplier of building materials, rose 5.9%. Homebuilders, D.R. Horton, PulteGroup and Lennar all rose at least 5.6%. 

All told, the S&P 500 rose 18.03 points to 5,987.37. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 440.06 to 44,736.57, and the Nasdaq composite gained 51.18 to 19,054.84. 

In stock markets abroad, indexes moved modestly across much of Europe after finishing mixed in Asia. 

In the crypto market, bitcoin was trading below $95,000 after threatening to hit $100,000 late last week for the first time.
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Ще двоє жінок звернулися по допомогу, заявила обласна прокуратура
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BAKU, AZERBAIJAN — Anger and frustration from developing nations vulnerable to climate impacts are likely to linger following the conclusion of the climate change summit in Azerbaijan, COP29, as nations adopted a $300 billion global finance target to help poorer nations cope with climate change, a deal that many recipient nations slammed as severely insufficient.

Global North countries, often historic emitters responsible for global warming, agreed on Sunday to pledge $300 billion a year until 2035 for their developing counterparts to stave off the direst effects of climate change — less than a quarter of the acknowledged $1.3 trillion needed annually to reduce emissions and build resilience in vulnerable countries.

The $300 billion figure, also, is an increase by $200 billion each year, compared to the agreement in place since 2009, which is expiring.

Spirited disappointment and rage from Global South countries was expressed at the closing plenary, with some national representatives calling adoption of the new funding package “insulting.”

“We are extremely disappointed,” said Indian negotiator Chandni Raina, who called the figure “abysmal.”

Her Cuban counterpart, Pedro Luis Pedroso, described the deal as “environmental colonialism,” pointing out that, when factoring in today’s inflation, the pledged funding is lower than the $100 billion agreed to in 2009. Bolivia’s negotiator called the deal “insulting” to developing nations.

Some Western representatives were more upbeat.

“COP29 will be remembered as a new era of climate finance,” top EU climate negotiator Wopke Hoekstra said, calling the target amount “ambitious” and “achievable.”

Some experts told VOA that the structure and composition of the $300 billion deal was more important than the actual monetary figure. The final deal allows for both public and private sources of funds to be tapped to bolster climate preparation efforts in the developing world.

Negotiators for developing countries expressed concern that private sources of funding could come in the form of more loans, which could lead to challenging debt accumulation by poorer nations, rather than funding in the preferred form of grants.

Global South countries argued for a new target for green finance and have consistently called for such climate finance to come in the form of public grants. The tense and fraught negotiations of the past week dragged on for two extra days and included at least one episode of negotiators from small island nations and some of the poorest nations in the world walking out of a meeting room with wealthy nations in protest. They asserted that their voices and perspectives were not heard.

”This COP has been a disaster for the developing world,” said Mohammed Adow, director of Kenya-based climate and energy research group Power Shift Africa. ”It’s a betrayal of both people and planet, by wealthy countries, who claim to take climate change seriously.”

The adopted finance package also stated that a further roadmap is set to be discussed at the next conference – likely COP30, set for Belem, Brazil in late 2025 — on how to reach the trillion-dollar figure.

Independent South African climate consultant Gillian Hamilton called the $300 billion core funding target “insufficient,” particularly for building resilience against climate impacts — also known as climate adaptation.

“Developed nations should have shown more leadership and transparency,” Hamilton told VOA. “The biggest emitters need to rapidly decrease their emissions so that adaptation costs for developing countries don’t increase exponentially.”

Campaigners staged multiple environmental protests each day here during the past week-plus of meetings.

Though negotiators for developing nations repeatedly asked for climate finance in the form of grants instead of loans, in the final deal, developed countries stopped short of guaranteeing that could be done.

Adaptation finance

The deal adopted Sunday acknowledges that funding sources for adaptation finance should be public and transparent.

With 2024 going down as the hottest year in history, the world has experienced a slew of climate disasters, ranging from devastating floods in Nepal and Spain, to Hurricane Helene in the Americas, droughts in the Mediterranean and typhoons in the western Pacific region.

Despite the disasters and renewed calls to finance climate-resilient infrastructure across the Global South to guard against rising sea levels and wildfires, funding has been falling short for years, according to a November report from the U.N. Environment Program.

The so-called adaptation projects include developing more advanced disaster warning systems, reforestation, and building catchment mechanisms to ensure water security in regions most affected by climate change.

