Summit

Nov. 27 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has withdrawn South Africa’s invitation to next year’s G20 summit in Miami, Fla., escalating a row with Johannesburg.

Trump made the announcement Wednesday on his Truth Social platform as this year’s summit of the wealthy nations, held in South Africa, came to an end without the United States participating.

“South Africa has demonstrated to the World they are not a country worthy of Membership anywhere, and we are going to stop all payments and subsidies to them, effective immediately,” the American leader said in the statement.

Trump has escalated his criticisms against South Africa since returning to the White House.

In February, he threatened to cut U.S. funding to the African nation over a new law allowing authorities to expropriate land in the public interest as part of efforts to redress racial inequalities rooted in apartheid.

Though the law states that property cannot be expropriated arbitrarily and allows expropriation without compensation only in limited cases, Trump accused South Africa of “confiscating land” in violation of the human rights of White South Africans.

Trump has since escalated his rhetoric, alleging that White South Africans face genocide — a claim rejected by South African officials and regional leaders and not supported by available evidence.

After Trump announced that the United States wouldn’t be attending the G20 summit in Johannesburg due to “Afrikaners … being killed and slaughtered and their land and farms … being illegally confiscated,” the African National Congress described Trump’s allegations as “part of a long and disgraceful pattern of imperial arrogance and disinformation.”

“These statements are not borne of ignorance, they are deliberate attempts to distort the reality of South Africa’s democracy and to mobilize racial fear for political gain in the United States,” the African National Congress, the ruling political party of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, said Nov. 8 in a statement.

“Donald Trump’s continued siding with racist and right-wing movements across the world is well-documented and consistent with his dangerous rhetoric. From defending White supremacists at Charlottesville to vilifying African nations as ‘expletive countries,’ his record speaks of a man driven by prejudice, not principle.”

Trump on Tuesday reiterated his allegations that Afrikaners were being killed and their land being stolen from them, while stating that at the conclusion of the G20 summit in Johannesburg, the South African delegation “refused” to hand over the G20 presidency to a senior U.S. Embassy official who attended the closing ceremony.

In response, the office of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said that since the United States did not participate in the summit, it handed over the instruments of the G20 presidency to a U.S. Embassy official at South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation.

The office added that it will continue to participate as a full, active and founding member of the G20.

“It is regrettable that despite the efforts and numerous attempts by President Ramaphosa and his administration to reset the diplomatic relationship with the U.S., President Trump continues to apply punitive measures against South Africa based on misinformation and distortions about our country,” his office said in a statement.

Africa’s first-ever Group of 20 (G20) summit – and the first boycotted by a prominent member – has wrapped up.

Host South Africa hailed it as a success, as a declaration was agreed covering a wide range of issues.

But what’s next for the G20?

Presenter: Imran Khan

Guests:

Thembisa Fakude – Director of Africa Asia Dialogues (Afrasid) in Johannesburg

Richard Weitz – Senior non-resident associate fellow at the NATO Defense College in Washington, DC

Omar Ashour – Professor of strategic studies and international security at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies

World leaders broke with tradition and quickly adopted a new declaration at the start of the G20 summit, despite pressure from the Trump administration to avoid a leaders’ declaration in the absence of an American delegation.

US President Donald Trump welcomed Saudi Arabia’s crown prince to the White House, declaring the Kingdom a major non-NATO ally and signaling a push to deepen US-Saudi ties. Here’s what we know about what they agreed on.

Belém, Brazil — 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.

A navy soldier patrols the Port of Outeiro, where cruise ships are docked to host delegations attending the COP30 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Belem, Brazil, on Nov. 8. Two cruise ships tower imposingly over a sleepy port in the Brazilian Amazon where some 50,000 people are gathering for a U.N. climate conference. With capacity for 6,000 people, the behemoths came from Europe to the riverine city of Belem on Brazil’s north coast to serve as floating hotels.

(Pablo Porciuncula / AFP via Getty Images)

The contrast — a climate conference relying on emissions-heavy cruise ships — has become the defining image of this year’s COP30, where wealth and scarcity sit side by side.

Belém residents said they felt a mix of curiosity and excitement watching the influx of foreigners, eager to show a culture that is often overshadowed by the country’s larger southern cities.

Many described COP30 as the first time the world had paused long enough to take notice of the people living at the mouth of the Amazon River, where locally grown açaí is sold on nearly every block. The region supplies the vast majority of Brazil’s açaí crop and much of what’s exported worldwide.

As humidity hung thick in the hot air, locals across the city of 1.3 million people pointed to expanded docks meant to attract future tourism, freshly painted walkways, restored colonial buildings with late-19th-century European touches and new cultural centers rushed to completion. But the sudden infusion of money layered atop long-standing inequality sharpened questions from residents about what will remain after the summit’s global spotlight fades.

Much of the summit footprint, they said, sits in areas where new structures were built fast, unevenly or only partly completed. Brazil’s government highlighted upgrades to Belém’s airports, ports, drainage systems, sanitation networks, parks and tourist areas, saying the work would leave a lasting legacy beyond COP30.

