By SETH BORENSTEIN, ANTON L. DELGADO and MELINA WALLING, Associated Press

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Higher-ranking government ministers took charge of negotiations during Monday’s United Nations climate talks, facing pressure to do more — and do it fast.

The summit, known as COP30, opened its second week with foreign and other ministers stepping in for the lower-level negotiators who handled the first week. They have far more power and leeway to make tough political decisions, and U.N. Climate Executive Secretary Simon Stiell told them to use it.

Brazil Vice President Geraldo Alckmin, right, shakes hands with U.N. General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock during a plenary session at the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit, Monday, Nov. 17, 2025, in Belem, Brazil. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

“The spirit is there, but the speed is not,” Stiell said. “The pace of change in the real economy has not been matched by the pace of progress in these negotiating rooms. As climate disasters wrecked millions of lives and hammer every economy, pushing up prices for food and other basic needs, we all know what’s at stake.”

Other speakers also urged quicker action.

“The time for promises is over,” Brazil Vice President Geraldo Alckmin said. “Each additional fraction of a degree of global warming represents lives at risk, greater inequality and greater losses for those who contributed least to the problem.”

U.N. General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock said recent disasters show how much needs to be done.

Related Articles

Palestinian deaths in Israeli custody have surged. A prison guard describes rampant abuse

Today in History: November 17, the NFL’s infamous ‘Heidi Game’

Today in History: November 16, Pakistan elects first woman prime minister

Today in History: November 15, Protesters march against Vietnam War

Bible described as the ‘Mona Lisa of illuminated manuscripts’ goes on display in Rome

“The climate crisis is unrelenting,” she said. “We saw this when Hurricane Melissa barreled into the Caribbean two weeks ago. We saw it again last week at the Philippines … near back-to-back typhoons.”

“We have seen this movie before and we know how it goes,” Baerbock said. “Let us not wallow. All the solutions are all out there, all over the world.”

Adding to the pressure, late Sunday, the Brazilian presidency of the talks issued a five-page summary on how to proceed on several sticky issues. Those include pressing nations to do more in their new emissions-cutting plans, how to handle trade disputes and barriers involving climate and the need to deliver on last year’s $300 billion annual pledge for climate financial aid to poor nations.

Those difficult issues weren’t part of the original agenda nor the COP30 presidency’s plans, but several countries pushed for them.

Several nations — especially small island nations for whom sea level rise is an existential threat — have asked that the talks address the inadequacy of the emissions-cutting plans submitted by 116 nations so far this year. Collectively, the plans come nowhere close to cutting heat-trapping gases enough to prevent 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since the 1800s, which is the goal the world adopted in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

That issue may get combined with a call for a plan for phasing out fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas, the chief cause of climate change. That phaseout was agreed to after much debate at U.N. climate talks two years ago, but last year, little happened on the issue. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva earlier this month raised the issue anew.

Scientists and a group of former world leaders known as The Elders, including the Irish and Colombian former presidents, handed out flyers to delegates Monday, urging them to do more.

“Here in the Amazon, COP30 must ignite a global effort to protect life in all its forms,” the flyer read. “Countries must unite to deliver road maps to phase out fossil fuels, and to halt and reverse forest loss. This necessitates holding on to the COP30 mission” to keep warming to 1.5 degrees.

“Our very existence is at stake,” Mauritius Foreign Affairs Minister Dhananjay Ramful said. “A decade after the promises of the Paris Agreement, despite our good intentions, we realized that we have not done enough. … Our planet demands action now.”

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.

This story was produced as part of the 2025 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.

By SOPHIA TAREEN, BRIAN WITTE and MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press

After a surge in Border Patrol activity in North Carolina’s largest city over the weekend, including dozens of arrests, Gov. Josh Stein said the effort is “stoking fear,” not making Charlotte safer.

The Trump administration has made the Democratic city of about 950,000 people its latest target for an immigration enforcement surge it says will combat crime, despite fierce objections from local leaders and downtrending crime rates. Charlotte residents reported encounters with federal immigration agents near churches, apartment complexes and stores.

“We’ve seen masked, heavily armed agents in paramilitary garb driving unmarked cars, targeting American citizens based on their skin color, racially profiling, and picking up random people in parking lots and off of our sidewalks,” Stein said in a video statement late Sunday. “This is not making us safer. It’s stoking fear and dividing our community.”

Stein acknowledged that it was a stressful time, but he called on residents to stay peaceful. If people see something wrong, he said they should record it and report it to local law enforcement.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CBP, has said it was focusing on North Carolina because of so-called sanctuary policies, which limit cooperation between local authorities and immigration agents.

Several county jails house immigrant arrestees and honor detainers, which allow jails to hold detainees for immigration officers to pick them up. But Mecklenburg County, where Charlotte is located, does not. Also, the city’s police department does not help with immigration enforcement. DHS alleged that about 1,400 detainers across North Carolina had not been honored, putting the public at risk.

Gregory Bovino, who led hundreds of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in a similar effort in Chicago, documented some of the more than 80 arrests he said agents had made in social media posts on Sunday. He posted pictures of people the Trump administration commonly dubs “criminal illegal aliens,” meaning people living in the U.S. without legal permission who allegedly have criminal records. That included one of a man with an alleged history of drunk driving convictions.

The activity has prompted fear and questions, including where detainees would be held, how long the operation would last and what agents’ tactics — criticized elsewhere as aggressive and racist — would look like in North Carolina.