At COP29, Germany pledged $62 billion, to the adaptation fund; France highlighted its 2023 pledge of $2.9 billion, in adaptation; the U.S. said it pays $3 billion into it each year. A total of 14 Global North countries including Spain, Sweden, South Korea and Switzerland promised to provide $300 million this year, according to a separate negotiation text in the conference.

Despite pledges in recent years, countries didn’t completely deliver on promises. This year, for example, more than $122 million of pledged financial support to poor nations for adapting to climate risk is still up in the air, even though this assistance has been a stated priority at recent COP meetings.

What to expect in Belem?

Countries will be tasked at the Brazil meeting next November with ironing out the details of a global carbon trade system governed by a centralized U.N. regulatory body. They also will try to find a path for wealthy, developed countries to reach the target of $1.3 trillion to support efforts in the Global South to address the consequences of climate disasters. A major component will be reviewing national climate plans, which are due to be submitted in February. Britain, Brazil and the UAE are among the nations that this past week aimed to get ahead of the February deadline and shared some of the goals in their national climate preparation plans.

Harjeet Singh, global engagement director of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, said it is likely that ‘most’ nations will not meet the February deadline to submit their updated plans to address climate change.

The future participation of Argentina is unclear, after hardline President Javier Milei — who has called climate change a hoax — reportedly told his government delegates here to pack their bags and leave the negotiations on the third day of the summit.

Singh was asked by VOA whether wealthy nations would deliver on their promises to lead the effort toward $300 billion in climate finance support, and he responded that the key lies in their ‘willingness, as the money has always been there.’
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На півдні збили п’ять розвідувальниї безпілотників, повідомляє командування
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will soon have a new administrator. Former lawmaker Lee Zeldin has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump for that role. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias looks at Zeldin’s credentials and how the agency’s priorities are expected to change, particularly when it comes to climate change regulations.
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ROME — Foreign ministers from the world’s leading industrialized nations are meeting Monday, with the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East entering decisive phases and a certain pressure to advance diplomatic efforts ahead of the new U.S. administration taking over.

Hopes for brokering a cease-fire in Gaza and Lebanon are foremost on the agenda of the Group of Seven meeting outside Rome that is gathering ministers from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.

On the first day of the two-day gathering Monday, the G7 will be joined by ministers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, as well as the Secretary General of the Arab League.

“With partners will be discussed ways to support efforts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon, initiatives to support the population and the promotion of a credible political horizon for stability in the region,” the Italian foreign ministry said.

The so-called “Quint” grouping of the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and the UAE has been working to finalize a “day after” plan for Gaza, and there is some urgency to make progress before the Trump administration takes over in January. President-elect Donald Trump is expected to pursue a policy that strongly favors Israel over the aspirations of the Palestinians.

Host Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani added another item to the G7 agenda last week after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defense minister and Hamas’ military chief.

Italy is a founding member of the court and hosted the 1998 Rome conference that gave birth to it. But Italy’s right-wing government has been a strong supporter of Israel after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, while also providing humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza.

The Italian government has taken a cautious line, reaffirming its support and respect for the court but expressing concern that the warrants were politically motivated.

“There can be no equivalence between the responsibilities of the state of Israel and the terrorist organization of Hamas,” Premier Giorgia Meloni said, echoing the statement from U.S. President Joe Biden.

Nathalie Tocci, director of the Rome-based Institute for International Affairs think tank, said Italy would be seeking to forge a united front on the ICC warrants, at least among the six G7 countries that are signatories of the court: everyone but the U.S.

But in an essay this weekend in La Stampa newspaper, Tocci warned it was a risky move, since the U.S. tends to dictate the G7 line and has blasted the ICC warrants against Netanyahu as “outrageous.”

“If Italy and the other (five G7) signatories of the ICC are unable to maintain the line on international law, they will not only erode it anyway, but will be acting against our interests,” Tocci wrote, recalling Italy’s recourse to international law in demanding protection for Italian U.N. peacekeepers who have come under fire in southern Lebanon.

The other major talking point of the G7 meeting is Ukraine, and tensions have only heightened since Russia attacked Ukraine last week with an experimental, hypersonic ballistic missile that escalated the nearly 33-month-old war.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha is expected at the G7 in Fiuggi on Tuesday, and NATO and Ukraine are to hold emergency talks the same day in Brussels.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the strike was retaliation for Kyiv’s use of U.S. and British longer-range missiles capable of striking deeper into Russian territory.

