By MICHAEL CASEY

BOSTON (AP) — When Jim Sanborn was commissioned to create a sculpture at CIA headquarters, he wanted to do something that spoke to its world of spies and secret codes.

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The result was a 10-foot-tall, S-shaped copper screen called “Kryptos” that resembles a piece of paper coming out of a fax machine. One side features a series of staggered alphabets that are key to decoding the four encrypted messages on the other side.

“At the time, codes and encoding was an esoteric subject,” Sanborn said. “I wanted it to be less so, and I wanted it to be fun. … Any artist’s goal when they make an artwork is to have the viewer’s attention for as long as possible.”

Sanborn figured the first three messages on the sculpture, dedicated in 1990 and known as K1, K2 and K3, would be cracked relatively quickly, and they were.

But 35 years later, the fourth, K4, remains a mystery and a source of obsessive fascination among thousands of “Kryptos” fans. One person has contacted Sanborn every week for the past 20 years, trying to solve K4, and the artist received so many inquiries that he began charging $50 per submission to make it more manageable.

Now, Sanborn, who at age 79 has had a series of health scares in recent years, is auctioning off the solution to K4, anointing a new “Kryptos” keeper whom he hopes will keep its secrets and continue interacting with followers.

Finding the next keeper

Boston-based RR Auction launched the auction last month. It runs through Nov. 20, with the top bid currently at $201,841 for the “Kryptos” archive.

This undated photo provided by RR Auction Monday, Nov. 10, 2025, shows some of artist Jim Sanborn’s archive materials that are up for auction related to the 1990 Kryptos encrypted sculpture that was installed on the grounds CIA headquarters. (RR Auction via AP)

“Since its installation in 1990, ‘Kryptos’ has become a worldwide phenomenon,” said Bobby Livingston, executive vice president at RR Auction. “K4 has stumped professional cryptologists and code breakers as well as amateurs who have tried to solve it and read the message. The winner of this archive is now going to possess the secrets of ‘Kryptos.’”

The archive includes everything needed to solve K4, along with an alternate paragraph that the artist is calling K5. The original coding charts for K1, K2 and K3 will also be up for bid, along with the original scrambled texts, which Sanborn said he showed to the CIA’s Department of Historical Intelligence to ensure the agency understood there was nothing “untoward” on the sculpture.

Sanborn has created about 50 public sculptures, including a memorial for a 2019 mass shooting in Odessa, Texas, but he is best known for “Kryptos.” Over the years, snippets from the cryptic sculpture appeared on the dust jacket of the Dan Brown bestseller “The Da Vinci Code” and were mentioned in a chapter of Brown’s book “The Lost Symbol.”

Auction almost derailed

In September, Sanborn got a phone call from two “Kryptos” sleuths. Tipped off by the auction listing, writer and researcher Jarett Kobek asked playwright and journalist Richard Byrne to take photos of Sanborn’s papers at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art. Among the papers were Sanborn’s original scrambled texts.

Kobek said he had hoped to discover “a document that had some vague hint of about how K4 was encoded,” but was astonished to realize they had stumbled upon the text itself instead.

This photo provided by Jae Ko shows sculptor Jim Sanborn in Magdalena, N.M., 1995. (Jae Ko via AP)

Sanborn was initially “shocked” by the call, and he and his wife, Jae Ko, “just sort of put our heads in our hands.” He was mostly upset at himself for putting the texts into the archive — he has since sealed his papers so they can’t be accessed for the next 50 years. RR Auction also deleted any mention of the Smithsonian in connection with the auction.

“It was miserable, and it’s still miserable,” Sanborn said. “It’s very difficult. There’s a lot of regret and anguish.”

Sanborn initially figured that the discovery meant the auction could not proceed. But he decided to proceed anyway, while changing it from just offering the secrets to K4 to offering the entire archive. RR Auction also acknowledged the pair’s discovery on the auction description, though Kobek said that came weeks afterward.

“The important distinction is that they discovered it. They did not decipher it,” Sanborn said. “They do not have the key. They don’t have the method with which it’s deciphered. To the entire cryptographic community, that method is the real deal, and nobody has the method but me.”

Keeping K4 a secret

Elonka Dunin, co-moderator of the largest group of “Kryptos” enthusiasts, said most people she has talked with want K4 kept secret. “There is a very strong desire that we would like to know whether K4 is even solvable,” she said.