The BBC reported that a new four-lane highway built for COP30 resulted in tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest being leveled, including trees locals relied on to harvest açaí berries to sell. One roadway to ease traffic to the climate summit remains unfinished and blocked by plastic orange netting.

“They cut all this forest to make that road and didn’t even finish it,” said Lucas Lina, 19, who works as an administrator at a Belém fire station, as he pointed to the unfinished road. “I don’t think they ever will. They will delay and delay.”

Lina said climate change is something locals feel acutely. The region has seen unpredictable rainfall, and in some years, receives little at all in an area used to its showers.

“The climate is going crazy,” Ana Paula, a government food safety inspector, said in Portuguese as Lina translated. “We can’t predict anything anymore.”

Even environmentalists acknowledge the optics are fraught, particularly as attendees flew more than 1,800 miles from events in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo for satellite gatherings. That included members of California’s delegation and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“It’s not well conceived because there’s not enough housing,” said Terry Tamminen, former California environmental secretary. “If we really cared about the climate, we’d have these events every year and they’d be 100% virtual.”

Such contradictions have often fueled demonstrations at climate summits, including on Friday when roughly 100 Indigenous protesters blocked the conference’s main entrance for more than 90 minutes. They formed a human chain as they denounced development plans they say would accelerate deforestation.

Indigenous activists participate in a climate protest during the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit on Saturday in Belém, Brazil.

(Andre Penner / Associated Press)

“Our forest is not for sale,” they wrote in a statement.

It was the second protest during the first week of COP30 after a brief clash inside the massive newly constructed facility resulted in two security guards suffering minor injuries.

“There are a lot of promises that the government made that are yet to be delivered,” said Lina, who taught himself English by watching YouTube and through online gaming. “We don’t know if these promises will actually be kept up after COP30.”

That tension — between symbolism and the city’s strained reality — defines this climate conference in a way that delegates say feels impossible to ignore.

Brazil remains one of the world’s top oil producers and recently approved new drilling near the rainforest. Many delegates argued that no setting better captures the stakes of the climate crisis than the Amazon, where Indigenous stewardship, extraordinary biodiversity and the consequences of deforestation are felt globally.

“I don’t know there’s a more important location than the rainforest,” Newsom told The Times. “The one area that consistently gets overlooked in the climate discussion is biodiversity.”

This aerial view shows a deforested area of the Amazon rainforest in the municipality of Moju, Brazil, on Wednesday during the COP30 U.N. Climate Change Conference.

(Mauro Pimentel / AFP via Getty Images)

With the summit came new investments that residents say they welcomed, including new bus routes, expansions at ports meant to increase future tourism and increased police presence to make streets safer.

“It’s very good for us,” said Maria Fátima in Portuguese while standing under an awning of a shuttered bar overlooking the cruise ships. She smiled and gave a thumbs up after saying she had never seen an American in Belém before.

“Everyone is very happy,” she said of the possibility that the newly expanded port will bring future tourism.

That port, which experienced an oil spill in April, is now being marketed as the Amazon’s next cruise-tourism hub. Its expansion cost $44 million and relied on nonstop work from construction crews in rotating shifts. The rush project doubled the pier’s capacity.

Room prices aboard the cruise ships soared to more than $1,400 a night for a balcony cabin, according to Times inquiries. On land, Belém’s modest supply of hotels and even seedy love motels that typically rent by the hour surged in price, pushing residents to rent their apartments and homes at rates many said they had never imagined.

People on a beach along the Guama River watch cruise ships docked at the Port of Outeiro, which will host delegations attending the COP30 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil, on Nov. 6.

(Carlos Fabal/AFP via Getty Images)

One attendee said her hotel room typically goes for $85 a night. Her room cost $1,000 instead.

Newsom even joked about the costs. When a Brazilian journalist asked whether California would make climate investments in the country, Newsom said the price of his room at the Holiday Inn in Belém already felt like an “economic contribution.”

But those prices didn’t benefit everyone. Local media reported that some renters were evicted ahead of the conference in order to open up rooms to foreigners.

Inside the summit, Newsom operated as a proxy for the United States while attending COP30 for two days after President Trump, an outspoken climate skeptic, declined to send any high-level federal officials.

Long Beach resident Dominic Bednar, attending his fifth climate summit, said the contradictions of this year’s summit don’t diminish the importance of being there.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” said Bednar, an assistant professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy at UC Irvine. “On one hand, it brings understanding to the city and is driving a lot of economic investment. But I’m also curious: What is the carbon footprint of everybody coming into COP and the construction of this place? We are using energy, and we’re contributing to climate pollution.”

People riding in boats participate in a People’s Summit event on Guajara Bay during the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit on Wednesday in Belém, Brazil.

(Andre Penner / Associated Press)

Graduate students from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography echoed that discomfort, but said not attending would only cede more ground to powerful energy interests that already dominate climate talks.