The G7 has been at the forefront of providing military and economic support for Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February 2022 and G7 members are particularly concerned about how a Trump administration will change the U.S. approach.

Trump has criticized the billions of dollars that the Biden administration has poured into Ukraine and has said he could end the war in 24 hours, comments that appear to suggest he would press Ukraine to surrender territory that Russia now occupies.

Italy is a strong supporter of Ukraine and has backed the U.S. decision to allow Ukraine to strike Russia with U.S.-made, longer-range missiles. But Italy has invoked the country’s constitutional repudiation of war in declining to provide Ukraine with offensive weaponry to strike inside Russia and limiting its aid to anti-air defense systems to protect Ukrainian civilians.

The G7 foreign ministers’ meeting, the second of the Italian presidency after ministers gathered in Capri in April, is being held in the medieval town of Fiuggi southeast of Rome, best known for its thermal spas.

On Monday, which coincides with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, ministers will attend the inauguration of a red bench meant to symbolize Italy’s focus on fighting gender-based violence.

Over the weekend, tens of thousands of people marched in Rome to protest gender-based violence, which in Italy so far this year has claimed the lives of 99 women, according to a report last week by the Eures think tank.
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Denver, Colorado — It hasn’t been a typical fall for the northeastern United States. 

Fires have burned in parks and forests around New York City. Towns and cities in a stretch from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to south of Philadelphia had their driest three months on record, according to the Applied Climate Information System. Some reservoirs in the region are near historic lows. 

Major changes need to happen to avoid critical shortages of water in the future, even if that future isn’t immediate. As the climate warms, droughts will continue to intensify and communities should use this one as motivation to put in place long-term solutions, experts say. 

“This is the canary in the coal mine for the future,” said Tim Eustance, executive director of the North Jersey District Water Supply Commission. “People should stop watering their lawns yesterday.” 

Eustance wants New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy to issue a drought emergency to increase people’s sense of urgency. 

Here are some ways to stretch water experts said could become necessary in the Northeast. 

Replenishing more water underground 

One important place water is stored is under our feet. Groundwater has dropped significantly over the years in parts of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and New York. 

Groundwater makes up about half of New Jersey’s drinking water. Sprawl and concrete can make it tough for rain to replenish the water underground. 

“New Jersey is ‘mall-landia.’ We have these giant parking lots that could be ways to reclaim water instead of having runoff,” Eustance said. 

In some other parts of the country, there is increasing use of permeable asphalt, concrete and pavers that allow water to percolate into the ground and back into the aquifer. It would be up to municipalities to require that, he said. 

A faster way to replenish the aquifer is by injecting highly treated wastewater into it, something Los Angeles has been doing for years. It is dramatically adding to the city’s available water. 

Virginia Beach, Virginia, is also pumping highly treated water back into its aquifer, and Anne Arundel County in Maryland is trying to pass legislation that would allow the same. 

Paying people to conserve 

In some places in the western U.S., getting paid to save water has long been an option. Some cities and counties pay dollars for every square foot of lawn torn out and replaced with native landscaping. 

Those policies are not nearly as widespread in the Northeast, said Alan Roberson, CEO of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators. 

“The abundance has created a different perspective,” he said. This can make it hard to get people on board with conservation. 

Upgraded water meters can give customers details about their water use and help them see where they can save money when drought doesn’t feel as urgent, said Beth O’Connell, chief engineer for Anne Arundel County, Maryland. 

Reusing water could become more common 

The concept is simple: capture water from the sink, clothes washer, shower and toilet, treat it to a high standard and use it again for nonpotable purposes: It can be sent back through pipes to flush toilets, cool buildings, water yards or help raise water levels in a river or aquifer. 

“One of the crimes I think, in America, is we use drinking water to water our lawns and flush our toilet,” Eustance said. 

Zach Gallagher is CEO of Natural Systems Utilities, which designs, builds and operates water recycling systems. He also is the father of three kids and lives in New Jersey, so this drought hits close to home. 

“I feel like I’m doing something that is going to be meaningful and leave something beyond for my children, and their children,” he said. 

Reuse can be a tool for both drought and flood, he explained. When a building can reuse its own wastewater and discharge it directly into a body of water, it eases stress on a city’s fragile sewer system, which is a common vulnerability in old coastal cities. It also reduces demand on new water. 