Sanborn came up with the texts, and a retired CIA cryptographer showed him several systems for encoding them. The paragraphs, he said, were “designed to unravel like a ball of string” or “nesting Russian dolls” and get increasingly difficult.

Still, Sanborn and RR Auction aren’t taking any chances. Sanborn unsuccessfully asked Kobek and Byrne to sign a nondisclosure agreement that included giving them a portion of the auction proceeds. RR Auction also sent the pair scores of emails threatening legal action for everything from trade secret violations to defamation.

Kobek, a self-described fan of “Kryptos” and the artist, has no plans to release the text publicly, though he read it over the phone to a New York Times journalist who was the first to report their discovery. Still, he wants the auction house and others to respect their discovery, noting that allies during World War II used weather reports to help solve encrypted messages.

“I’m the first person to say that it was not a mathematically cryptographic solve. One hundred percent. There’s no way that it was,” Kobek said. “But to pretend that this has no connection to the history of cryptography is little more than advertising for an auction.”

Park quarterback Alayna Adamez is heading to the Super Bowl in San Francisco in February with her dad as the NFC North division winner of the NFL Latino Youth Honors award.

Park senior quarterback Alayna Adamez (courtesy of Park High School)

Adamez was surprised at school by Vikings defensive lineman Levi Drake Rodriguez, who delivered the news.

The senior led Park to the semifinals of the first-ever Minnesota high school flag football state tournament in the spring. The signal caller threw for 1,432 yards and 32 touchdowns last season en route to being named District 6 Gold Quarterback of the Year.

As quarterback, Adamez led the Wolfpack to the Final Four in the Minnesota State Tournament, throwing for 1,432 yards and 32 touchdowns in just eight regular season games, earning District 6 Gold Quarterback of the Year honors.

Adamez, who sports a 3.967 GPA, plays four varsity sports at Park — football, hockey, tennis and softball. She’ll play Division-I softball at Southern Illinois-Edwardsville next year.

Four girls and four boys were selected as division winners for the NFL honor. One ultimate winner for each gender will be announced at the Super Bowl.

By SAMYA KULLAB

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday called for the removal of Ukraine’s justice and energy ministers amid a wide-reaching corruption scandal involving the state nuclear power company.

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“Among other things, this is a matter of trust,” Zelenskyy said in a video statement on his Telegram channel as he urged the prime minister to remove Justice Minister Herman Halushchenko and Energy Minister Svitlana Grynchuk.

He said he is asking members of parliament to support this decision.

The announcement came after Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency said Tuesday it has detained five people and identified seven other suspects in a major graft investigation involving alleged kickbacks worth around $100 million in the energy sector.

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau did not identify the suspects but said they include a businessman believed to be the mastermind, a former adviser to the energy minister, and an executive with the power company Energoatom.

The agency also accused eight people of bribery, abuse of office and possession of disproportionate assets on Tuesday. The investigation, which began 15 months ago, was welcomed by Zelenskyy who urged officials to cooperate with the probe. Energoatom says the investigation has not disrupted its operations.

Zelenskyy said existence of any type of illegal schemes in country’s energy sector is “absolutely not normal.” He said he will sign a decree imposing sanctions on two people included in the corruption investigation, but didn’t clarify who.

Top government officials and associates close to Zelenskyy are implicated in the scandal.

Earlier, Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko said Halushchenko would be suspended from his post. Responding in a statement on Facebook, he said he would defend himself in court.

“I believe that being suspended for the duration of the investigation is a civilized and proper course of action,” he said. “I will defend myself in the legal domain and prove my position.”

Halushchenko, who was energy minister from 2021 until July when he took over as justice minister, has not been formally charged.

Svyrydenko said Deputy Minister of Justice for European Integration Liudmyla Suhak will take over Halushchenko’s duties as acting minister.

The alleged ringleader of the scheme is a close associated of Zelenskyy’s, Timur Mindich, who was among those charged, according to local media reports.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

By CALEIGH WELLS, Associated Press

Every autumn, news feeds get flooded with stories about climate change. That’s because around this time each year, global leaders gather to discuss collective efforts to limit our emissions of planet-warming gases, released primarily from oil, gas and coal.

Some of the information coming out of the COP30 conference is bleak. But it’s not just COP. Climate stories can be difficult to consume year-round, whether it’s about natural disasters, victims of heat waves or sea level rise or new studies about global warming impacts.