“We can empathize with not having our voices heard,” said graduate student Danielle McHaskell as she waited to take a photo with Newsom. “And that’s an important part of the climate movement — empathy for other people.”

Newsom, too, said he was aware of the contradiction of using fossil fuels to reach a climate summit.

Still, he defended the decision to hold COP30 in the Amazon. He said it offered a chance to “see what I’ve only seen on TV or could see disappear in my lifetime.” He added that he was particularly excited about venturing into the Amazon rainforest with a small delegation to learn in person about conservation efforts and connect with something beyond policy and negotiations.

“I think that spiritual element really matters in a world that can use a little bit more of that,” he said before returning to California on Sunday. “That’s one of the reasons I’m looking forward to getting deeper into the Amazon.”

Indigenous and other climate activists say they need to ‘make their voices heard’ as UN conference hits halfway mark.

Thousands of people have marched through the streets of the Brazilian city of Belem, calling for the voices of Indigenous peoples and environmental defenders to be heard at the United Nations COP30 climate summit.

Indigenous community members mixed with activists at Saturday’s march, which unfolded in a festive atmosphere as participants carried a giant beach ball representing the Earth and a Brazilian flag emblazoned with the words “Protected Amazon”.

It was the first major protest outside the conference, which began earlier this week in Belem, bringing together world leaders, activists and experts in a push to tackle the worsening climate crisis.

Indigenous activists previously stormed the summit, disrupting the proceedings as they demanded that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva take concrete action to ensure their territories are protected from growing threats.

Amnesty International warned in a recent report that billions of people around the world are threatened by the expansion of fossil fuel projects, such as oil-and-gas pipelines and coal mines.

Indigenous communities, in particular, sit on the front lines of much of this development, the rights group said.

Branded the “Great People’s March” by organisers, Saturday’s rally in Belem came at the halfway point of contentious COP30 negotiations.

“Today we are witnessing a massacre as our forest is being destroyed,” Benedito Huni Kuin, a 50-year-old member of the Huni Kuin Indigenous group from western Brazil, told the AFP news agency.

“We want to make our voices heard from the Amazon and demand results,” he said. “We need more Indigenous representatives at COP to defend our rights.”

Youth leader Ana Heloisa Alves, 27, said it was the biggest climate march she has participated in. “This is incredible,” she told The Associated Press. “You can’t ignore all these people.”

The COP30 talks come as the UN warned earlier this month that the world was on track to exceed the 1.5C (2.7F) mark of global warming – an internationally agreed-upon target set under the Paris Agreement – “very likely” within the next decade.

If countries do as they have promised in their climate action plans, the planet will warm 2.3 to 2.5C (4.1 to 4.5F) by 2100, a report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) found.

“While national climate plans have delivered some progress, it is nowhere near fast enough, which is why we still need unprecedented emissions cuts in an increasingly tight window, with an increasingly challenging geopolitical backdrop,” said UNEP chief Inger Andersen.

Despite that urgency, analysts and some COP30 participants have said they don’t expect any major new agreements to emerge from the talks, which conclude on November 21.

Still, some are hoping for progress on some past promises, including funding to help poorer countries adapt to climate change.

BELÉM, Brazil — The expansive halls of the Amazon’s newly built climate summit hub echoed with the hum of air conditioners and the footsteps of delegates from around the world — scientists, diplomats, Indigenous leaders and energy executives, all converging for two frenetic weeks of negotiations.

Then Gov. Gavin Newsom rounded the corner, flanked by staff and security. They moved in tandem through the corridors on Tuesday as media swarmed and cellphone cameras rose into the air.

“Hero!” one woman shouted. “Stay safe — we need you,” another attendee said. Others didn’t hide their confusion at who the man with slicked-back graying hair causing such a commotion was.

“I’m here because I don’t want the United States of America to be a footnote at this conference,” Newsom said when he reached a packed news conference on his first day at the United Nations climate policy summit known as COP30.

In less than a year, the United States has shifted from rallying nations on combating climate change to rejecting the science altogether under President Trump, whose brash governing style spawned in part from his reality-show roots.

Newsom has engineered his own evolution when coping with Trump — moving from sharp but reasoned criticism to name-calling and theatrical attacks on the president and his Republican allies. Newsom’s approach adds fire to America’s political spectacle — part governance, part made-for-TV drama. But on climate, it’s not all performance.

California’s carbon market and zero-emission mandates have given the state outsize influence at summits such as COP30, where its policies are seen as both durable and exportable. The state has invested billions in renewables, battery storage and electrifying buildings and vehicles and has cut greenhouse gas emissions by 21% since 2000 — even as its economy grew 81%.

“Absolutely,” he said when asked whether the state is in effect standing in for the United States at climate talks. “And I think the world sees us in that light, as a stable partner, a historic partner … in the absence of American leadership. And not just absence of leadership, the doubling down of stupid in terms of global leadership on clean energy.”

