World leaders warned Thursday that time is running short for urgent and decisive action to prevent the worst effects of climate change, and blasted the United States for its retreat from those efforts, as they gathered at the edge of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest for the annual United Nations climate summit.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres opened a gathering of heads of state in Belem, Brazil, with harsh words for world powers who he said “remain captive to the fossil fuel interests, rather than protecting the public interest.”

Allowing global warming to exceed the key benchmark of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit), laid out in the Paris Agreement, would represent a “moral failure and deadly negligence,” Guterres said, warning that “even a temporary overshoot will have dramatic consequences ... every fraction of a degree higher means more hunger, displacement and loss.”

Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva sought to mobilize funds from world powers to halt the ongoing destruction of tropical rainforests and advance the many unmet promises made at previous summits.

But reduced participation — with only half the heads of state in attendance as there were at last year’s summit — showcased global divisions and set a somber tone.

The leaders of the planet’s three biggest polluters, China, the United States and India, were completely absent from the preliminary gathering ahead of climate talks that begin next week at the Conference of Parties, known as COP30.

In a rousing speech, Lula warned that the “window of opportunity we have to act is rapidly closing and said there was “no greater symbol of the environmental cause” than the Amazon rainforest.

Louisville, Ky.

UPS cargo jet crash investigated

Federal investigators have begun collecting information from the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder of the UPS cargo plane that crashed this week in Louisville, Ky., the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday.

The devices, known as black boxes, were sent to the NTSB’s offices in Washington for examination, and data was being downloaded and assessed, a board member told reporters at a news conference in Louisville on Thursday.

Investigators are continuing to examine the wreckage, which covers about a half-mile just outside the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, where the flaming UPS cargo plane crashed early Tuesday evening, killing 13 people.

It was the first full day of on-site investigation by the safety board, which is working to determine why the aircraft caught fire on the runway and dropped one of its engines just before the crash. Remains of 12 of the victims have been found and removed from the site, Mayor Craig Greenberg of Louisville said at a separate news conference earlier in the day. Among those, three have been named, and the coroner was working to identify nine others.

One of the 15 people who were brought to University of Louisville hospitals after the crash died Thursday, Greenberg said. One patient remained in critical condition, and 13 were discharged Wednesday, according to Jason W. Smith, the CEO of the university hospital system.

Washington

Diversity foe named to chair EEOC

President Donald Trump has named Andrea Lucas as chair of the country’s top workplace civil rights agency, the agency announced Thursday.

The move signals a vote of confidence for Lucas’s efforts to stamp out diversity programs, roll back protections for transgender workers and prioritize religious rights in the workplace.

First nominated to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2020 during Trump’s first administration, Lucas was confirmed in July for a second five-year term. Democratic lawmakers and dozens of civil rights organizations strongly opposed Lucas’ confirmation, accusing her of politicizing the agency against Congress’s intent and undermining workers’ civil rights.

Republican senators praised her leadership, especially her commitment to rolling back Biden-era guidance on workplace gender identity protections, which Lucas has argued overstepped the EEOC’s authority. Trump elevated Lucas to acting chair in January and, in an unprecedented move, fired two Democratic commissioners, clearing the way to establish a Republican majority in the agency.

The Senate last month confirmed Trump pick Brittany Panuccio as a commissioner, restoring the EEOC to the full power needed to deepen his overhaul of civil rights enforcement.

Washington

Maryland sues over of FBI headquarters

Maryland officials sued President Donald Trump’s administration Thursday for blocking the previously-approved construction of new FBI headquarters just outside the nation’s capital.

Gov. Wes Moore joined other Maryland leaders to criticize the plan to move the FBI’s headquarters several blocks from its current home in Washington to the Ronald Reagan Building complex, instead of to Greenbelt, Md., which had been selected by the Biden administration for a modern building after years of planning.

The FBI announced the change over the summer after a yearslong battle over the location. But Moore, a Democrat, described the Reagan Building as “too old, too small and too exposed.”

New York

Court opens door to moving Trump case

A New York appeals court Thursday left open the possibility that President Donald Trump’s Manhattan criminal conviction could be moved to federal court, offering him a quicker path to overturning it.

Trump’s lawyers will still have to convince a federal judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein, that the criminal case belongs in federal court, and there may be obstacles to doing so.

Previously, Hellerstein has been unpersuaded.

Still, Thursday’s ruling was a minor win for Trump, stemming from the Supreme Court’s July 2024 finding that presidents are entitled to presumptive immunity for acts taken in their official capacities.

That finding has shielded Trump from federal prosecution and his lawyers have sought to use it to overturn his Manhattan criminal conviction from earlier in 2024.

Newport News, Va.

teacher wins $10M shooting judgment

A jury in Virginia awarded $10 million Thursday to a former teacher who was shot by a 6-year-old student, siding with her claims in a lawsuit that an ex-administrator ignored repeated warnings that the child had a gun.

