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The White House issued a major clarification Saturday to its new H-1B visa policy that had rattled the tech industry, saying a $100,000 fee will be a “one-time” payment imposed only on new applicants.US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, in announcing the major fee increase on Friday, said it would be paid annually, and would apply to people seeking a new visa as well as renewals.But White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a clarification on Saturday, hours before the new policy was to go into effect.”This is NOT an annual fee. It’s a one-time fee that applies… only to new visas, not renewals, and not current visa holders,” she said in a social media post. The executive order, which is likely to face legal challenges, comes into force Sunday at 12:01 am US Eastern time (0401 GMT), or 9:01 pm Saturday on the Pacific Coast.Prior to the White House’s clarification, US companies were scrambling to figure out the implications for their foreign workers, with several reportedly warning their employees not to leave the country.Some people who were already on planes preparing to leave the country on Friday de-boarded over fears they may not be allowed to re-enter the United States, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.”Those who already hold H-1B visas and are currently outside of the country right now will NOT be charged $100,000 to re-enter,” Leavitt said.”H-1B visa holders can leave and re-enter the country to the same extent as they normally would,” she added.H-1B visas allow companies to sponsor foreign workers with specialized skills — such as scientists, engineers, and computer programmers — to work in the United States, initially for three years but extendable to six.Such visas are widely used by the tech industry. Indian nationals account for nearly three-quarters of the permits allotted via lottery system each year.The United States approved approximately 400,000 H-1B visas in 2024, two-thirds of which were renewals.- India, US business concerns -US President Donald Trump announced the change in Washington on Friday, arguing it would support American workers.The H-1B program “has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor,” the executive order said.Trump also introduced a $1 million “gold card” residency program he had previewed months earlier.”The main thing is, we’re going to have great people coming in, and they’re going to be paying,” Trump told reporters as he signed the orders in the Oval Office.Lutnick, who joined Trump in the Oval Office, said multiple times that the fee would be applied annually.”The company needs to decide… is the person valuable enough to have $100,000 a year payment to the government? Or they should head home and they should go hire an American,” he told reporters.Though he claimed that “all the big companies are on board,” many businesses were left confused about the details of the H-1B order.US bank JPMorgan confirmed that a memo had been sent to its employees with H-1B visas advising them to remain in the United States and avoid international travel until further guidance was issued.Tech entrepreneurs — including Trump’s former ally Elon Musk — have warned against targeting H-1B visas, saying that the United States does not have enough homegrown talent to fill important tech sector job vacancies.India’s foreign ministry said the mobility of skilled talent had contributed to “innovation” and “wealth creation” in both countries and that it would assess the changes.It said in a statement the new measure would likely have “humanitarian consequences by way of the disruption caused for families,” which it hoped would be addressed by US authorities.

A deal for the Chinese parent company of popular video-sharing app TikTok to sell its US operations would see the creation of a board dominated by Americans, the White House said Saturday.”There will be seven seats on the board that controls the app in the United States, and six of those seats will be Americans,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News.She said a deal could be signed “in the coming days.”The United States has forcefully sought to take TikTok’s US operations out of the hands of Chinese parent company ByteDance for national security reasons.Under President Donald Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, the US Congress passed a law to force ByteDance to sell its US operations or face a ban of the app.US policymakers, including in Trump’s first term, have warned that China could use TikTok to mine data from Americans or exert influence on what they see on social media.But Trump turned to the platform, which is hugely popular with young Americans, to garner support during his ultimately successful 2024 presidential campaign.The Republican president has repeatedly pushed off implementation of the ban while a deal has been sought.Investors reportedly being eyed to take over the app include Oracle, the tech firm owned by Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people — and a major Trump supporter.Leavitt seemed to confirm Oracle’s participation.”The data and privacy will be led by one of America’s greatest tech companies, Oracle, and the algorithm will also be controlled by America as well,” she told Fox News.”So all of those details have already been agreed upon. Now we just need this deal to be signed.”Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed the matter in a phone call on Friday.Trump said that Xi “approved” the deal during the phone call but then said, “We have to get it signed.” China did not confirm any agreement.”We’re going to have a very, very tight control,” Trump said. “There’s tremendous value with TikTok, and I’m a little prejudiced because I frankly did so well on it.”The Wall Street Journal, quoting sources familiar with the talks, reported that the US government could receive a multi-billion-dollar fee from investors as part of the deal.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday he would meet US counterpart Donald Trump on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly next week as Russia intensified deadly strikes across his country.Russia carried out one of its largest aerial attacks, firing 40 missiles and some 580 drones at Ukraine in a nightime barrage that killed at least three people and wounded dozens, Zelensky said.A Ukrainian strike killed four people in Russia’s southwestern Samara region, the local governor said, in one of the deadliest Ukrainian strikes since Russia launched its invasion in 2022.Zelensky said he would discuss security guarantees for Ukraine and sanctions on Russia during the talks with Trump in New York.Ukraine has insisted on Western-backed security guarantees to prevent future Russian attacks. Russian President Vladimir Putin has however warned that any Western troops in Ukraine would be unacceptable and legitimate targets.A US-led push for a quick end to the war has stalled and Russia effectively ruled out a  Putin-Zelensky meeting — something that Kyiv says is the only way towards peace.”We expect sanctions if there is no meeting between the leaders or, for example, no ceasefire,” Zelensky said in comments released by the Ukrainian presidency.”We are ready for a meeting with Putin. I have spoken about this. Both bilateral and trilateral. He is not ready,” Zelensky added.In Russia’s latest aerial assault, “a missile with cluster munitions directly struck an apartment building” in the central city of Dnipro, Zelensky said on social media.He posted pictures of cars and a building on fire and rescuers carrying a person to safety amid rubble scattered nearby.In the Dnipropetrovsk region, the strikes killed one person and wounded at least 30 people, with one man in a serious condition, regional governor Sergiy Lysak said.- ‘Intense’ fighting -The strikes come a day after three Russian fighter jets violated the airspace of Estonia — a NATO member on the alliance’s eastern flank — an allegation Moscow denied.But it triggered fears in the West of a dangerous new provocation from Moscow after Poland last week complained that around 20 Russian drones overflew its territory.Zelensky repeated the call for “joint solutions” to shoot down drones over Ukraine “together with other countries”.Russia, which has been chipping away at Ukrainian territory for months, announced on Saturday its troops had captured the village of Berezove in the Dnipropetrovsk region.In the northeastern Kharkiv region, there were “intense actions” in the key area of Kupiansk, Zelensky said, referring to a rail hub Ukraine recaptured in a 2022 offensive.In Russia, four people were killed “in an enemy drone attack last night,” Samara governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said on social media.He earlier said “fuel and energy facilities” were targeted, without specifying the damage.Ukrainian General Staff said “strategic objects of the Russian aggressor were struck”, adding its forces “inflicted damage” on the Saratov Oil Refinery and struck the Novokuybyshevsk Oil Refinery in the Samara region.A source in Ukraine’s SBU security agency said Ukrainian drone strikes “have stopped the operation of a number of oil pumping stations in Russia”.”It is this infrastructure that brings oil-dollar superprofits to the Russian budget, which fuel the war against Ukraine. Work to block these cash flows will continue,” the source said.The Russian defence ministry said its air defence alert systems “intercepted and destroyed” 149 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 27 over the Saratov region and 15 over the Samara region.Three rounds of direct talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul this year only produced prisoner exchanges. Russia has maintained hardline demands, including that Ukraine fully cedes the eastern Donbas region — parts of which it still controls.Kyiv has rejected territorial concessions and wants European troops to be deployed to Ukraine as a peacekeeping force, something Moscow considers unacceptable.