Newsom has honed a combative presence online — trading barbs with Trump and leaning into satire, especially on social media, tactics that mirror the president’s. Critics have argued that it’s contributing to a lowering of the bar when it comes to political discourse, but Newsom said he doesn’t see it that way.

“I’m trying to call that out,” Newsom said, adding that in a normal political climate, leaders should model civility and respect. “But right now, we have an invasive species — in the vernacular of climate — by the name of Donald Trump, and we got to call that out.”

At home, Newsom recently scored a political win with Proposition 50, the ballot measure he championed to counter Trump’s effort to redraw congressional maps in Republican-led states. On his way to Brazil, he celebrated the victory with a swing through Houston, where a rally featuring Texas Democrats looked more like a presidential campaign stop than a policy event — one of several moments in recent months that have invited speculation about a White House run that he insists he hasn’t launched.

Those questions followed him to Brazil. It was the first topic posed from a cluster of Brazilian journalists in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city and financial hub, where Newsom had flown to speak Monday with climate investors in what he conceded sounded more like a campaign speech.

“I think it has to,” said Newson, his talking points scribbled on yellow index cards still in his pocket from an earlier meeting. “I think people have to understand what’s going on, because otherwise you’re wasting everyone’s time.”

In a low-lit luxury hotel adorned with Brazilian artwork and deep-seated chairs, Newsom showcased the well-practiced pivot of a politician avoiding questions about his future. His most direct answer about his presidential prospects came in a recent interview with “CBS News Sunday Morning,” on which Newsom was asked whether he would give serious thought after the 2026 midterm elections to a White House bid. Newsom responded: “Yeah, I’d be lying otherwise.”

He laughed when asked by The Times how often he has fielded questions about his plans in 2028 in recent days, and quickly deflected.

“It’s not about me,” he said before fishing a malaria pill out of his suit pocket and chasing it with borrowed coffee from a nearby carafe. “It’s about this moment and people’s anxiety and concern about this moment.”

Ann Carlson, a UCLA environmental law professor, said Newsom’s appearance in Brazil is symbolically important as the federal government targets Californa’s decades-old authority to enforce its own environmental standards.

“California has continued to signal that it will play a leadership role,” she said.

The Trump administration confirmed to The Times that no high-level federal representative will attend COP30.

“President Trump will not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said.

For his own part, Trump told world leaders at the United Nations in September that climate change is a “hoax” and “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”

Since Trump returned to office for a second term, he’s canceled funding for major clean energy projects such as California’s hydrogen hub and moved to revoke the state’s long-held authority to set stricter vehicle emissions standards than those of the federal government. He’s also withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement, a seminal treaty signed a decade ago in which world leaders established the goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels and preferably below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). That move is seen as pivotal in preventing the worst effects of climate change.

Leaders from Chile and Colombia called Trump a liar for rejecting climate science, while Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva broadly warned that extremist forces are fabricating fake news and “condemning future generations to life on a planet altered forever by global warming.”

Terry Tamminen, former California Environmental Protection Agency secretary under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, contended that with the Trump administration’s absence, Newsom’s attendance at COP30 thrusts even more spotlight on the governor.

“If the governor of Delaware goes, it may not matter,” Tamminen said. “But if our governor goes, it does. It sends a message to the world that we’re still in this.”

The U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of state leaders, said three governors from the United States attended COP30-related events in Brazil: Newsom, Wisconsin’s Tony Evers and New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham.

Despite the warm reception Newsom has received in Belém, environmentalists in California have recently questioned his commitment.

In September, Newsom signed a package of bills that extended the state’s signature cap-and-trade program through 2045. That program, rebranded as cap-and-invest, limits greenhouse gas emissions and raises billions of dollars for the state’s climate priorities. But, at the same time, he also gave final approval to a bill that will allow oil and gas companies to drill as many as 2,000 new wells per year through 2036 in Kern County. Environmentalists called that backsliding; Newsom called it realism, given the impending refinery closures in the state that threaten to drive up gas prices.

“It’s not an ideological exercise,” he said. “It’s a very pragmatic one.”

Leah Stokes, a UC Santa Barbara political scientist, called his record “pretty complex.”

“In many ways, he is one of the leaders,” she said. “But some of the decisions that he’s made, especially recently, don’t move us in as good a direction on climate.”

Newsom is expected to return to the climate summit Wednesday before traveling deeper into the Amazon, where he plans to visit reforestation projects. The governor said he wanted to see firsthand the region often referred to as “the lungs of the world.”

“It’s not just to admire the absorption of carbon from the rainforest,” Newsom said. “But to absorb a deeper spiritual connection to this issue that connects all of us. … I think that really matters in a world that can use a little more of that.”

Indigenous protesters stormed the UN’s COP30 climate summit in Belem, Brazil, clashing with security officers inside the venue. They were demanding stronger action to stop deforestation and mining in the Amazon rainforest.

Hundreds of people have joined an Indigenous-led protest on the second day of the UN climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belem, highlighting tensions with the Brazilian government’s claim that the meeting is open to Indigenous voices.

