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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.
…

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.
…

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.
…

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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BAKU, AZERBAIJAN — As nerves frayed and the clock ticked, negotiators from rich and poor nations were huddled in one room Saturday during overtime United Nations climate talks to try to hash out an elusive deal on money for developing countries to curb and adapt to climate change.

But the rough draft of a proposal circulating in that room was getting soundly rejected, especially by African nations and small island states, according to messages relayed from inside. Then a group of negotiators from the Least Developed Countries bloc and the Alliance of Small Island States walked out because they didn’t want to engage with the rough draft.

The “current deal is unacceptable for us. We need to speak to other developing countries and decide what to do,” said Evans Njewa, chair of the LDC group. When asked if the walkout was a protest, Colombia Environment Minister Susana Mohamed told The Associated Press: “I would call this dissatisfaction, [we are] highly dissatisfied.”

With tensions high, climate activists heckled United States climate envoy John Podesta as he left the meeting room. They accused the U.S. of not paying its fair share and having “a legacy of burning up the planet.”

The last official draft on Friday pledged $250 billion annually by 2035, more than double the previous goal of $100 billion set 15 years ago but far short of the annual $1 trillion-plus that experts say is needed. The rough draft discussed on Saturday was for $300 billion in climate finance, sources told AP.

Accusations of a war of attrition

Developing countries accused the rich of trying to get their way — and a small financial aid package — via a war of attrition. And small island nations, particularly vulnerable to climate change’s worsening impacts, accused the host country presidency of ignoring them for the entire two weeks.

After bidding one of his suitcase-lugging delegation colleagues goodbye and watching the contingent of about 20 enter the meeting room for the European Union, Panama chief negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez had enough.

“Every minute that passes we are going to just keep getting weaker and weaker and weaker. They don’t have that issue. They have massive delegations,” Gomez said. “This is what they always do. They break us at the last minute. You know, they push it and push it and push it until our negotiators leave. Until we’re tired, until we’re delusional from not eating, from not sleeping.”

With developing nations’ ministers and delegation chiefs having to catch flights home, desperation sets in, according to Power Shift Africa’s Mohamed Adow. “The risk is if developing countries don’t hold the line, they will likely be forced to compromise and accept a goal that doesn’t add up to get the job done,” he said.

Teresa Anderson, the global lead on climate justice at Action Aid, said that to get a deal, “the presidency has to put something far better on the table.”

“The U.S. in particular, and rich countries, need to do far more to show that they’re willing for real money to come forward,” she said. “And if they don’t, then LDCs [Least Developed Countries] are unlikely to find that there’s anything here for them.”

Climate cash deal is still elusive

Developing nations are seeking $1.3 trillion to help adapt to droughts, floods, rising seas and extreme heat, pay for losses and damages caused by extreme weather, and transition their energy systems away from planet-warming fossil fuels and toward clean energy. Wealthy nations are obligated to pay vulnerable countries under an agreement reached at these talks in Paris in 2015.

Panama’s Monterrey Gomez said even the higher $300 billion figure that was discussed on Saturday is “still crumbs.”

“Is that even half of what we put forth?” he asked.

Monterrey Gomez said the developing world has since asked for a finance deal of $500 billion up to 2030 — a shortened timeframe than the 2035 date. “We’re still yet to hear reaction from the developed side,” he said.

On Saturday morning, Irish Environment Minister Eamon Ryan said it’s not just about the number in the final deal, but “how do you get to $1.3 trillion.”

Ryan said that any number reached at the COP will have to be supplemented with other sources of finance, for example through a market for carbon emissions where polluters would pay to offset the carbon they spew.

The amount in any deal reached at COP negotiations — often considered a “core” — will then be mobilized or leveraged for greater climate spending. But much of that means loans for countries already drowning in debt.

Anger and frustration over state of negotiations

Alden Meyer of the climate think tank E3G said it’s still up in the air whether a deal on finance will come out of Baku at all.

“It is still not out of the question that there could be an inability to close the gap on the finance issue,” he said.

Ali Mohamed, chair of the African Group of Negotiators, said the bloc is “prepared to reach agreement here in Baku … but we are not prepared to accept things that cross our red lines.”

Despite the fractures between nations, several still held out hopes for the talks. “We remain optimistic,” said Nabeel Munir of Pakistan, who chairs one of the talks’ standing negotiating committees.

The Alliance of Small Island States said in a statement that it wants to continue to engage in the talks, as long as the process is inclusive. “If this cannot be the case, it becomes very difficult for us to continue our involvement,” the statement said.
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Scott Turner, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is a former NFL player who ran the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council during Trump’s first term.