The Pentagon has unveiled new restrictions on media covering the US military, requiring them to pledge not to disclose anything not formally authorized for publication and limiting their movements within the Department of War.The new guidelines, laid out in a lengthy memo distributed to reporters on Friday, require them to sign an affidavit promising to comply — or risk losing their media credentials.The move is the latest by the administration of President Donald Trump to control media coverage of his policies, and after he suggested that negative stories could be “illegal.”The Pentagon “remains committed to transparency to promote accountability and public trust,” the memo says.But it adds: “Information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified” — effectively barring material sourced to unnamed officials.This new restriction would apply to both classified and “controlled unclassified information.”The memo also details sweeping new restrictions on where Pentagon reporters can actually go without official escorts within the military’s vast headquarters just outside Washington.”The ‘press’ does not run the Pentagon — the people do,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on X.”The press is no longer allowed to roam the halls of a secure facility. Wear a badge and follow the rules — or go home.”The new rules come months after Hegseth faced stark criticism for revealing timings of US air strikes on Yemen’s Huthi rebels in a Signal group chat that inadvertently included a reporter.Hegseth — a former Fox News co-host and Army National Guard veteran — was also reported to have shared those details in a separate Signal group chain that included his wife.A spokesperson for The New York Times — a frequent target of Trump’s ire — called the new rules “yet another step in a concerning pattern of reducing access to what the US military is undertaking at taxpayer expense.”National Press Club President Mike Balsamo hit out at the new rules, and called on the Pentagon to quickly rescind them.”If the news about our military must first be approved by the government, then the public is no longer getting independent reporting,” Balsamo said in a statement. “It is getting only what officials want them to see. That should alarm every American.”

India’s leading IT trade body said on Saturday it was concerned by a new annual $100,000 fee that US President Donald Trump ordered for H-1B skilled worker visas, an addition that could have major repercussions for the tech industry where such permits are widespread.The foreign ministry in New Delhi also said the new measure, which will likely face legal challenges, would cause “disruption” for the families of H-1B visa holders.Such visas allow companies to sponsor foreign workers with specialised skills — such as scientists, engineers, and computer programmers — to work in the United States, initially for three years but extendable to six.The United States awards 85,000 H-1B visas per year on a lottery system, with India accounting for around three-quarters of the recipients.India’s top IT industry body Nasscom said the new measure would hit “business continuity” and was also concerned by the short timeline, with the new fee coming into effect on Sunday.”A one-day deadline creates considerable uncertainty for businesses, professionals, and students across the world,” Nasscom said in a statement.”Policy changes of this scale are best introduced with adequate transition periods, allowing organisations and individuals to plan effectively and minimise disruption,” it said.Trump announced the change in Washington on Friday, along with the introduction of a $1 million “gold card” residency programme he had previewed months earlier.”The main thing is, we’re going to have great people coming in, and they’re going to be paying,” Trump told reporters as he signed the orders in the Oval Office.India’s foreign ministry said the mobility of skilled talent had contributed to “technology development, innovation, economic growth, competitiveness and wealth creation” in both countries and that it would assess the changes.It said in a statement the new measure would likely have “humanitarian consequences by way of the disruption caused for families”, which it hoped would be addressed by US authorities.- Not enough homegrown talent -Large technology firms rely on Indian workers who either relocate to the United States or come and go between the two countries.US bank JPMorgan confirmed that a memo had been sent to its employees with H-1B visas advising them to remain in the United States and avoid international travel until further guidance was issued.Tech entrepreneurs — including Trump’s former ally Elon Musk — have warned against targeting H-1B visas, saying that the United States does not have enough homegrown talent to fill important tech sector job vacancies.However, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who joined Trump in the Oval Office, said: “All the big companies are on board.”Trump has had the H-1B program in his sights since his first term in office, but faced court challenges to his earlier approach, which targeted the types of jobs that qualify.The current iteration has become the latest move in the major immigration crackdown of his second term.The number of H-1B visa applications has risen sharply in recent years, with a peak in approvals in 2022 under Democratic president Joe Biden.In contrast, the peak in rejections was recorded in 2018, during Trump’s first term in the White House.The United States approved approximately 400,000 H-1B visas in 2024, two-thirds of which were renewals.Trump also signed an order on Friday creating a new expedited pathway to US residency for people who pay $1 million, or for corporate sponsors to pay $2 million.”I think it’s going to be tremendously successful,” he said.South Korea’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday officials would “comprehensively assess the impact of these measures on the advancement of (South Korean) companies and professional talents into the US market and engage in necessary communication with the US”.Hundreds of South Koreans were detained during a US immigration raid on a Hyundai-LG battery factory site in the state of Georgia this month.