Dozens of Indigenous protesters forced their way into the 30th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) on Tuesday evening after hundreds of people participated in a march to the venue.

“We can’t eat money,” said Gilmar, an Indigenous leader from the Tupinamba community near the lower reaches of the Tapajos River in Brazil, who uses only one name, referring to the emphasis on climate finance at many of the meetings during the ongoing summit.

“We want our lands free from agribusiness, oil exploration, illegal miners and illegal loggers.”

A spokesperson from the UN, which is responsible for security inside the venue, said in a statement that “a group of protesters breached security barriers at the main entrance to the COP, causing minor injuries to two security staff, and minor damage to the venue”.

The protest came as Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has highlighted Indigenous communities as key players in this year’s COP30 negotiations, even as several industries continue to further encroach on the Amazon rainforest during his presidency.

Lula told a leaders summit last week that participants at the COP30 would be “inspired by Indigenous peoples and traditional communities – for whom sustainability has always been synonymous with their way of life”.

However, Indigenous participants taking part in rolling protests in and around the climate change meeting say that more needs to be done, both by Lula’s left-leaning government at home and around the world.

A joint statement ahead of the summit from Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon Basin and all Biomes of Brazil emphasised the importance of protecting Indigenous territories in the Amazon.

As “a carbon sink of approximately 340 million tons” of carbon dioxide, the world’s largest rainforest, “represents one of the most effective mitigation and adaptation strategies”, the statement said.

The statement also called for Indigenous territories to be excluded from mining and other activities, including “in particular, the Amazon, Congo, and Borneo-Mekong-Southeast Asia basins”.

Leo Cerda, one of the organisers of the Yaku Mama protest flotilla, which arrived at the summit after sailing 3,000km (1,864 miles) down the Amazon river, told Al Jazeera that Indigenous peoples are trying to secure nature not just for themselves but for humanity.

“Most states want our resources, but they don’t want to guarantee the rights of Indigenous peoples,” Cerda said.

As the flotilla sailed towards COP30, Brazil’s state-run oil company, Petrobras, received a licence to begin exploratory offshore oil drilling near the mouth of the Amazon River.

“You cannot make climate policies without indigenous people at the negotiation table.”

This Indigenous activist flotilla just sailed the entire length of the Amazon River to take their message to the #COP30 climate conference. pic.twitter.com/55YjlZgJct

— AJ+ (@ajplus) November 11, 2025

Cerda also said it was important for Indigenous people to be present at the conference, considering the fossil fuel industry has also participated in the meetings for several decades.

According to The Guardian newspaper, some 5,350 fossil fuel lobbyists participated in UN climate summits over the past four years.

Representatives from 195 countries are participating in this year’s summit, with the notable absence of the United States. Under President Donald Trump, the US has fought against action on climate change, further cementing its role as the world’s largest historical emitter of fossil fuels.

Most recently, Trump has torpedoed negotiations to address emissions from the shipping industry.

Notably, this year’s meeting is the first to take place since the UN’s top court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), ruled that countries must meet their climate obligations and that failing to do so could violate international law.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — President Trump says that his government will boycott the Group of 20 summit this month in South Africa over his claims that a white minority group there is being violently persecuted. Those claims have been widely rejected.

Trump announced Friday on social media that no U.S. government official will attend the Nov. 22-23 summit in Johannesburg “as long as these Human Rights abuses continue.” South Africa’s Black-led government has been a regular target for Trump since he returned to office.

In February, Trump issued an executive order stopping U.S. financial assistance to South Africa, citing its treatment of the Afrikaner white minority. His administration has also prioritized Afrikaners for refugee status in the U.S. and says they will be given most of the 7,500 places available this fiscal year.

The South African government — and some Afrikaners themselves — say Trump’s claims of persecution are baseless.

Descendants of European settlers

Afrikaners are South Africans who are descended mainly from Dutch but also French and German colonial settlers who first came to the country in the 17th century.

Afrikaners were at the heart of the apartheid system of white minority rule from 1948-94, leading to decades of hostility between them and South Africa’s Black majority. But Afrikaners are not a homogenous group, and some fought against apartheid. There are an estimated 2.7 million Afrikaners in South Africa’s population of 62 million.

Afrikaners are divided over Trump’s claims. Some say they face discrimination, but a group of leading Afrikaner business figures and academics said in an open letter last month that “the narrative that casts Afrikaners as victims of racial persecution in post-apartheid South Africa” is misleading.

Afrikaners’ Dutch-derived language is widely spoken in South Africa and is one of the country’s 12 official languages. Afrikaners are represented in every aspect of society. Afrikaners are some of South Africa’s richest entrepreneurs and some of its most successful sports stars, and also serve in government. Most are largely committed to South Africa’s multiracial democracy.

Trump claims they’re being ‘killed and slaughtered’

Trump asserted that Afrikaners “are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated.” The president’s comments are in reference to a relatively small number of attacks on Afrikaner farmers that he and others claim are racially motivated.