Once open this summer, the company’s redesign of the old Domino Sugar Refinery on New York’s East River will be able to treat 400,000 gallons (1.5 million liters) of wastewater a day, enough to cover a football field in nearly 15 inches (38 centimeters) of water. The cleaned water will be piped back into the new mixed-use buildings for flushing toilets, cooling and landscaping, with some of it discharged back into the river. 

Nonpotable reuse has a growing footprint in the eastern U.S., but scaling it to a regional level should be the next focus, O’Connell said. 

A new mindset 

Planning for a future that includes extended drought can be costly. It could also require a shift in mindset from one of abundance to conservation, said Del Shannon, dam engineer and member of the American Society of Civil Engineers. 

He has worked on water projects around the world and said many developing countries are focused on getting reliable water for crops and drinking. 

“We need to treat our water and guard it as gently as those countries are.”
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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is “incredibly concerned” about the escalating use of different types of weaponry in Russia’s nearly three-year war on Ukraine, his designated choice for national security adviser said Sunday.

Michael Waltz, now a Florida congressman, told “Fox News Sunday” that the decision by the outgoing administration of President Joe Biden to allow Ukraine to use anti-personnel land mines to try to halt Russia’s battlefield ground troop advances has turned the fight in eastern Ukraine into something akin to “World War I trench warfare.”

Waltz said the decision “needs to be within a broader framework to end this conflict.”

“It is just an absolute meat grinder of people and personnel on that front,” he said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said last week the United States is sending the anti-personnel mines to Ukraine because of the changing nature of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, the main battlefield.

He said Russian ground troops, rather than forces more protected in armored carriers, are leading Moscow’s advance, so Ukraine has “a need for things that can help slow down that effort.”

Waltz said Trump, who takes office January 20, is concerned about the carnage but said that in the broad picture, the question that must be preeminent is, “How do we restore deterrence and how do we bring peace?”

“We need to, we need to bring this to a responsible end,” he added.

Trump has often claimed that he would end the Russia-Ukraine war even before he is inaugurated as the 47th U.S. president. Trump has never said how and refused to say during a campaign debate in September that he wants Ukraine to win.

Biden gave Ukraine authority to launch Washington-supplied missiles with a 300-kilometer range deep into Russia in response to North Korea’s dispatch of 10,000 troops to fight alongside Moscow’s forces. Within two days, Kyiv targeted weapons warehouses in Russia’s Bryansk region with the missiles.

Then, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a new experimental rocket, targeting Dnipro in Ukraine’s eastern region.

“This is a clear escalation,” Waltz said. “Where is this escalation going? How do we get both sides to the table” for peace negotiations?

Waltz, whose appointment does not require Senate confirmation, said he has been meeting with Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser. Waltz said that any U.S. adversary “is wrong” if it thinks it can “play one side off against the other” with the switch in power in Washington from Biden, a Democrat, and his long-time political foe, Trump, a Republican.

Waltz said he is “confident” Trump will restore peace “in pretty short order” in the multiple conflicts in the Middle East involving Israel fighting Iran-funded militants — Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

But months of cease-fire talks on the conflict in Gaza are stalemated and talks to reach a halt in the Hezbollah-Israel fighting have yet to produce a deal.
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In the U.S. state of Colorado, a local youth hockey team wanted to give their counterparts in Ukraine a break from the constant threat of war. So, they invited a Ukrainian hockey team to come to American to play in a tournament. Svitlana Prystynska has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Volodymur Petruniv 
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WINDSOR, CALIFORNIA — Forecasters warned over the weekend that another round of winter weather could complicate travel leading up to Thanksgiving in parts of the U.S.

In California, where a person was found dead in a vehicle submerged in floodwaters on Saturday, authorities braced for more precipitation while still grappling with flooding and small landslides from a previous storm. And thousands in the Pacific Northwest remained without power after multiple days in the dark.

A winter storm warning in California’s Sierra Nevada on Saturday was in effect through Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service’s Sacramento office, with heavy snow expected at higher elevations and wind gusts potentially reaching 88 kph. Total snowfall of roughly 1.2 meters was forecast, with the heaviest accumulations coming Monday and Tuesday.

Forecasters said the Midwest and Great Lakes regions will see rain and snow Monday, and the East Coast will be the most impacted on Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

A low-pressure system will bring rain to the Southeast early Thursday before heading to the Northeast, where areas from Boston to New York could see rain and strong winds. Parts of northern New Hampshire, northern Maine and the Adirondacks could get snow. If the system tracks further inland, the forecast would call for less snow for the mountains and more rain.

