Mamdani says he wants to meet with Trump for good of NYC

NEW YORK — New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani said Monday he wants to meet face to face with President Donald Trump to discuss ways the two leaders can work together for the good of the city.

The incoming mayor confirmed that his staff has reached out to the White House to open lines of communication with Trump’s team and that he hopes to discuss ways to make New York City more affordable.

“I made a commitment ... to meet with anyone and everyone so long as it was to the benefit of the 8 1/2 million people that call the city their home, and so long as it would help to address the affordability crisis that is pushing many out of them out of this city,” Mamdani said after serving meals to New Yorkers at a Bronx food pantry.

Mamdani vowed to press Trump to avoid cutting off Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program food benefits like he did during the recent government shutdown.

—New York Daily News

An Amazon climate summit built on contradiction, creating unease for California delegates

LOS ANGELES — Two stark-white cruise ships loomed over a muddy Amazonian estuary, an odd sight from a beach where two children waded in the water.

The diesel-powered vessels towered over the impoverished riverfront neighborhood where trash littered the ground and a rainbow sheen from household and street runoff glistened on top of rain puddles.

The cruise liners — with their advertised swimming pools, seafront promenades and an array of restaurants and bars — were brought in to house thousands of delegates attending the 12-day United Nations COP30 climate summit in Belém, which ends Friday. The ships helped address a housing crunch created by an influx of roughly 50,000 people into the capital of Pará in northern Brazil.

Along with being a global economic powerhouse, Brazil is also one of the planet's most important climate actors. The South American nation is home to tropical rainforests that absorb vast amounts of carbon dioxide but are increasingly threatened by deforestation and a drying Amazon.

—Los Angeles Times

Menopause hormone therapy no longer has the FDA’s most-dire warning. Now what?

Removing the most dire warning from hormonal therapies to treat menopause is likely the right call, women’s health experts say, but exuberance for the treatments could be getting ahead of the evidence.

Since 2003, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration required a “black box” warning — reserved for the most-serious side effects — on products that use estrogen, progesterone or both to treat symptoms such as hot flashes and vaginal dryness. The black box warned of an increased risk of blood clots and certain heart problems.

On Monday, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced providers would no longer see the black box, and described the decision to place the warning as a betrayal of women that denied them “strength, peace and dignity,” and may have shortened their lives.

Other top officials said in a news release that estrogen would help women prevent chronic diseases while “extending their vigor,” and that female brains need estrogen to function at their best.

—The Denver Post

With US warships massing offshore, new terror label seen as final deadline for Maduro

The United States will designate Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles as a Foreign Terrorist Organization on Nov. 24, a dramatic escalation in Washington’s confrontation with strongman Nicolás Maduro and his closest allies.

The move is being widely read in Venezuelan political circles as an ultimatum: a final window for Maduro to negotiate his exit or face what many see as the most serious U.S. threat to his rule to date, as the U.S. deploys the largest concentration of military assets in the Caribbean in decades.

In a statement late Sunday, the State Department said the cartel — which the U.S. says is headed by Maduro and top figures of his “illegitimate regime” — has penetrated Venezuela’s military, intelligence services, legislature and courts while partnering with other terrorist-designated groups, including Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua and Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel.

U.S. officials say the network fuels hemispheric violence, channels cocaine into the United States and Europe and finances the Venezuelan government’s repressive apparatus. The designation would effectively label Maduro and senior officials, including Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López, as terrorists.

—Miami Herald