Trump has also pointed to a highly contentious law introduced by the South African government that allows land to be appropriated from private owners without compensation. Some Afrikaners fear that law is aimed at removing them from their land in favor of South Africa’s poor Black majority. Many South Africans, including opposition parties, have criticized the law, but it hasn’t led to land confiscations.

Trump first made baseless claims of widespread killing of white South African farmers and land seizures during his first term in response to allegations aired on conservative media personality Tucker Carlson’s former show on Fox News. Trump ordered then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to look into the allegations, but nothing came of any investigation.

South Africa rejects the claims

The South African government said in response to Trump’s social media post that his claims were “not substantiated by fact.” It has said that Trump’s criticism of South Africa over Afrikaners is a result of misinformation because it misses the context that Black farmers and farmworkers are also killed in rural attacks, which make up a tiny percentage of the country’s high violent crime rate.

There were more than 26,000 homicides in South Africa in 2024. Of those, 37 were farm murders, according to an Afrikaner lobby group that tracks them. Experts on rural attacks in South Africa have said the overriding motive for the violent farm invasions is robbery, not race.

Other pressure on South Africa

Trump said it is a “total disgrace” that the G-20 summit — a meeting of the leaders of the 19 top rich and developing economies, the European Union and the African Union — is being held in South Africa. He had already said he wouldn’t attend, and Vice President JD Vance was due to go in his place. The U.S. will take on the rotating presidency of the G-20 after South Africa.

Trump also said in a speech last week that South Africa should be thrown out of the G-20.

Trump’s criticism of Africa’s most developed economy has gone beyond the issue of Afrikaners. His executive order in February said South Africa had taken “aggressive positions towards the United States and its allies,” specifically with its decision to accuse Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza at the United Nations’ top court.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio boycotted a G-20 foreign ministers meeting in South Africa in February after deriding the host country’s G-20 slogan of “solidarity, equality and sustainability” as “DEI and climate change.”

Imray writes for the Associated Press.

The 30th annual United Nations climate change conference (COP30) begins on Monday in the Brazilian city of Belem. About 50,000 people from more than 190 countries, including diplomats and climate experts, are expected to attend the 11-day meeting in the Amazon.

Delegates are expected to discuss the climate crisis and its devastating impacts, including the rising frequency of extreme weather.

The hosts have a packed agenda with 145 meetings planned to discuss the green fuel transition and global warming as well as the failure to implement past promises.

Andre Correa do Lago, president of this year’s conference, emphasised that negotiators engage in “mutirao”, a Brazilian word derived from an Indigenous word that refers to a group uniting to work on a shared task.

“Either we decide to change by choice, together, or we will be imposed change by tragedy,” do Lago wrote in his letter to negotiators on Sunday. “We can change. But we must do it together.”

What is COP?

COP is the abbreviation for the Conference of the Parties to the Convention, which refers to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a treaty adopted in 1992 that formally acknowledged climate change as a global threat.

The treaty also enshrined the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility”, meaning that rich countries responsible for the bulk of carbon dioxide emissions should bear the greatest responsibility for solving the problem.

The UNFCCC formally went into force in 1994 and has become the basis for international deals, such as the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, designed to limit global temperature increases to about 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by 2100 to avoid the most catastrophic effects of global warming.

The first COP summit was held in the German capital, Berlin, in 1995. The rotating presidency, now held by Brazil, sets the agenda and hosts the two-week summit, drawing global attention to climate change while trying to corral member states to agree to new climate measures.

What’s on the agenda this year?

Brazil wants to gather pledges of $25bn and attract a further $100bn from the global financial markets for a Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), which would provide financing for biodiversity conservation, including reducing deforestation.

Brazil has also asked countries to work on realising past promises, such as COP28’s pledge to phase out fossil fuel use. Indeed, the Brazilian government’s overarching goal for this COP is “implementation” rather than setting new goals.

“Our role at COP30 is to create a roadmap for the next decade to accelerate implementation,” Ana Tonix, the chief executive of COP30, was quoted as saying in The Guardian newspaper.

At a summit last week before COP30, Brazilian President Lula Inacio Lula da Silva said: “I am convinced that despite our difficulties and contradictions, we need roadmaps to reverse deforestation, overcome dependence on fossil fuels and mobilise the resources necessary for these objectives.”

In a letter to negotiators released late on Sunday, Simon Stiell, the UN climate chief, said the 10-year-old Paris Agreement is working to a degree “but we must accelerate in the Amazon. Devastating climate damages are happening already – from Hurricane Melissa hitting the Caribbean, super typhoons smashing Vietnam and the Philippines to a tornado ripping through southern Brazil.”

Not only must nations do more faster but they “must connect climate action to people’s real lives”, Stiell wrote.

COP30 is also the first to acknowledge the failure to so far prevent global warming.

Who will participate?

More than 50,000 people have registered to attend this year’s COP in Belem, including journalists, climate scientists, Indigenous leaders and representatives from 195 countries.