Turner, 52, is the first Black person selected to be a member of the Republican’s Cabinet. Here are some things to know about him:

From professional football to politics

Turner grew up in a Dallas suburb, Richardson, and graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He was a defensive back and spent nine seasons in the NFL beginning in 1995, playing for the Washington Redskins, San Diego Chargers and Denver Broncos.

During offseasons, he worked as an intern for then-Representative Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California. After Turner retired in 2004, he worked full time for the congressman. In 2006, Turner ran unsuccessfully as a Republican in California’s 50th Congressional District.

Turner joined the Texas House in 2013 as part of a large crop of tea party-supported lawmakers. He tried unsuccessfully to become speaker before he finished his second term in 2016. He did not seek a third term.

Motivational speaker and pastor

Turner also worked for a software company in a position called “chief inspiration officer” and said he acted as a professional mentor, pastor and councilor for the employees and executive team. He has also been a motivational speaker.

He and his wife, Robin Turner, founded a nonprofit promoting initiatives to improve childhood literacy. His church, Prestonwood Baptist Church, lists him as an associate pastor. He is also chair of the center for education opportunity at America First Policy Institute, a think tank set up by former Trump administration staffers to lay the groundwork if he won a second term.

Headed council in Trump’s first term

Trump introduced Turner in April 2019 as the head of the new White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council. Trump credited Turner with “helping to lead an Unprecedented Effort that Transformed our Country’s most distressed communities.”

The mission of the council was to coordinate with various federal agencies to attract investment to so-called “Opportunity Zones,” which were economically depressed areas eligible to be used for the federal tax incentives.

Role of HUD

The Housing and Urban Development Department is responsible for addressing the nation’s housing needs. It also is charged with fair housing laws and oversees housing for the poorest Americans, sheltering more than 4.3 million low-income families through public housing, rental subsidy and voucher programs.

The agency, with a budget of tens of billions of dollars, runs a multitude of programs that cover a range of responsibilities, from reducing homelessness to promoting homeownership. It also finances the construction of affordable housing and provides vouchers that allow low-income families to pay for housing in the private market.

During the campaign, Trump focused mostly on the prices of housing, not public housing. He railed against the high cost of housing and said he could make it more affordable by cracking down on illegal immigration and reducing inflation. Trump also said he would work to reduce regulations on home construction and make some federal land available for residential construction.
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«Світла пам’ять усім жертвам: дорослим і дітям – безневинним жертвам голодоморів» – президент
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«Види тортур описані, і по них вчаться. Це те, що не може собі уявити будь-який представник західної цивілізованої країни»
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За даними Федорова, впродовж доби війська РФ 433 рази обстріляли 16 населених пунктів Запорізької області
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«Ці матеріали доводять, що голод був свідомим інструментом упокорення українського народу»
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HONOLULU, HAWAII — The latest lawsuit to take aim at Hawaii’s gun laws challenges the state’s ban on gun ownership for young adults 18 to 20 years old, which Second Amendment advocates say is an unconstitutional restriction on Americans’ right to bear arms. 

Elijah Pinales, 19, and Juda Roache, who turns 18 next month, want to own guns for self-defense, according to their lawsuit filed Wednesday night in U.S. District Court in Honolulu. 

Their lawyers assert that Hawaii is the only state with a complete ban on acquiring and owning firearms and ammunition by those who are 18 to 20. Some states allow 18-year-olds to purchase a long gun and some allow for private party transfer of handguns, said Alan Beck, one of the lawyers who filed the lawsuit and has lodged numerous other challenges to Hawaii weapons laws. 

Roache’s mother wants to give him a firearm and ammunition, the lawsuit says. 

Federal law requires a person to be 21 to purchase a handgun from a licensed firearm dealer and 18 to buy a long gun from a dealer, according to Everytown for Gun Safety. There’s an 18-year-old minimum for handgun purchases from unlicensed sellers and no minimum age for long guns, according to the group’s research. 

Chris Marvin, a Hawaii resident with Everytown, said states are raising the age for purchasing firearms and ammunition, noting a federal appeals court ruled earlier this month that a Colorado law raising the age to purchase a gun from 18 to 21 can take effect while the legal battle over it continues. 

New York and Illinois also have broad laws limiting people under 21 from possessing firearms, said David Pucino, legal director and deputy chief counsel for the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. 

“Hawai’i has some of the strongest gun laws in the country and it has among the very lowest gun death rates,” he said in a statement Thursday. “That’s not an accident, but it hasn’t stopped extremists from attacking Hawai’i’s gun laws at every turn.” 

Firearm suicide rate jumps

According to Everytown, firearms are the leading cause of death for young people ages 18 to 20, the firearm suicide rate in that age group has jumped 41% in the last decade, and 18- to 20-year-olds commit gun homicides at triple the rate of those 21 and older. 