“When you throw a ton of scary facts and information at people, their nervous system shuts down. It’s a coping mechanism,” said Sarah Newman, founder and executive director of the Climate Mental Health Network.

That sense of dread, doom, fear or hopelessness gets lumped into a single term: climate anxiety. Surveys from the American Psychiatric Association have repeatedly shown that a significant amount of Americans experience climate anxiety.

Dealing with it, just like dealing with climate change, is an ongoing process. Here’s how to get started.

Climate anxiety different from general anxiety

Imagine you leave the house in the morning, and realize you left the stove on. There’s a fire hazard at home, and you’re feeling anxious about it. So you turn around and switch it off. The problem is solved, and so is your anxiety.

Climate change doesn’t work that way.

It activates different parts of the brain, according to a study published by the National Institutes of Health. While Generalized Anxiety Disorder often involves the part of the brain that handles fear, threat and emotion, climate anxiety activates parts of the brain that help with high cognition, willpower and tenacity.

“It’s an ongoing larger problem that I need to attend to over time and that is largely out of my control,” climate psychologist Thomas Doherty said. ”I can’t just flip a switch around climate change.”

The anxiety is more complex than a stove left on, because climate change is a more complex problem. The threat is indefinite, it’s largely out of each person’s control and addressing it requires repeated and variable action.

Doherty, who wrote a book about coping with climate anxiety, said that it isn’t inherently negative. It’s a natural reaction to a threat, and it’s the first step in a cyclical relationship with climate change.

“The rest of the cycle is ultimately taking some action to resolve the threat as best that we can,” he said.

First, cope and connect

Newman said that one of the most effective ways to combat climate anxiety is to find other people who are experiencing it too, and to talk about it.

Every year, New York City hosts something called Climate Week. Folks from all over descend upon Manhattan for hundreds of events and panels on energy, the environment and climate change.

Between 15 and 20 people showed up to one event about finding connection and hope in the face of climate change. It was intimate, but so is confiding feelings of dread and isolation with a room full of strangers.

“How many of you wake up in the morning with feelings of despair or hopelessness?” asked the leader at the front of the room.

Just about every hand sheepishly went up.

“Not just in the morning!” said a man in the front row. And an awkward chuckle of understanding swept through the room.

That group was addressing what Doherty said is one of the greatest risks of climate anxiety: isolation.

“Just like working on any problem, any issue, once you have a team around you, then you feel better. You’re not alone. You feel stronger,” he said.

Meetups such as Climate Cafes or groups like Climate Psychology Alliance have online and in-person events where people can share experiences and build resilience together.

Much of Newman’s work with the Climate Mental Health Network is about bringing people together to combat that feeling of isolation.

“When people start to recognize that, they’re not alone with what they’re feeling,” she said. “There’s an opportunity for people to move from that helpless state to one of empowerment.”

Many general anxiety treatments relate to calming the body and clearing the head, and Doherty said that all of those work with climate anxiety.

“It’s our same body. Our same brain, our same heart rate, blood pressure, our same ways of thinking,” he said.

Immediate grounding exercises include the 3-3-3 technique, where you name three things you see, three you hear and three parts of your body that you can move. Another one is the 5-4-3-2-1 technique, where you identify five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell and one thing you can taste.

Doherty also recommends prioritizing rest and exercise, going outside in nature and focusing on the present moment. He calls all of those practices basic mental hygiene.

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Then, find a purpose

Doherty recommended channeling climate concern into something controllable, such as the impacts of climate change in your neighborhood, or even in your home.

“Take care of my own garden so to speak, before I try to plant a garden somewhere else,” he said.

That starts with something Doherty calls ceremonial actions. They don’t meaningfully change the world, but they’re easy, they can be repeated, they align with a person’s values and make them feel better, like picking up litter or bringing reusable bags to the grocery store.

Then those ceremonial actions fuel the desire and resilience needed for something larger, like getting rid of the gas appliances in the house, which could take years to afford and invest in. The U.N. lists 10 actions to reduce a person’s impact on the planet.

Climate anxiety is cyclical, because the sources of anxiety keep coming, and so does the need for coping mechanisms and actions. Newman said that there isn’t an easy switch between climate anxiety and climate optimism.

“I still carry those emotions and I still have the worry and I have the anger and I have the sadness, but I’m able to live with them in a different way,” she said.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.