Some of the more prominent official group voices will include the Alliance of Small Island States, the G77 bloc of developing countries and the BASIC Group, consisting of Brazil, South Africa, India and China.

In September, United States President Donald Trump told the UN General Assembly that climate change was “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”, based on “predictions … made by stupid people”.

Trump’s aggressive approach to deny the climate crisis has further complicated the agenda at the conference, which will have no representation from Washington. Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement twice – once during his first term, which was overturned by former President Joe Biden, and a second time on January 20, 2025, the day his second term began. He cited the economic burden of climate initiatives on the US. Trump has called climate change a “hoax”.

The US historically has put more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas than any other country. On an annual basis, however, the biggest carbon polluter now is China.

COP30 organisers have been criticised for the exorbitant prices of hotel rooms in Belem, which has just 18,000 hotel beds. Brazil’s government has stepped in, offering free cabins on cruise ships to poorer nations in a last-minute bid to ensure they can attend.

As of November 1, only 149 countries had confirmed lodging. The Brazilian government said 37 were still negotiating. Meanwhile, business leaders have decamped to host their own events in the cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Brazil has also been slammed for clearing forest to build a new road to reach the conference venue.

What progress has been made since last year’s summit?

Renewables, led by solar and wind, accounted for more than 90 percent of new power capacity added worldwide last year, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. Solar energy has now become the cheapest form of electricity in history.

Meanwhile, one in five of new cars sold around the world last year was electric, and there are now more jobs in clean energy than in fossil fuels, according to the UN.

Elsewhere, the International Energy Agency has estimated that global clean-energy investment will reach $2.2 trillion this year, which would be about twice as much as on fossil fuel spending.

At the same time, global temperatures are not just rising, they are climbing faster than ever with new records logged for 2023 and 2024. That finding was part of a study done every few years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The new research shows the average global temperature rising at a rate of 0.27C (0.49F) each decade, almost 50 percent faster than in the 1990s and 2000s when the warming rate was around 0.2C (0.36F) per decade.

The world is now on track to cross the 1.5C threshold by 2030, after which scientists warn that humanity will trigger irreversible climate impacts. Already, the planet has warmed by 1.3C (2.34F) since the pre-industrial era, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

At the same time, governments around the world spend about $1 trillion each year subsidising fossil fuels.

At a preparatory summit with dozens of heads of state and government, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: “The hard truth is that we have failed to ensure we remain below 1.5 degrees.”

“Science now tells us that a temporary overshoot beyond the 1.5 limit – starting at the latest in the early 2030s – is inevitable. We need a paradigm shift to limit this overshoot’s magnitude and duration and quickly drive it down,” he said on Thursday.

“Even a temporary overshoot will have dramatic consequences. It could push ecosystems past irreversible tipping points, expose billions to unliveable conditions and amplify threats to peace and security.”

How did climate change affect the world in 2025?

The India-Pakistan heatwave began unusually early, in April this year. By June, temperatures had reached a peak of about 48C (118.4F) in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Hundreds of lives were lost, and crops were decimated.

Europe also faced extreme heat this year. Over the summer, the region endured a heatwave that pushed cities like Lisbon past 46C  (114.8F). In London, a prolonged period of elevated temperatures in late June caused an estimated excess 260 deaths.

At the same time, Mediterranean wildfires ravaged large tracts of Southern Europe with more than 100,000 people evacuated and dozens of deaths.

Turkiye suffered one of its worst droughts in decades, hitting agricultural areas. Rainfall dropped by up to 71 percent in some areas compared with the previous year, stressing ecosystems and energy and food production.

Nov. 7 (UPI) — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán visited the White House Friday for a summit with President Donald Trump and lavished praise on the president while disparaging former President Joe Biden.

“The reason why we are here, to open a new chapter between the bilateral relation between the United States and Hungary basically because during the Democrat administration everything was rigged,” Orbán said, according to The Hill.

“Everything was basically broke, ruined, cancelled. A lot of harm done by the previous administration,” he said. “You’ve improved the bilateral relationship. You repaired what was done badly by the previous administration, so now we are in quite a good position to open up a new chapter. Let’s say a golden age between the United States and Hungary.”

Orbán wants Trump to come to Budapest and to meet with Russia President Vladimir Putin about the Ukraine war. Trump has already canceled one meeting, saying he didn’t want to “have a waste of time.”

Orbán also came to the White House to ask Trump to give Hungary an exception to the sanctions on buying Russian oil. The president said he might exempt Hungary from those sanctions.

He also called on European leaders to be more respectful of Orbán, who has faced battles with them over migration, democracy and rule of law.

“I think they should respect Hungary and respect this leader very, very strongly because he’s been right on immigration,” Trump said.

Hungary claims it must buy Russian oil because it has no other viable source.

“We’re looking at it because it’s very difficult for him to get the oil and gas from other areas,” Trump said. “It’s a big country, but they don’t have sea. They don’t have the ports. And so they have a difficult problem.”