However, some welcomed the effort, including Mecklenburg County Republican Party Chairman Kyle Kirby, who said in a post Saturday that the county GOP “stands with the rule of law — and with every Charlottean’s safety first.”

Bovino’s operations in Chicago and Los Angeles triggered lawsuits over the use of force, including widespread deployment of chemical agents. Democratic leaders in both cities accused agents of inflaming community tensions. Federal agents fatally shot one suburban Chicago man during a traffic stop.

Bovino, head of a Border Patrol sector in El Centro, California, and other Trump administration officials have called their tactics appropriate for growing threats on agents.

Tareen and Dale reported from Chicago. Witte reported from Annapolis, Maryland.

By STAN CHOE, Associated Press Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is holding steadier on Monday following two weeks of sharp swings, but it’s churning underneath the surface ahead of big-time reports coming later in the week.

The S&P 500 was virtually unchanged and remained only a bit below its all-time high set late last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was also basically flat, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.1% higher.

Alphabet was the strongest force pushing upward on the market. It rose 5.2% in the first chance for traders to buy its stock since Berkshire Hathaway said it built a $4.34 billion ownership stake in Google’s parent company. Berkshire Hathaway, run by famed investor Warren Buffett, is notorious for trying to buy only stocks that look like good values while avoiding anything that looks too expensive.

Such discipline has become a much hotter topic on Wall Street recently. Critics have been warning that the U.S. stock market could be primed for a drop because of how high prices have shot since April, leaving them looking too expensive. Critics point in particular to stocks swept up in the AI mania, which have been surging at spectacular speeds for years.

The company at the center of the frenzy, Nvidia, fell another 1.3% Monday, following swings of at least 1.8% in eight of the last 10 days. It’s nevertheless still up nearly 40% for the year so far after it doubled in price in four of the last five years.

That has Wall Street’s spotlight on Wednesday, when Nvidia will report how much profit it made during the summer. AI stocks have surged as much as they have because of expectations that they’ll produce huge growth in profits. If they fail to meet analysts’ expectations, that would undercut one of the big assumptions that’s driven the U.S. stock market to records.

Such high expectations extend beyond tech stocks, even if they are toughest for AI darlings.

Aramark fell 6% after the company, which offers food and facilities management for schools, national parks and convention centers, reported a profit for the latest quarter that fell short of analysts’ expectations. It also said it expects an underlying measure of profit to grow between 20% and 25% this upcoming year. While relatively strong, that was less than what analysts had been forecasting.

Another source of potential disappointment for Wall Street is what the Federal Reserve does with interest rates. The expectation had been that the Fed would keep cutting interest rates in hopes of shoring up the slowing job market. Wall Street loves lower rates because they can give the economy and prices for investments a boost.

But questions are rising about whether a third cut for the year will actually come after the Fed’s next meeting in December, something that traders had earlier seen as very likely. The downside of lower interest rates is that they can make inflation worse, and inflation has stubbornly remained above the Fed’s 2% target.

Fed officials have pointed to the U.S. government’s shutdown, which delayed the release of updates on the job market and other signals about the economy. With less information and less certainty about how things are going, some Fed officials have suggested it may be better just to wait in December to get more clarity.

Now that the shutdown is over, the government is preparing to release September’s delayed jobs report on Thursday. That could create further swings for the market. Too strong a job market would likely stay the Fed’s hand on rate cuts, while too weak figures would raise worries about the economy.

In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady. The yield on the 10-year Treasury was at 4.14%, where it was late Friday.

In stock markets abroad, indexes fell across much of Europe and Asia.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 slipped 0.1% after the government reported that the Japanese economy contracted at a 1.8% annual pace in the July-September quarter.

South Korea’s Kospi was an outlier and jumped 1.9% as tech-related stocks there did well.

AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

Your daily look at what happened across the East Metro high school sports scene last night (or, on Mondays, over the weekend).

Girls hockey season is off and running. Here are key results from Saturday’s games:

Girls hockey

Mounds View/Irondale 7, Park 4: Mounds View/Irondale is a perfect 4-0 thanks to an offense that’s averaging 5.5 goals per game. Mia Simones and Sarah Johnson each netted hat tricks in Saturday’s win.

Johnson has a whopping 10 goals and seven assists already this season.

Mounds View/Irondale travels to Forest Lake on Tuesday.

South St. Paul 3, Rock Ridge 1: After a couple narrow defeats at the hands of Hastings and Simley to open the season, the Packers nabbed their first win of the season as Isabella Stinsa, Kira Erb and Sidney Thompson all scored, while Kjirsten Kline stopped 21 shots.

Stinsa now has three goals on the season.

Stillwater 1, Forest Lake 0: Brynne Laska scored the game’s lone goal to improve the Ponies to 1-0-1 on the season.

Stillwater out-shot the Rangers 39-15, but Kiera Peek was excellent in net for Forest Lake, stopping 38 shots. Haley Solnitzky recorded a shutout for the Ponies.

Eagan 4, Shakopee 1: The Wildcats are 2-0 on the season after a pair of dominant victories over Hastings and Shakopee.

Kaitlyn Barry and Reagan Robbins each scored twice on Saturday. The Wildcats have surrendered only 26 shots on goal combined through two games.

Related Articles

State football roundup: Blocked kick powers Waseca to Class 3A Prep Bowl

Adapted Soccer: Dakota United defends its state title

State swimming: Como Park’s Lueck wins 50 free, Biebl and Aarness also take titles

High School Football: Saturday’s state semifinal predictions

High School Football: Moorhead tops Lakeville South for spot in Prep Bowl