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MANAUS, Brazil (AP) — Joe Biden on Sunday became the first sitting American president to set foot in the Amazon rainforest, as incoming Trump administration seems poised to scale back the U.S. commitment to combating climate change.

The massive Amazon, which is about the size of Australia, stores huge amounts of the world’s carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas driving climate change, even as the world’s largest tropical rainforest is rapidly deforested.

Biden is expected to be taken over a stretch of the rainforest where he would get a good view of the shallowing of waterways, fire damage and a wildlife refuge. He’s also expected to get a peek at where the Rio Negro and Amazon Rivers meet. He will then meet local and indigenous leaders and visit an Amazonian museum as he looks to highlight his commitment to the preservation of the region.

His administration announced plans last year for a $500 million contribution to the Amazon Fund, the most significant international cooperation effort to preserve the rainforest, primarily financed by Norway.

So far, the U.S. government said it has provided $50 million, and the White House announced Sunday an additional $50 million contribution to the fund.

“It’s significant for a sitting president to visit the Amazon. … This shows a personal commitment from the president,” said Suely Araújo, former head of the Brazilian environmental protection agency and public policy coordinator with the nonprofit Climate Observatory. “That said, we can’t expect concrete results from this visit.”

She doubts that a “single penny” will go to the Amazon Fund once Donald Trump is back in the White House.

The incoming Trump administration is highly unlikely to prioritize the Amazon or anything related to climate change. The Republican president-elect already said he would again pull out of the Paris agreement, a global pact forged to avert the threat of catastrophic climate change, after Biden recommitted to the agreement.

Trump has cast climate change as a “hoax” and said he will eliminate energy efficiency regulations by the Biden administration.

Still, the Biden White House on Sunday announced a series of new efforts aimed at bolstering the Amazon and stemming the impact of climate change.

Among the actions is the launch of a finance coalition that looks to spur at least $10 billion in public and private investment for land restoration and bioeconomy-related projects by 2030, and a $37.5 million loan to the organization Mombak Gestora de Recursos Ltda. to support the large-scale planting of native tree species on degraded grasslands in Brazil.

Biden is also set to sign a U.S. proclamation designating Nov. 17 as International Conservation Day, and will highlight in remarks during the visit that the U.S. is on track to reach $11 billion in spending on international climate financing in 2024, a six-fold increase from when he started his term.

The Amazon is home to Indigenous communities and 10% of Earth’s biodiversity. It also regulates moisture across South America. About two-thirds of the Amazon lies within Brazil, and scientists say its devastation poses a catastrophic threat to the planet.

The forest has been suffering two years of historic drought that have dried up waterways, isolated thousands of riverine communities and hindered riverine dwellers’ ability to fish. It’s also made way for wildfires that have burned an area larger than Switzerland and choked cities near and far with smoke.

When Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office last year, he signaled a shift in environmental policy from his predecessor, far-right Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro prioritized agribusiness expansion over forest protection and weakened environmental agencies, prompting deforestation to surge to a 15-year-high.

Lula has pledged “zero deforestation” by 2030, though his term runs through the end of 2026. Forest loss in Brazil’s Amazon dropped by 30.6% in the 12 months through July from a year earlier, bringing deforestation to its lowest level in nine years, according to official data released last week.

In that 12-month span, the Amazon lost 6,288 square kilometers (2,428 square miles), roughly the size of the U.S. state of Delaware. But that data fails to capture the surge of destruction this year, which will only be included in next year’s reading.

Despite the success in curbing Amazon deforestation, Lula’s government has been criticized by environmentalists for backing projects that could harm the region, such as paving a highway that cuts from an old-growth area and could encourage logging, oil drilling near the mouth of the Amazon River and building a railway to transport soy to Amazonian ports.

Biden is making the Amazon visit as part of a six-day trip to South America, the first to the continent of his presidency. He traveled from Lima, Peru, where he took part in the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

After his stop in Manaus, he was heading to Rio de Janeiro for this year’s Group of 20 leaders summit.

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Sa Pessoa reported from Sao Paulo, and Long from Washington.

BEIRUT (AP) — A rare Israeli airstrike on central Beirut killed Hezbollah’s chief spokesman on Sunday, an official with the militant group said. Earlier, officials said Israeli strikes killed at least 12 people in the Gaza Strip, where Israel has been at war with the Palestinian Hamas for over a year.

The latest in targeted killings of senior Hezbollah officials came as Lebanese officials considered a United States-led cease-fire proposal. Israel also bombed several buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has long been headquartered, after warning people to evacuate.

Mohammed Afif, the head of media relations for Hezbollah, was killed in a strike on the Arab socialist Baath party’s office in central Beirut, according to a Hezbollah official who was not authorized to brief reporters and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Afif had been especially visible after all-out war erupted between Israel and Hezbollah in September and the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike. Last month, Afif hastily wrapped up a press conference in Beirut ahead of Israeli strikes.

Screams in central Beirut

There was no Israeli evacuation warning before the strike near a busy intersection in central Beirut. An Associated Press photographer at the scene saw four bodies and four wounded people, but there was no official word on the toll. People could be seen fleeing. There was no comment from the Israeli military.

“I was asleep and awoke from the sound of the strike, and people screaming, and cars and gunfire,” said Suheil Halabi, a witness. “I was startled, honestly. This is the first time I experience it so close.”

The last Israeli strike in central Beirut was on Oct. 10, when 22 people were killed in two locations.