Deadly ‘bomb cyclone’ on West Coast

The storm on the West Coast arrived in the Pacific Northwest earlier this week, killing two people and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands, mostly in the Seattle area, before its strong winds moved through Northern California. The system roared ashore on the West Coast on Tuesday as a ” bomb cyclone,” which occurs when a cyclone intensifies rapidly. It unleashed fierce winds that toppled trees onto roads, vehicles and homes.

Santa Rosa, California, saw its wettest three-day period on record with about 32 centimeters of rain falling by Friday evening, according to the National Weather Service in the Bay Area. On Saturday vineyards in Windsor, about 16 kilometers to the north, were flooded.

To the west, rescue crews in Guerneville recovered a body inside a vehicle bobbing in floodwaters around 11:30 a.m. Saturday, according to Rob Dillion, a Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy and spokesperson. The deceased was presumed to be a victim of the storm, but an autopsy had not yet been conducted.

Dominick Conti, a 19-year-old volunteer firefighter, and a friend drove around the Santa Rosa area Friday helping people whose vehicles were swamped. With his 2006 Dodge Ram pickup truck and a set of ropes, they were able to rescue the driver of a sedan that stalled out in water, a truck stuck in a giant mudhole and a farmer stranded on a dirt road.

Tens of thousands remain without power in Seattle area

Some 80,000 people in the Seattle area were still without electricity after this season’s strongest atmospheric river — a long plume of moisture that forms over an ocean and flows over land. Crews worked to clear streets of downed lines, branches and other debris, while cities opened warming centers so people heading into their fourth day without power could get warm food and plug in their cellphones and other devices.

The power came back in the afternoon at Katie Skipper’s home in North Bend, about 50 kilometers east of the city in the foothills of the Cascades, after being out since Tuesday. It was tiring to take cold showers, rely on a wood stove for warmth and use a generator to keep the refrigerator cold, Skipper said, but those inconveniences paled in comparison to the damage other people suffered, such as from fallen trees.

“That’s really sad and scary,” she said.

Northeast gets much-needed precipitation

Another storm brought rain to New York and New Jersey, where rare wildfires have raged in recent weeks, and heavy snow to northeastern Pennsylvania. Parts of West Virginia were under a blizzard warning through Saturday morning, with up to 61 centimeters of snow and high winds making travel treacherous.

Despite the mess, the precipitation was expected to help ease drought conditions after an exceptionally dry fall.

“It’s not going to be a drought buster, but it’s definitely going to help when all this melts,” said Bryan Greenblatt, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Binghamton, New York.

Heavy snow fell in northeastern Pennsylvania, including the Pocono Mountains. Higher elevations reported up to 43 centimeters, with lesser accumulations in valley cities like Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. Fewer than 80,000 customers in 10 counties lost power, and the state transportation department-imposed speed restrictions on some highways.

Parts of West Virginia also experienced their first significant snowfall of the season Friday and overnight Saturday, with up to 25.4 centimeters in the higher elevations of the Allegheny Mountains. Some areas were under a blizzard warning.

The precipitation helped put a dent in the state’s worst drought in at least two decades. It also was a boost for West Virginia ski resorts preparing to open their slopes in the weeks ahead. 
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NEW YORK — Walk into any supermarket and you can generally buy a banana for less than $1. But a banana duct-taped to a wall? That sold for $6.2 million at an auction at Sotheby’s in New York.

The yellow banana fixed to the white wall with silver duct tape is a work entitled “Comedian,” by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. It first debuted in 2019 as an edition of three fruits at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair, where it became a much-discussed sensation.

Was it a prank? A commentary on the state of the art world? Another artist took the banana off the wall and ate it. A backup banana was brought in. Selfie-seeking crowds became so thick, “Comedian” was withdrawn from view, but three editions of it sold for between $120,000 and $150,000, according to Perrotin gallery.

Five years later, someone has now paid more than 40 times that higher price point at the Sotheby’s auction. Or, more accurately, they have purchased a certificate of authenticity that gives them the authority to duct-tape a banana to a wall and call it “Comedian.”

Bidding started at $800,000 and within minutes shot up to $2 million, then $3 million, then $4 million, as the auctioneer joked, “It’s slipping through the auction room.” The final hammer price announced in the room Wednesday was $5.2 million, which didn’t include the about $1 million in auction house fees, paid by the buyer.

Sotheby’s calls Cattelan “among Contemporary Art’s most brilliant provocateurs.”

