By ALEX VEIGA, AP Business Writer

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes rose in November from the previous month, but slowed compared to a year earlier for the first time since May despite average long-term mortgage rates holding near their low point for the year.

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Existing home sales rose 0.5% in last month from October to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.13 million units, the National Association of Realtors said Friday.

Sales fell 1% compared with November last year. The latest sales figure came in slightly below the 4.14 million pace economists were expecting, according to FactSet.

Through the first 11 months of this year, home sales are down 0.5% compared to the same period last year.

“It’s possible that 2025, unless December (sales) figures really improve, we may be technically slightly down from one year ago,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist.

One factor limiting home sales is weaker demand for condominiums. Sales of condos are down 6% so far this year, Yun noted.

Despite sluggish sales, home prices continued to climb last month. The national median sales price increased 1.2% in November from a year earlier to $409,200, an all-time high for any November on data going back to 1999.

Home prices have risen on an annual basis for 29 months in a row, even as the housing market has been mired in a slump that began in 2022 when mortgage rates began climbing from historic lows. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes sank last year to their lowest level in nearly 30 years.

Sales have been stuck at around a 4-million annual pace now going back to 2023. That’s well short of the 5.2-million annual pace that’s historically been the norm.

Home sales got a boost this fall as the average rate on a 30-year mortgage declined at the end of October to 6.17%, the lowest level in more than a year.

Even so, affordability remains a challenge for many aspiring homeowners, especially first-time buyers who don’t have equity from an existing home to put toward a new home purchase. Uncertainty over the economy and job market are also keeping many would-be buyers on the sidelines.

A shortage of homes for sale, especially in the more affordable end of the market, continues to weigh especially on first-time homebuyers. They accounted for 30% of homes sales last month. Historically, they made up 40% of home sales.

An annual survey of homebuyers by NAR showed first-time buyers accounted for an all-time low 21% of home purchases between July 2024 and June 2025, while the average age of such homebuyers rose to a record-high of 40.

Homes purchased last month likely went under contract in September and October, when the average rate on a 30-year mortgage ranged from 6.5% to 6.17%, according to Freddie Mac. Mortgage rates have mostly remained close to their October low in recent weeks.

Home shoppers who can afford to buy at current mortgage rates benefited from a wider selection of properties on the market last month than a year ago, although the number of homes for sale in November declined from the previous month.

There were 1.43 million unsold homes at the end of last month, down 5.9% from October and up 7.5% from November last year, NAR said.

The latest inventory snapshot remains well below the roughly 2 million homes for sale that was typical before the COVID-19 pandemic.

November’s month-end inventory translates to a 4.2-month supply at the current sales pace. Traditionally, a 5- to 6-month supply is considered a balanced market between buyers and sellers.

Yun is forecasting that existing U.S. home sales will jump 14% next year. That’s more optimistic than several other housing economist forecasts, which range from a 1.7% to 9% increase.

Economists generally forecast that the average rate on a 30-year mortgage will remain slightly above 6% next year.

By SAM MEDNICK

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — The spread of famine has been averted in the Gaza Strip, but the situation remains critical with the entire Palestinian territory still facing starvation, the world’s leading authority on food crises said Friday.

The new report by The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, comes months after the group said famine was occurring in Gaza City and likely to spread across the territory without a ceasefire and an end to humanitarian aid restrictions.

There were “notable improvements” in food security and nutrition following an October ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war and no famine has been detected, the report said. Still, the IPC warned that the situation remains “highly fragile” and the entire Gaza Strip is in danger of starvation with nearly 2,000 people facing catastrophic levels of hunger through April.

In the worst-case scenario, including renewed conflict and a halt of aid, the whole Gaza Strip is at risk of famine. Needs remain immense, and sustained, expanded and unhindered aid is required, the IPC said.

The Israeli military agency in charge of coordinating aid to Gaza, known as COGAT, said Friday that it strongly rejected the findings.

The agency adheres to the ceasefire and allows the agreed amount of aid to reach the strip, COGAT said, noting the aid quantities “significantly exceed the nutritional requirements of the population” in Gaza according to accepted international methodologies, including the United Nations.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said Friday that it also rejects the findings, saying the IPC’s report doesn’t reflect reality in Gaza and more than the required amount of aid was reaching the territory. The ministry said the IPC ignores the vast volume of aid entering Gaza, because the group relies primarily on data related to U.N. trucks, which account for only 20% of all aid trucks.

The IPC said that the report totals include commercial and U.N. trucks and its information is based on U.N. and COGAT data.

Israel’s government has rejected the IPC’s past findings, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling the previous report an “outright lie.”

Ceasefire offsets famine

The report’s findings come as the shaky U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas reaches a pivotal point as Phase 1 nears completion, with the remains of one hostage still in Gaza. The more challenging second phase has yet to be implemented and both sides have accused the other of violating the truce.