He also accused other European countries of buying Russian oil and gas. They “don’t have those problems, and they buy a lot of oil and gas from Russia. And, as they know, I’m very disturbed by that.”

Trump and Orbán are both conservative leaders who share similar values, including a dislike of immigration.

“Look what’s happened to Europe with the immigration. They have people flooding Europe,” Trump said. “You go to some of the countries, they’re unrecognizable now because of what they’ve done. And Hungary is very recognizable.”

Orbán defended his migration policies, blaming Europe.

“This is the absurd world we are living in now in Europe,” Orbán said. “We are the only government in Europe which considers itself as a Christian government. All the other governments in Europe are basically liberal leftist governments.”

In September, Trump lifted travel restrictions against Hungarians, readmitting them to the Visa Waiver program. Biden had added restrictions against Hungarians when he learned that Budapest was granting Hungarian citizenship without adequate security measures.

The Guardian reported that at Friday’s meeting, Orbán was expected to try to set up another meeting between the two leaders not only to broker peace in Ukraine, but to also boost his own standing as a statesman.

Citing insiders, the news outlet said the far-right leader is facing stiff opposition ahead of April’s parliamentary elections, and a visit from Trump would potentially boost support among conservatives.

“Orbán wants Trump to come to Budapest before the elections,” an unnamed source working in the Hungarian government told The Guardian. “This is a top priority. They will discuss the Russian gas issue, but the thing Orbán cares about the most is the elections.”

In a post on X on Thursday, Orbán said Trump’s first 10 months back in office have repaired the relationship between the United States and Hungary. He said the Biden administration damaged that relationship through “politically motivated sanctions.”

“Our goal is to establish a strategic partnership that includes energy cooperation, investments, defense collaboration, and discussions on the post-war landscape following the Russia-Ukraine conflict,” Orbán wrote.

“We are working on an agreement based on mutual benefits — one that serves the interests of every Hungarian citizen.”

Trump told reporters last week that Orbán wants an exemption from the oil and gas sanctions.

“We haven’t granted one, but he has asked,” Trump said aboard Air Force One. “He’s a friend of mine. He’s asked for an exemption.”

Trump calls it a ‘disgrace’ that South Africa is hosting the G20, reiterates debunked claims of a ‘genocide’ against white farmers.

President Donald Trump has said no United States officials will attend this year’s Group of 20 (G20) summit in South Africa, citing the country’s treatment of white farmers.

Writing on his Truth Social platform on Friday, Trump said it was a “total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa”.

“Afrikaners (People who are descended from Dutch settlers, and also French and German immigrants) are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated,” Trump wrote, reiterating claims that have been rejected by authorities in South Africa.

“No US Government Official will attend as long as these Human Rights abuses continue. I look forward to hosting the 2026 G20 in Miami, Florida!” he added.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has repeatedly claimed that white South Africans are being persecuted in the Black-majority country, a claim rejected by South Africa’s government and top Afrikaner officials.

Trump had already said on Wednesday that he would not attend the summit – which will see the heads of states from the world’s leading and emerging economies gather in Johannesburg on November 22 and 23 – as he also called for South Africa to be thrown out of the G20.

US Vice President JD Vance had been expected to attend the meeting in place of the president. But a person familiar with Vance’s plans told The Associated Press news agency that he will no longer travel to South Africa.

Tensions first arose between the US and South Africa after President Cyril Ramaphosa introduced a new law in January seeking to address land ownership disparities, which have left three-quarters of privately owned land in the hands of the white minority more than three decades after the end of apartheid.

The new legislation makes it easier for the state to expropriate land, which Ramaphosa insists does not amount to confiscation, but creates a framework for fair redistribution by allowing authorities to take land without compensation in exceptional circumstances, such as when a site has been abandoned.

Shortly after the introduction of the Expropriation Act, Trump accused South Africa of “confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY”.

“The United States won’t stand for it, we will act,” he said.

In May, Trump granted asylum to 59 white South Africans as part of a resettlement programme that Washington described as giving sanctuary after racial discrimination.

The same month, when Trump met with President Ramaphosa in the White House, he ambushed him with the claim that a “genocide” is taking place against white Afrikaners in his country.

Ramaphosa denied the allegations, telling Trump “if there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you, these three gentlemen would not be here”, pointing to three white South African men present – professional golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, and South Africa’s richest man, Johann Rupert.

South African historian Saul Dubow, professor of Commonwealth history at the University of Cambridge, previously told Al Jazeera that there is no merit to “Trump’s fantasy claims of white genocide”.

Dubow suggested that Trump may be more angry about South Africa’s genocide case filed against Israel in the International Court of Justice over its war on Gaza.

Nonetheless, the Trump administration has maintained its claim of widespread persecution. On October 30, the White House indicated that most new refugees admitted to the US will be white South Africans, as it slashed the number of people it will admit annually to just 7,500.

“The admissions numbers shall primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa pursuant to Executive Order 14204 and other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands,” the White House said.