Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who must sign the measure into law, had previously voiced support for such a ban but has also expressed concerns regarding protections for workers in the industry.

If the mayor signs it, the ban will go into effect in June of 2028.

The lead-up is meant to help the approximately 150 active carriage drives find new employment, city council speaker Julie Menin told journalists ahead of the vote.

The Transport Workers Union representing those laborers have vowed court action.

Legislative battles over the fate of the cultural tradition that’s nearly as old as Central Park itself have been ongoing for nearly two decades.

Critics say the animals suffer, pointing to deadly collapses and dangerous escapes, while advocates point to the jobs they create and the heritage they uphold.

The bill includes a provision for exploring potential compensation for license holders, Menin said.

It mandates that owners of the nearly 200 horses would not be allowed to sell them for slaughter or for the purposes of other horse-carriage businesses.

The rides — enshrined in film and television including Robert Redford and Jane Fonda’s scene in “Barefoot in the Park,” or a dramatic ride in “Sex and the City” — currently run for $150 for 45 minutes up to several hundred dollars for a marriage proposal.

But after years of wrangling over the issue this past summer season proved decisive in sounding the death knell for the Manhattan carriages.

This past June a 18-year-old tourist from India was killed by a horse that got loose and bolted.

That followed a series of other incidents with the carriages, including the deaths of several horses.

The Central Park Conservancy, which manages the US’s most frequented urban park with 42 million annual visits, even threw its weight behind the calls for a ban, saying it had become “a matter of public health and safety.”

Before hauling a single trap from picturesque Casco Bay, north of Portland, the 59-year-old lobsterboat captain counts the costs: Thirty gallons of diesel at $6.49 per gallon — nearly 45 percent up from one year ago — and three drums of increasingly expensive bait at $260 a pop.

“It’s hard to make a business plan with so many uncertainties and so much change,” Train, who works with his brother, told AFP aboard their 36-foot (11-meter) single-engine boat named “Moira Bay.”

They had just finished unloading 430 pounds (195 kilograms) of American lobster at the Portland pier. “We had a good day,” Train said.

But a storm is brewing — and the fuel costs affecting Maine’s lobster industry feature prominently in November’s midterm vote, where the state’s veteran Republican Senator Susan Collins is fighting a strong challenge from Democrat Troy Jackson.

Train said he will still back Collins because of her longtime support of Maine’s maritime workers, even if Republican President Donald Trump’s tariff policies and high fuel prices are “slapping us in the face.”

Trump is “such a wild card,” Train complained.

Other rising costs faced by the lobster industry include berthing, insurance and maintenance.

Add to those a declining catch, warming water which is pushing what Train called the lobster “sweet spot” out deeper and a shifting tariff policy, and Maine’s singular coastal heritage industry is facing peril.

Another challenge also looms: federal regulations aimed at protecting endangered North Atlantic right whales, which migrate along the East Coast and risk entanglement in the vertical lines from lobster traps to surface buoys.

For thousands of Maine families who rely on lobstering, the stakes in sustaining maritime commerce are high.

On a windy morning in Maine’s busiest lobster port of Stonington, bearded men in orange trouser bibs sort lobsters into bins, work on their steel wire traps, or prepare their boats.

The town lands 11 million pounds of lobster per year. “That’s $50 million to the local economy from 350 boats,” according to Alexa Dayton, executive director of the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries.

“We could not replace that kind of economic power,” she told AFP on the Stonington dock.

Belt-tightening afflicting millions of households is having an impact, she noted.

“The industry has really been squeezed by costs going up quite a bit… but the price of lobster is actually at its lowest” in years, Dayton said.

With the significantly decreased profits, she added, “there certainly are people who are asking themselves, is this worth it?”

– ‘Devastating consequences’ –

The Maine Department of Marine Resources said the state’s lobster harvest reached 78.8 million pounds in 2025, an eight-million-pound drop from the previous year but still three quarters of Maine’s fisheries value.

In other words, said Dayton, lobsters remain critical to Maine’s economic health.

Maine’s baby lobsters peaked in 2008, when a convergence of events including slightly warming temperatures — but not warm enough to cause thermal stress — spurred larval growth, according to professor Damian Brady, who directs the Darling Marine Center at the University of Maine.