The Hawaii attorney general’s office said it had not been served with the complaint and declined to comment. 

“There can be no real argument that adults under 21 are not part of the national community,” the lawsuit said, noting that 18-to-20-year-olds have the right to vote. “They have the right to serve in the military and are otherwise full-fledged members of society and the People.” 

Court decision upends laws

The quest for a preliminary injunction against enforcing a prohibition on gun ownership for young adults comes as Hawaii continues to contend with a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that said Americans have a right to carry firearms in public for self-defense. 

The so-called Bruen decision upended gun laws nationwide and set a new standard for interpreting gun laws, such that modern firearm laws must be consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. 

There’s no historical tradition of prohibiting the purchase and ownership of firearms and ammunition by adults under 21, according to the lawsuit, which describes some of the nation’s founding figures such as Aaron Burr, who at 19 enlisted in the Continental Army with his own arms and ammunition, and James Monroe who did the same at 18. 

Hawaii’s gun ownership ban for young adults dates to 1994, the lawsuit said. The state “doubled down” this year by prohibiting the possession of ammunition by those under 21, the lawsuit said. 

Danger Close Tactical in Honolulu and JGB Arms on Kauai are federally licensed firearms dealers who are plaintiffs in the case because they want to do business with customers who are 18 to 20 years old, the lawsuit said. 

Another plaintiff is the Second Amendment Foundation, a nonprofit in Bellevue, Washington. 
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dallas — More than 60 years after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, conspiracy theories still swirl and any new glimpse into the fateful day of Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas continues to fascinate. 

President-elect Donald Trump promised during his reelection campaign that he would declassify all of the remaining government records surrounding the assassination if he returned to office. He made a similar pledge during his first term, but ultimately bent to appeals from the CIA and FBI to keep some documents withheld. 

At this point, only a few thousand of the millions of governmental records related to the assassination have yet to be fully released, and those who have studied the records released so far say that even if the remaining files are declassified, the public shouldn’t anticipate any earth-shattering revelations. 

“Anybody waiting for a smoking gun that’s going to turn this case upside down will be sorely disappointed,” said Gerald Posner, author of Case Closed, which concludes that assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. 

November 22, 1963 

When Air Force One carrying Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy touched down in Dallas, they were greeted by a clear sky and enthusiastic crowds. With a reelection campaign on the horizon the next year, they had gone to Texas on political fence-mending trip. 

But as the motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown, shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested Oswald, 24, and, two days later, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer. 

A year after the assassination, the Warren Commission, which President Lyndon B. Johnson established to investigate the assassination, concluded that Oswald acted alone and there was no evidence of a conspiracy. But that hasn’t quelled a web of alternative theories over the decades. 

The collection 

In the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that all assassination-related documents be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection of over 5 million records was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president. 

Trump, who took office for his first term in 2017, had said that he’d allow the release of all of the remaining records but ended up holding some back because of what he called the potential harm to national security. And while files have continued to be released during President Joe Biden’s administration, some still remain unseen. 

The documents released over the last few years offer details on the way intelligence services operated at the time, and include CIA cables and memos discussing visits by Oswald to the Soviet and Cuban embassies during a trip to Mexico City just weeks before the assassination. The former Marine had previously defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas. 

Mark S. Zaid, a national security attorney in Washington, said what’s been released so far has contributed to the understanding of the time period, giving “a great picture” of what was happening during the Cold War and the activities of the CIA. 

Withheld files 

Posner estimates that there are still about 3,000 to 4,000 documents in the collection that haven’t yet been fully released. Of those documents, some are still completely redacted while others just have small redactions, like someone’s Social Security number. 

“If you have been following it, as I have and others have, you sort of are zeroed in on the pages you think might provide some additional information for history,” Posner said. 

There are about 500 documents that have been completely withheld, Posner said, and those include Oswald’s and Ruby’s tax returns. Those files, the National Archives says on its website, weren’t subject to the 2017 disclosure requirement. 

Trump’s transition team hasn’t responded to questions this week about his plans when he takes office. 

A continued fascination 

From the start, there were those who believed there had to be more to the story than just Oswald acting alone, said Stephen Fagin, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, which tells the story of the assassination from the building where Oswald made his sniper’s perch. 

“People want to make sense of this and they want to find the solution that fits the crime,” said Fagin, who said that while there are lingering questions, law enforcement made “a pretty compelling case” against Oswald. 

Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said his interest in the assassination dates to the event itself, when he was a child. 

“It just seemed so fantastical that one very disturbed individual could end up pulling off the crime of the century,” Sabato said. “But the more I studied it, the more I realized that is a very possible, maybe even probable in my view, hypothesis.”
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