“He has persistently disrupted the art world’s status quo in meaningful, irreverent, and often controversial ways,” the auction house said in a description of “Comedian.”

“What Cattelan is really doing is turning a mirror to the contemporary art world and asking questions, provoking thought about how we ascribe value to artworks, what we define as an artwork,” Galperin said.

The banana that was on display in Miami is long gone. Sotheby’s says the fruit always was meant to be replaced regularly, along with the tape.

“What you buy when you buy Cattelan’s ‘Comedian’ is not the banana itself, but a certificate of authenticity that grants the owner the permission and authority to reproduce this banana and duct tape on their wall as an original artwork by Maurizio Cattelan,” Galperin said.

The very title of the piece suggests Cattelan himself likely didn’t intend for it to be taken seriously. But Chloé Cooper Jones, an associate professor at the Columbia University School of the Arts, said it is worth thinking about the context.

Cattelan premiered the work at an art fair, visited by well-off art collectors, where “Comedian” was sure to get a lot of attention on social media. That might mean the art constituted a dare, of sorts, to the collectors to invest in something absurd, she said.

If “Comedian” is just a tool for understanding the insular, capitalist, art-collecting world, Cooper Jones said, “it’s not that interesting of an idea.”

But she thinks it might go beyond poking fun at rich people.

Cattelan is often thought of as a “trickster artist,” she said. “But his work is often at the intersection of the sort of humor and the deeply macabre. He’s quite often looking at ways of provoking us, not just for the sake of provocation, but to ask us to look into some of the sort of darkest parts of history and of ourselves.”

And there is a dark side to the banana, a fruit with a history entangled with imperialism, labor exploitation and corporate power.

“It would be hard to come up with a better, simple symbol of global trade and all of its exploitations than the banana,” Cooper Jones said. If “Comedian” is about making people think about their moral complicity in the production of objects they take for granted, then it’s “at least a more useful tool or it’s at least an additional sort of place to go in terms of the questions that this work could be asking,” she said.

“Comedian” hits the block around the same time that Sotheby’s is also auctioning one of the famed paintings in the “Water Lilies” series by the French impressionist Claude Monet, with an expected value of around $60 million.

When asked to compare Cattelan’s banana to a classic like Monet’s “Nymphéas,” Galperin says impressionism was not considered art when the movement began.

“No important, profound, meaningful artwork of the past 100 years or 200 years, or our history for that matter, did not provoke some kind of discomfort when it was first unveiled,” Galperin said.
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BAKU, AZERBAIJAN — United Nations climate talks adopted a deal to inject at least $300 billion annually in humanity’s fight against climate change, aimed at helping poor nations cope with the ravages of global warming in tense negotiations in the city where industry first tapped oil.

The $300 billion will go to developing countries who need the cash to wean themselves off the coal, oil and gas that causes the globe to overheat, adapt to future warming, and pay for the damage caused by climate change’s extreme weather. It’s not near the full amount of $1.3 trillion that developing countries were asking for, but it’s three times a deal of $100 billion a year from 2009 that is expiring. Some delegations said this deal is headed in the right direction, with hopes that more money flows in the future.

It was not quite the agreement by consensus that these meetings usually operate with and developing nations were livid about being ignored.

COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev gaveled the deal into acceptance before any nation had a chance to speak.

When they did, they blasted him for being unfair to them, the deal for not being enough, and the world’s rich nations for being too stingy.

“It’s a paltry sum,” India negotiator Chandni Raina said, repeatedly saying how India objected to rousing cheers. “I’m sorry to say we cannot accept it.”

She told The Associated Press that she has lost faith in the United Nations system.

Nations express discontent

A long line of nations agreed with India and piled on, with Nigeria’s Nkiruka Maduekwe, CEO of the National Council on Climate Change, calling the deal an insult and a joke.

“I’m disappointed. It’s definitely below the benchmark that we have been fighting for for so long,” said Juan Carlos Monterrey, of the Panama delegation. He noted that a few changes, including the inclusion of the words “at least” before the number $300 billion and an opportunity for revision by 2030, helped push them to the finish line.

“Our heart goes out to all those nations that feel like they were walked over,” he said.

The final package pushed through “does not speak or reflect or inspire confidence and trust that we will come out of this grave problem of climate change,” India’s Raina said.

“We absolutely object to the unfair means followed for adoption,” Raina said. “We are extremely hurt by this action by the president and the secretariat.”