Eight years later, when those lobsters grew to legal harvestable size, Maine landed a record of more than 100 million pounds. The catch has declined ever since, Brady said.

Climate change — which Trump dismisses as a “hoax” — is a factor, and its ripple effects are substantial.

According to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, since 1982 average annual gulf surface temperatures have warmed at nearly triple the rate of the world’s oceans.

Canada and US lobster landings have been roughly equal over the years. Today, Canada’s lobsters are “doing better,” Brady told AFP, because while temperature increases in Maine waters are stressing lobster populations, “that’s not the case up in Canada.”

As the harvest shifts, Maine’s lobstermen are sailing out to deeper waters — on bigger boats, using more diesel and crew.

The whale showdown could prove especially deleterious.

The US House of Representatives passed a bill last month freezing whale protection rules until 2035. If it fails in the Senate and requirements for whale-safe lobster operations come into force, “that would have devastating consequences” for lobstermen, Brady said.

The U.S.-sponsored talks on transitioning from the hardline socialist rule of ousted ex-president Nicolas Maduro began in August.

Washington is under pressure to organize democratic elections following its January ouster of Maduro.

It nudged interim President Delcy Rodriguez, a former Maduro loyalist who was his vice president, to negotiate with an opposition delegation led by Dinorah Figuera.

“I welcome and recognize the efforts of the parties sitting at this dialogue table to move forward in the area of political guarantees for everyone,” Rodriguez said at the end of Thursday’s meeting with the opposition, held at the presidential palace.

Figuera led a political bloc that won a majority in the 2015 National Assembly, the last legislature elected in a vote widely recognized by the international community.

The third round of talks “delivered tangible results including agreement to work to review and revise several repressive laws to increase political and social freedom and guarantee the participation of all political actors,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement.

It also hailed progress on “rebuilding an independent Supreme Court.”

Since the talks started, the process has strengthened press freedoms, restored access to more than 70 previously blocked websites, “produced an agreement to recover gold holdings in the Bank of England for earthquake relief, and advanced efforts to reform the repressive Law Against Hatred,” it said.

The statement also said the Trump administration remains committed to supporting a Venezuelan-led process toward a peaceful democratic transition.

Exiled opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has been sidelined from the negotiations, and thousands protested in Caracas and other cities on Thursday demanding her return to the country.

Washington, United States

U.S. First Lady Melania Trump said in a surprise announcement Friday she had brokered a localized ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine in the ravaged city of Oleshky, where citizens are trapped and running out of food.

Her unusual intervention comes as her husband, President Donald Trump, pursues a full end to Russia’s war with a sudden pivot to Moscow that has alarmed Kyiv.

“The situation in Oleshky is dire. Oleshky is a front-line war city on the brink of disaster,” the 56-year-old Melania Trump said in a statement released by the White House.

“It was abundantly clear that without my intervention, the possibility to bring humanitarian aid into the city and to evacuate the elderly would be impossible.”

Moscow and Kyiv both said they would observe a truce from Tuesday in the city in the southern Kherson region, which has been occupied by Russia since its 2022 invasion.

Melania Trump has been pursuing a parallel diplomatic track on Ukraine since October 2025, when she announced that she established a channel of communication with Putin.

The Slovenian-born former model has since helped reunify more than 30 children separated from their parents by the war, her office says.

– ‘Significant contribution’ –

The Kremlin praising Melania Trump’s role in arranging the truce.

“We welcome the efforts of the First Lady of the USA, Melania Trump, who has made a significant contribution to the ceasefire,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Russian and Ukrainian military top brass both confirmed that they would observe the ceasefire from 0100 GMT on Tuesday — two days earlier than Melania Trump’s statement had said it would start.

President Trump also hailed his wife, telling reporters that the Oleshky ceasefire was “her initiative” and she wanted to “save children.”

Asked if Melania could participate in trilateral Ukraine-Russia-US peace talks that the Kremlin says will resume in Abu Dhabi next month, Trump replied: “No, but it’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

Trump’s comments reflected his mercurial approach to the Ukraine war, with the US leader recently feuding once again with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Zelensky complained on Friday that Ukraine was still having problems using the military-grade version of the Starlink communications service, a day after Trump said tech titan Elon Musk had restored access.