The IPC in August confirmed the grim milestone of famine for the first time in the Middle East and warned it could spread south to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis. More than 500,000 people in Gaza, about a quarter of its population, faced catastrophic levels of hunger, with many at risk of dying from malnutrition-related causes, the August report said.

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Friday’s report said that the spread of famine had been offset by a significant reduction in conflict, a proposed peace plan and improved access for humanitarian and commercial food deliveries.

There is more food on the ground and people now have two meals daily, up from one meal each day in July. That situation “is clearly a reversal of what had been one of the most dire situations where we were during the summer,” Antoine Renard, the World Food Program’s director for the Palestinian territories, told U.N. reporters in a video briefing from Gaza City Thursday.

Food access has “significantly improved,” he said, warning that the greatest challenge now is adequate shelter for Palestinians, many of whom are soaked and living in water-logged tents. Aid groups say nearly 1.3 million Palestinians need emergency shelter as winter sets in.

Aid is still not enough

Displacement is one of the key drivers behind the food insecurity, with more than 70% of Gaza’s population living in makeshift shelters and relying on assistance. Other factors such as poor hygiene and sanitation as well as restricted access to food are also exacerbating the hunger crisis, the IPC said.

While humanitarian access has improved compared with previous analysis periods, that access fluctuates daily and is limited and uneven across the Gaza Strip, the IPC said.

To prevent further loss of life, expanded humanitarian assistance including food, fuel, shelter and health care is urgently needed, according to the group’s experts, who warned that over the next 12 months, more than 100,000 children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition and require treatment.

Figures recently released by Israel’s military suggest that it hasn’t met the ceasefire stipulation of allowing 600 trucks of aid into Gaza each day, though Israel disputes that finding. American officials with the U.S.-led center coordinating aid shipments into Gaza also say deliveries have reached the agreed upon levels.

Aid groups say despite an increase of assistance, aid still isn’t reaching everyone in need after suffering two years of war.

“This is not a debate about truck numbers or calories on paper. It’s about whether people can actually access food, clean water, shelter and health care safely and consistently. Right now, they cannot,” said Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam’s policy lead for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.

People must be able to rebuild their homes, grow food and recover and the conditions for that are still being denied, she said.

Even with more products in the markets, Palestinians say they can’t afford it. “There is food and meat, but no one has money,” said Hany al-Shamali, who was displaced from Gaza City.

“How can we live?”

Edith M. Lederer contributed to this report from the United Nations.

By ELLIOT SPAGAT and HALLIE GOLDEN

President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program on Thursday that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the United States.

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Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that, at Trump’s direction, she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program.

“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she said of the suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente.

Neves Valente, 48, is suspected in the shootings at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, and the killing of an MIT professor. He was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.

Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa beginning in 2000, according to an affidavit from a Providence police detective. In 2017, he was issued a diversity immigrant visa and months later obtained legal permanent residence status, according to the affidavit. It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017.

The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the U.S., many of them in Africa. The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.

Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners. After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.

Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card. They are interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.

Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery. Noem’s announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals. After an Afghan man was identified as the gunman in a fatal attack on National Guard members in November, Trump’s administration imposed sweeping rules against immigration from Afghanistan and other counties.

While pursuing mass deportation, Trump has sought to limit or eliminate avenues to legal immigration. He has not been deterred if they are enshrined in law, like the diversity visa lottery, or the Constitution, as with a right to citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear his challenge to birthright citizenship.

By JOHN DOWLING

RETETI ELEPHANT SANCTUARY, Kenya (AP) — We stood at the edge of a dusty corral baked by the equatorial sun and ringed by chest-high posts as thick as telephone poles. On some posts, workers had perched plastic jugs of goat’s milk, each holding a couple of liters and equipped with red nipples the size of a man’s finger.

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Across the corral, a young elephant ambled into view, head bobbing, trunk curling, ears flapping, trundling along as fast as its tree-trunk legs could carry it. Another followed, then a steady stream, bumping and jostling, kicking up orange dust — a joyful stampede of 2,000-pound toddlers.

It was feeding time for the orphan elephants of Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in Kenya.

The keepers tipped the jugs into the elephants’ hungry mouths while sing-chanting a traditional lyric that praises them for being good eaters. Each jug was drained in seconds. Some elephants managed to wrap their trunk around a jug and gulp down lunch on their own.

We were about halfway through a two-week trip through Kenya organized by a fledgling nonprofit that contributes a share of its revenue to local development in the country. The trek combined a traditional safari with chances to meet the Kenyan people who are working to preserve the wildlife. And, unexpected and most compelling, we saw how tourism and wildlife conservation are improving the lives of Indigenous people.

Elephants: The keystone of the economy

Reteti, run by the Samburu tribe, rescues young elephants that villagers notice have become separated from their families. A threshold problem was how to feed the orphans; manufactured formula was costly and nutritionally unsuitable. The answer was in the omnipresent goat herds in rural Kenya. Goat’s milk, it turned out, was a suitable substitute for elephant’s milk, wildlife caretakers at Reteti said.