Speaking for nearly 50 of the poorest nations of the world, Evans Davie Njewa of Malawi was more mild, expressing what he called reservations with the deal.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a post on X that he hoped for a “more ambitious outcome.” But he said the agreement “provides a base on which to build.”

Some see deal as relief

There were somewhat satisfied parties, with European Union’s Wopke Hoekstra calling it a new era of climate funding, working hard to help the most vulnerable. But activists in the plenary hall could be heard coughing over Hoekstra’s speech in an attempt to disrupt it.

Eamon Ryan, Ireland’s environment minister, called the agreement “a huge relief.”

“It was not certain. This was tough,” he said. “Because it’s a time of division, of war, of (a) multilateral system having real difficulties, the fact that we could get it through in these difficult circumstances is really important.”

U.N. Climate Change’s Executive Secretary Simon Stiell called the deal an “insurance policy for humanity,” adding that like insurance, “it only works if the premiums are paid in full, and on time.”

The deal is seen as a step toward helping countries on the receiving end create more ambitious targets to limit or cut emissions of heat-trapping gases that are due early next year. It’s part of the plan to keep cutting pollution with new targets every five years, which the world agreed to at the U.N. talks in Paris in 2015.

The Paris agreement set the system of regular ratcheting up climate fighting ambition as away to keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The world is already at 1.3 degrees Celsius and carbon emissions keep rising.

Hope more cash will follow

Countries also anticipate that this deal will send signals that help drive funding from other sources, like multilateral development banks and private sources. That was always part of the discussion at these talks — rich countries didn’t think it was realistic to only rely on public funding sources — but poor countries worried that if the money came in loans instead of grants, it would send them sliding further backward into debt that they already struggle with.

“The $300 billion goal is not enough, but is an important down payment toward a safer, more equitable future,” said World Resources Institute President Ani Dasgupta. “This deal gets us off the starting block. Now the race is on to raise much more climate finance from a range of public and private sources, putting the whole financial system to work behind developing countries’ transitions.”

And even though it’s far from the needed $1.3 trillion, it’s more than the $250 billion that was on the table in an earlier draft of the text, which outraged many countries and led to a period of frustration and stalling over the final hours of the summit.

Other deals agreed at COP29

The several different texts adopted early Sunday morning included a vague but not specific reference to last year’s Global Stocktake approved in Dubai. Last year there was a battle about first-of-its-kind language on getting rid of the oil, coal and natural gas, but instead it called for a transition away from fossil fuels. The latest talks only referred to the Dubai deal, but did not explicitly repeat the call for a transition away from fossil fuels.

Countries also agreed on the adoption of Article 6, creating markets to trade carbon pollution rights, an idea that was set up as part of the Paris Agreement to help nations work together to reduce climate-causing pollution. Part of that was a system of carbon credits, allowing nations to put planet-warming gasses in the air if they offset emissions elsewhere. Backers said a U.N.-backed market could generate up to an additional $250 billion a year in climate financial aid.

Despite its approval, carbon markets remain a contentious plan because many experts say the new rules adopted don’t prevent misuse, don’t work and give big polluters an excuse to continue spewing emissions.

“What they’ve done essentially is undermine the mandate to try to reach 1.5,” said Tamara Gilbertson, climate justice program coordinator with the Indigenous Environmental Network. Greenpeace’s An Lambrechts, called it a “climate scam” with many loopholes.

With this deal wrapped up as crews dismantle the temporary venue, many have eyes on next year’s climate talks in Belem, Brazil.
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NEW YORK — The brooding waltz was carefully composed on a sheet of music roughly the size of an index card. The brief, moody number also bore an intriguing name, written at the top in cursive: “Chopin.”

A previously unknown work of music penned by the European master Frederic Chopin appears to have been found at the Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan.

The untitled and unsigned piece is on display this month at the opulently appointed institution, which had once been the private library of financier J. P. Morgan.

Robinson McClellan, the museum curator who uncovered the manuscript, said it’s the first new work associated with the Romantic era composer to be discovered in nearly a century.

But McClellan concedes that it may never be known whether it is an original Chopin work or merely one written in his hand.

The piece, set in the key of A minor, stands out for its “very stormy, brooding opening section” before transitioning to a melancholy melody more characteristic of Chopin, McClellan explained.

“This is his style. This is his essence,” he said during a recent visit to the museum. “It really feels like him.”

Curator finds composition in collection

McClellan said he came across the work in May as he was going through a collection from the late Arthur Satz, a former president of the New York School of Interior Design. Satz had acquired it from A. Sherrill Whiton Jr., an avid autograph collector who had been director of the school.