“Unfortunately the speed limits on Starlink and Starshield are still there,” Zelensky told the Hudson Institute thinktank. He said Kyiv was also waiting for US interceptor missiles to protect it from Russian strikes.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham separately “underlined the importance for Ukraine to have full access to Starlink” in a call with Trump on Friday, Downing Street said.

But Trump told reporters he would speak to Musk if there was still an issue. “If there is a problem, I will get it straightened out,” he said.

– Food shortages –

The U.S. leader has pivoted back towards Moscow over the past two weeks, announcing a diesel deal that he hopes will bring down oil prices sent soaring by the Iran war and postponing sanctions on Russia.

Moscow has in exchange freed a U.S. detainee — and now apparently given Trump’s wife a gift.

Melania Trump said she had worked with the Russian and Ukrainian leaderships on the Oleshky plan. Civilian leaders from both countries would both visit the devastated city to assess aid needs, she said.

“Residents who wish to evacuate will receive coordinated support and transportation to their preferred destination. I anticipate some will want to go to Russia, and some to Ukraine,” she said.

An “impartial American media organization” would accompany Russian and Ukrainian teams to ensure residents’ wishes were respected, she added, without naming the outlet.

Oleshky, on the southern bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson region, was seized by Russian troops in 2022. The population has dropped from about 24,000 before Russia invaded to around 2,000 today.

Former residents of the city told AFP earlier this month that people there were caught in the crossfire between Russia and Ukraine and facing worsening shortages of food and medication.

The two sides did not specify a value for the agreement, which comes as the Pentagon seeks to strike multi-year deals to expand American weapons production and boost the U.S. defense industrial base.

The announcement “cements (the plane’s) role as the free world’s key frontline fighter for years ahead,” Lockheed Chairman, President and CEO Jim Taiclet said on a call with investors.

F-35s — which Washington’s forces have used in combat during the US-Israeli war against Iran — come in three versions that can cost more than $100 million per plane.

The “framework agreement,” which the Pentagon said would “modernize and expand” the F-35 program, still requires congressional approval and funding.

“We have fundamentally changed how we stabilize the American defense industrial base to produce at speed and scale,” top acquisition official Michael Duffey said in the Pentagon’s announcement.

“By aligning financial incentives with actual performance, we are ensuring our warfighters are equipped with the lethal capabilities they need to fight and win,” Duffey said.

The F-35, a joint project between the United States and a number of allies, is one of the world’s most advanced military aircraft. There are more than 1,375 F-35s based around the world, according to Lockheed.

The deal, if approved, would give Washington a “predictable, affordable, and resilient” fighter jet program, Lockheed said, pointing to billions of dollars in expected savings thanks to “long-term pricing and industry volume discounts.”

– ‘Greater certainty’ –

In exchange for the Pentagon’s 10-year commitment, Lockheed Martin will fund $7 billion in projects supporting the F-35s, the Pentagon said.

“With the greater certainty that comes from the US government’s transformative approach to F-35 production and sustainment, we can make the upfront investments needed to expand capacity, improve efficiency, and build a more resilient supply chain,” Lockheed’s Taiclet said in a statement.

“That’s good for the taxpayer, good for our suppliers and, most importantly, good for the United States and its allies,” he added.

In addition to the F-35s themselves, the agreement also covers “initial spares, 10 years of modification kits and sustainment, and international customer orders,” Lockheed said.

There is significant international interest in the aircraft, with the United States recently announcing the approval of a $24.3 billion sale of 48 of the stealth planes to Saudi Arabia last month.

Turkey, which was expelled from the F-35 program in 2019 over its purchase of a Russian air defense system, recently expressed confidence that it would regain access to the jets — a move that is strongly opposed by Israel.

Lockheed said the F-35 program will support more than 315,000 jobs and generate nearly $80 billion in economic activity in the next 10 years, “strengthening the nation’s industrial base and providing long-term stability for suppliers.”

The company on Thursday announced better-than-expected earnings for the third quarter, once again benefiting from higher activity levels across all of its segments.

Lockheed shares surged more than seven percent in Thursday trading, closing at $590.2.q