Hezbollah began firing rockets, missiles and drones into Israel the day after Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack ignited the war in Gaza. Israel launched retaliatory airstrikes in Lebanon and the conflict steadily escalated, erupting into war in September. Israeli forces invaded Lebanon on Oct. 1.

Hezbollah has fired dozens of projectiles into Israel daily and expanded their range to central Israel. The attacks have killed at least 76 people, including 31 soldiers, and caused some 60,000 people to flee. A rocket barrage on the northern city of Haifa on Saturday damaged a synagogue and wounded two civilians.

More than 3,400 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to the Health Ministry, and over 1.2 million driven from their homes. It is not known how many of the dead are Hezbollah fighters.

Lebanon’s army, largely on the sidelines, said an Israeli strike on Sunday hit a military center in southeastern Al-Mari, killing two soldiers and wounding two others. There was no immediate Israeli comment.

Overnight strikes in central Gaza kill 12

Israeli strikes killed six people in Nuseirat and four in Bureij, two built-up refugee camps in central Gaza dating back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation.

Two people were killed in a strike on Gaza’s main north-south highway, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah, which received all 12 bodies.

The war between Israel and Hamas began after Palestinian militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7. last year, killing about 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting around 250 others. Around 100 hostages remain in Gaza, about a third believed to be dead.

The Health Ministry in Gaza says around 43,800 Palestinians have been killed in the war. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but has said women and children make up more than half the fatalities.

Around 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians have been displaced, and large areas of the territory have been flattened by Israeli bombardment and ground operations.

Pope Francis has called for an investigation to determine if Israel’s attacks in Gaza constitute genocide, according to excerpts released Sunday from an upcoming book.

3 arrested after flares fired at Netanyahu’s home

Israeli police arrested three suspects after two flares were fired overnight at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private residence in the coastal city of Caesarea.

Netanyahu and his family were not there, authorities said. A drone launched by Hezbollah struck the residence last month, also when Netanyahu and his family were away.

The police did not provide details about the suspects, but officials pointed to domestic political critics of Netanyahu. Israel’s largely ceremonial president, Isaac Herzog, warned against “an escalation of the violence in the public sphere.”

Netanyahu has faced months of mass protests. Critics blame him for the security and intelligence failures that allowed the Oct. 7 attack to happen and for not reaching a deal with Hamas to release hostages.

Israeli minister looks to revive judiciary overhaul

Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin seized on the flare attack to call for a revival of his plans to overhaul the judiciary, which had sparked months of mass protests before the war.

“The time has come to provide full support for the restoration of the justice system and the law enforcement systems, and to put an end to anarchy, rampage, refusal and attempts to harm the prime minister,” he said in a statement.

Supporters said the judiciary changes aim to strengthen democracy by circumscribing the authority of unelected judges and turning over more powers to elected officials. Opponents see the overhaul as a power grab by Netanyahu, who is on trial on corruption charges and for an assault on a key watchdog.

Many Israelis believe the internal divisions caused by the attempted overhaul had weakened the country ahead of the Hamas assault.

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid said on X that he strongly condemns the firing of flares while blasting Levin’s proposal.

“We will not let him turn Israel into an undemocratic state,” Lapid wrote.

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Melzer reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press reporters Wafaa Shurafa in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, and Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed.

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TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — Opposition protesters in Georgia’s breakaway province of Abkhazia on Sunday refused to cede control of key government buildings seized during rallies earlier in the week during which at least 14 people were injured in clashes with police.

Demonstrators stormed the buildings Friday to protest new measures allowing Russians to buy property in the seaside region.

Protesters on Sunday continued to demand the ouster of self-styled Abkhazian President Aslan Bzhania, and one prominent politician vowed that the opposition would form a rival government if he refuses to step down.

“If our demands for the president’s resignation are not met, we will have to form a temporary government to ensure the normal functioning of state bodies,” Temur Gulia told his supporters, according to local agencies.

Bzhania, who is backed by Russia, signaled Sunday that he was prepared to step aside temporarily and hold early elections, even as he continued to slam the demonstrations as “an attempted coup d’etat.”

Opponents of the property agreement say it will drive up prices of apartments and boost Moscow’s dominance in the region.

On Saturday, Bzhania announced that he would only agree to a snap election if demonstrators vacated the region’s parliament building. But crowds that gathered in the Abkhazian capital, Sukhumi, rejected the deal and opposition leaders said they would only accept Bzhania’s unconditional resignation.

Meanwhile, protesters on Sunday began dismantling the security barriers around the government complex in Sukhumi.

One prominent opposition figure called the metal barriers a symbol of the authorities being out of touch.

“This barrier shows that the government has decided to fence itself off from its people,” Adgur Ardzinba said, according to local media.

Most of Abkhazia broke away from Georgia in fighting that ended in 1993, and Georgia lost control of the rest of the territory in the short war with Russia in 2008. Russia recognizes Abkhazia as an independent country, but many Abkhazians are concerned that the region of about 245,000 people is a client state of Moscow.

Abkhazia’s mountains and Black Sea beaches make it a popular destination for Russian tourists and the demand for holiday homes could be strong.

At least 14 people were injured Friday when opposition protesters clashed with police, Russian state agencies reported.

Lawmakers had gathered at the region’s parliament building to discuss ratifying measures allowing Russian citizens to buy property in the breakaway state. However, the session was postponed as demonstrators broke down the gate to the building’s grounds with a truck and streamed inside. Some threw rocks at police, who responded with tear gas.

The arrest of five opposition figures at a similar demonstration Monday set off widespread protests the next day in which bridges leading to Sukhumi were blocked.

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