McClellan then worked with experts to verify its authenticity.

The paper was found to be consistent with what Chopin favored for manuscripts, and the ink matched a kind typical in the early 19th century when Chopin lived, according to the museum. But a handwriting analysis determined the name “Chopin” written at the top of the sheet was penned by someone else.

Born in Poland, Chopin was considered a musical genius from an early age. He lived in Warsaw and Vienna before settling in Paris, where he died in 1849 at the age of 39, likely of tuberculosis.

He’s buried among a pantheon of artists at the city’s famed Pere Lachaise Cemetery, but his heart, pickled in a jar of alcohol, is housed in a church in Warsaw, in keeping with his deathbed wish for the organ to return to his homeland.

Artur Szklener, director of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw, the Polish capital city where the composer grew up, agreed that the document is consistent with the kinds of ink and paper Chopin used during his early years in Paris.

Chopin expert calls piece ‘little gem’

Musically, the piece evokes the “brilliant style” that made Chopin a luminary in his time, but it also has features unusual for his compositions, Szklener said.

“First of all, it is not a complete work, but rather a certain musical gesture, a theme laced with rather simple piano tricks alluding to a virtuoso style,” Szklener explained in a lengthy statement released after the document was revealed last month.

He and other experts conjecture the piece could have been a work in progress. It may have also been a copy of another’s work, or even co-written with someone else, perhaps a student for a musical exercise.

Jeffrey Kallberg, a University of Pennsylvania music professor and Chopin expert who helped authenticate the document, called the piece a “little gem” that Chopin likely intended as a gift for a friend or wealthy acquaintance.

“Many of the pieces that he gave as gifts were short – kind of like ‘appetizers’ to a full-blown work,” Kallberg said in an email. “And we don’t know for sure whether he intended the piece to see the light of day because he often wrote out the same waltz more than once as a gift.”

David Ludwig, dean of music at The Juilliard School, a performing arts conservatory in Manhattan, agreed the piece has many of the hallmarks of the composer’s style.

“It has the Chopin character of something very lyrical and it has a little bit of darkness as well,” said Ludwig, who was not involved in authenticating the document.

But Ludwig noted that, if it’s authentic, the tightly composed score would be one of Chopin’s shortest known pieces. The waltz clocks in at under a minute long when played on piano, as many of Chopin’s works were intended.

“In terms of the authenticity of it, in a way it doesn’t matter because it sparks our imaginations,” Ludwig said. “A discovery like this highlights the fact that classical music is very much a living art form.”

The Chopin reveal comes after the Leipzig Municipal Libraries in Germany announced in September that it had uncovered a previously unknown piece likely composed by a young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in its collections.
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WASHINGTON — U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Brooke Rollins, president of the America First Policy Institute, to be agriculture secretary. 

“As our next Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke will spearhead the effort to protect American Farmers, who are truly the backbone of our Country,” Trump said in a statement. 

If confirmed by the Senate, Rollins would lead a 100,000-person agency with offices in every county in the country, whose scope includes farm and nutrition programs, forestry, home and farm lending, food safety, rural development, agricultural research, trade and more. It had a budget of $437.2 billion in 2024. 

The nominee’s agenda would carry implications for American diets and wallets, both urban and rural. Department of Agriculture officials and staff negotiate trade deals, guide dietary recommendations, inspect meat, fight wildfires and support rural broadband, among other activities. 

“Brooke’s commitment to support the American Farmer, defense of American Food Self-Sufficiency, and the restoration of Agriculture-dependent American Small Towns is second to none,” Trump said in the statement. 

The America First Policy Institute is a right-leaning think tank whose personnel have worked closely with Trump’s campaign to help shape policy for his incoming administration. She chaired the Domestic Policy Council during Trump’s first term. 

As agriculture secretary, Rollins would advise the administration on how and whether to implement clean fuel tax credits for biofuels at a time when the sector is hoping to grow through the production of sustainable aviation fuel. 

The nominee would also guide next year’s renegotiation of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal, in the shadow of disputes over Mexico’s attempt to bar imports of genetically modified corn and Canada’s dairy import quotas. 

Trump has said he again plans to institute sweeping tariffs that are likely to affect the farm sector. 

He was considering offering the role to former U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler, a staunch ally whom he chose to co-chair his inaugural committee, CNN reported on Friday. 
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