The jury returned its decision against Ebony Parker, a former assistant principal at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News.

Abby Zwerner was shot in January 2023 as she sat at a reading table in her first-grade classroom. She had sought $40 million against Parker in the lawsuit.

Zwerner spent nearly two weeks in the hospital, required six surgeries and does not have the full use of her left hand. A bullet narrowly missed her heart and remains in her chest.

Zwerner did not address reporters outside the courthouse after the decision was announced.

Tennessee

Trump pardons convicted lawmaker

President Donald Trump has pardoned the former Tennessee House speaker and a onetime aide to the speaker of public corruption charges after the White House said the Biden administration’s Justice Department “significantly over-prosecuted” both for a minor issue.

Former Republican state Rep. Glen Casada was sentenced in September to three years in prison, and his former chief of staff, Cade Cothren, was also convicted and received a 21/2-year prison sentence. The case centered on their actions after both had been driven from their leadership roles and were accused of running a scheme to win taxpayer-funded mail business from lawmakers.

According to prosecutors, Cothren launched a company called Phoenix Solutions — with the knowledge and support of Casada and then-Rep. Robin Smith. The three claimed the company was run by “Matthew Phoenix,” later determined to be fictitious. The companies controlled by Casada and Smith received roughly $52,000 in taxpayer money in 2020 from a mailer program for lawmakers.

Caribbean

Analysis: Climate intensified melissa

Hurricane Melissa’s path through the Caribbean last month was made more violent by climate change, according to a scientific analysis released Thursday.

Researchers from the group World Weather Attribution found that the storm had 7% stronger wind speeds than a similar one in a world that has not been warmed by the burning of fossil fuels. They also found the rate of rainfall inside the eyewall of the storm was 16% more intense.

Melissa made landfall as a Category 5 storm in Jamaica on Oct. 28 with wind speeds of 185 mph, collapsing buildings and knocking out internet to most of the island.

It continued on to Cuba as a Category 3 storm, forcing hundreds to evacuate, and pummeled Haiti with catastrophic flooding. Dozens of people in hard-hit areas have died.

Even a small increase in wind speed can cause substantial damage, said Friederike Otto, one of the group’s founders and a climatologist at Imperial College London.

While the economic toll of Melissa is still unfolding, Otto estimated that the increase in wind speed may have added more than $1 billion in additional damage. For a country with a small gross domestic product, that is a “huge percentage of the damages,” she said.

United Nations

New Syrian leader’s sanctions lifted

The U.N. Security Council voted Thursday to lift a series of sanctions on Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa and members of his government days before he is set to arrive in the U.S. for a historic visit to the White House.

The U.S. resolution to drop U.N. sanctions tied to al-Sharaa and Syria’s interior minister, Anas Hasan Khattab, stemming from their ties to the al-Qaida militant group, was adopted with 14 members in support. China abstained from the vote.

“With the adoption of this text, the council is sending a strong political signal that recognizes Syria is in a new era since Assad and his associates were toppled in December 2024,” Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said in his statement after the vote, referring to longtime autocratic leader Bashar Assad.

American officials pushed to pass the resolution before Monday, when President Donald Trump is expected to host al-Sharaa in the first visit by a Syrian president to Washington since the country gained independence in 1946.

washington

‘foreign actor’ seen in cbo data breach

The Congressional Budget Office on Thursday confirmed it had been hacked, potentially disclosing important government data to malicious actors.

The small government office, with some 275 employees, provides objective, impartial analysis to support lawmakers during the budget process.

It is required to produce a cost estimate for nearly every bill approved by a House or Senate committee and will weigh in earlier when asked to do so by lawmakers.

Caitlin Emma, a spokeswoman for the CBO said in a written statement that the agency “has identified the security incident, has taken immediate action to contain it, and has implemented additional monitoring and new security controls to further protect the agency’s systems going forward.”

The Washington Post first wrote the story on the CBO hack, stating that the intrusion was done by a suspected foreign actor, citing four anonymous people familiar with the situation.

The CBO did not confirm whether the data breach was done by a foreign actor.

London

‘Shirley Valentine’ actress dies at 85

Pauline Collins, the versatile British actress who won a cult following for her portrayal on stage and screen of Shirley Valentine, a disillusioned middle-aged housewife finding excitement in Greece, has died. She was 85.

In a statement Thursday, her family said that Collins died peacefully at her care home in north London this week, having endured Parkinson’s for several years.

In a long career that spanned television, film and theater, Collins was adept at playing an array of roles, all of which she infused with her trademark authenticity that indisputably earned her the status of a “national sweetheart” in the U.K. She was awarded the Order of the British Empire, or OBE, in 2001 for services to drama.

“Pauline was so many things to so many people, playing a variety of roles in her life,” the family said. “A bright, sparky, witty presence on stage and screen.”

— News service reports