More than 1,200 Samburu women sell nearly 185 gallons of milk from their goat herds to Reteti each day. Along with enabling them to buy better clothing and food, that gives them some financial independence from their husbands — a break from tradition.

Reteti also employs about 100 Samburu people and says it is the only elephant sanctuary in Africa entirely run by Indigenous people.

Members of Team Lioness, an all-female unit of anti-poaching rangers, pose for a photo at their headquarters in the Amboseli National Park in southern Kenya on May 18, 2025. (John Dowling via AP)

“We can say that elephants are the keystone of the entire economy,” said Dorothy Lowakutuk, a Samburu woman and elephant keeper who has become a spokesperson for the sanctuary.

Uplift Travel, which organized the safari, was founded with the intent to provide support to communities in Kenya, particularly with projects that help women and girls. Kim Schneider, a Michigan-based travel writer, created the group with a partner in philanthropy, Tanja Wittrock, after they discovered how a little money could have a huge impact on quality of life.

“I set out with a heart for travel and a heart for helping people, and this has married the two,” she said.

Highlights from the trip

“Safari” is Swahili for “journey,” and almost all of the overland drives qualified. A trip of 100 miles could take most of the day, traversing two-lane highways clogged with slow-moving semitrailers or backroads whose gullies and piano-size potholes tested the brawny, seven-passenger Toyota Land Cruisers at every turn.

In the wildlife areas, we rarely left the vehicles, save for photos at the equator and a brief stop to tiptoe across Kenya’s southern border into Tanzania.

A group of lions feeds on the carcass of a buffalo by the side of a road in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, a wildlife reserve in central Kenya, on May 21, 2025. (John Dowling via AP)

Within two hours on our first drive of the trip, in Amboseli National Park on Kenya’s southern border, we saw elephants, lions, giraffe, zebras and a brief glimpse of a leopard, the most elusive of Africa’s “big five” wild animals. Amboseli is also where we met members of Team Lioness, an all-women unit of anti-poaching wildlife rangers. They are the first women in their Masai tribal community to have jobs outside the home.

At the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust elephant orphanage in Nairobi, said to be the world’s oldest, each young elephant has its own room. Keepers sleep with babies, and human and elephant each has their own mattress.

At the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, I had the honor of feeding a carrot to one of the most celebrated wild animals in Africa – Najin, 36, one of only two northern white rhinos in existence. Najin lives with her daughter, Fatu, 25, under 24-hour armed guard on acres of fenced grassland. An international team of scientists is working to perpetuate the species using sperm from the last male northern white, Sudan, who died in 2014, and a southern white rhino as surrogate mom.

The conservancy has not lost a rhino to poachers since 2017. But much of the danger to Kenya’s wildlife today arises from conflicts between the animals and the people who live on the land. Elephants trample crops, lions and leopards prey on livestock. Giraffe and other wild animals are sometimes poached for meat.

Fatu, a 25-year-old northern white rhinoceros, is shown with one of her keepers and a truck full of visitors to Ol Pejeta Conservancy wildlife reserve in central Kenya in May 2025. (John Dowling via AP)

Indigenous Kenyans sometimes lack patience for conservation efforts, said Edwin Lusichi, head keeper at Sheldrick.

But at the Masai village of Japan B, so named by residents after a visitor extolled the wonders of Japan, the chief proudly displayed one of a ring of 33 beehives used to keep lions and elephants at bay. The buzzing and stinging of the tiny insects wards off the huge animals.

The stays on wildlife reserves

Most of our accommodations in Kenya’s wildlife reserves were run by Serena Hotels, an operator of luxury resorts and hotels in Africa and South Asia. Rooms or cabins had safari-themed touches. At a couple stops, cabins were built to look like tents, with canvas roofs, solid floors, electricity and hot showers. Breakfasts and dinners were buffet-style.

The most memorable stay was at Kileleoni Mara Gateway House in the Masai region, a sprawling, comfortable home with five guest rooms and two cottages in a fenced compound. It was as if a Masai friend had invited us to stay at her country house, serving us meat and vegetable stews at a long table under the stars. Innkeeper Yianti “Sylvia” Lerionka uses proceeds to sponsor a village for women who escape abusive relationships, and young widows.

A mother and child pose for a portrait near their home in Kileleoni Cultural Village in the Masai tribal region of southern Kenya on May 27, 2025. (John Dowling via AP)

On our last night in Kenya, we were told that if each of our group pitched in $20, we could buy a cow for the women of Sylvia’s village. Sadly, cows were going for more than $300 that day — but the $240 still landed a steer.

If you go…

Uplift Travel safaris vary in itinerary and length and can be customized, so prices range. A typical 14-day trip could cost about $9,000 per person, based on double occupancy, including hotel, meals, ground transportation and guides.

My airfare in May 2025 was $1,426 on British Airways from Chicago to Nairobi via London.