Amid a threat of towering US tariffs, Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis is seeking ways to enable Americans to pay less for their medicines, its chief said in an interview published Saturday.Vasant Narasimhan told the Swiss daily Neue Zurcher Zeitung (NZZ) that his company was “working to eliminate the price gap between the US and other industrialised countries”.”We are working with the government and trying to find constructive solutions so that Americans pay less for their medicines,” he told the Swiss daily.While pharmaceutical products have been spared so far from the tariffs Washington has slapped on its trading partners, US President Donald Trump has threatened to hit the entire sector with tariffs of as much as 250 percent if drug prices do not drop.Narasimhan suggested it made sense to bring down US prices.”It is a fact that American patients pay for a large part of the innovations,” he acknowledged to the NZZ, insisting that “countries outside the US will have to contribute a larger share in the future”.Pharmaceutical companies are meanwhile facing massive pressure from the Trump administration to move production to the United States.Novartis already announced in April that it plans to invest $23 billion in the United States over five years. The goal was “to manufacture the most important products for the American market locally”, he said, adding that it would “probably take three to four years to get there”.But he estimated the company could “make significant shifts within the next two years”, including carrying out some of the final filling and packaging in the United States.These efforts, he said, should allow Novartis to weather the situation if pharmaceuticals are hit with the same tariffs Washington has already slapped on other exports from the European countries where it has most of its production.Washington is currently taxing imports from the EU at 15 percent and from Switzerland at 39 percent.Novartis’s rapid US expansion “should allow us to fully mitigate any tariffs”, Narasimhan said. The company was “more concerned about the tariffs for the entire industry”, he acknowledged.Narasimhan said he was not worried about finding enough workers to staff Novartis’s new US factories, anticipating that massive pharmaceutical industry investment pledges would boost the US education system to turn out more specialists.He added that many pharmaceutical factory processes were “fully automated”.”We only need a total of 1,000 to 1,500 additional workers to operate our planned new factories in the US,” he said.”That’s manageable.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would meet US counterpart Donald Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly next week as Russia intensified strikes across his country.Russia carried out one of its largest aerial attacks overnight, firing 40 missiles and some 580 drones at Ukraine in a barrage that killed at least three people and wounded dozens, Zelensky said Saturday.A Ukrainian strike, meanwhile, killed four people in Russia’s southwestern Samara region, local governor said, in one of the deadliest Ukrainian retaliatory strikes on Russia since Moscow launched its invasion in 2022.Zelensky said he would hold “a meeting with the President of the United States”, adding he would discuss security guarantees for Ukraine and sanctions on Russia during the talks with Trump.Ukraine has insisted on Western-backed security guarantees to prevent future Russian attacks. Russian President Vladimir Putin has however warned that any Western troops in Ukraine would be unacceptable and legitimate targets.A US-led push for a quick end to the war has stalled and Russia effectively ruled out a meeting between Putin and Zelensky — something that Kyiv says is the only way towards peace.”We expect sanctions if there is no meeting between the leaders or, for example, no ceasefire,” Zelensky said in comments released by the Ukrainian presidency on Saturday.”We are ready for a meeting with Putin. I have spoken about this. Both bilateral and trilateral. He is not ready,” Zelensky added.In Russia’s latest aerial assault of Ukraine, “a missile with cluster munitions directly struck an apartment building” in the central city of Dnipro, Zelensky said earlier on social media.He posted pictures of cars and a building on fire and rescuers carrying a person to safety amid rubble scattered nearby.In the Dnipropetrovsk region, the strikes killed one person and wounded at least 30, with one man in a serious condition, regional governor Sergiy Lysak said.- ‘Intense’ fighting -The strikes come a day after three Russian fighter jets violated the airspace of Estonia — a NATO member on the alliance’s eastern flank — an allegation Moscow denied.But it triggered fears in the West of a dangerous new provocation from Moscow after Poland last week complained that around 20 Russian drones overflew its territory.Zelensky repeated the call for “joint solutions” to shoot down drones over Ukraine “together with other countries”.Russia, which has been chipping away at Ukrainian territory for months, announced on Saturday its troops had captured the village of Berezove in the Dnipropetrovsk region.In the northeastern Kharkiv region, “intense actions” were ongoing in the key area of Kupiansk, Zelensky said, referring to a rail hub Ukraine recaptured in its 2022 offensive.In Russia, four people were killed “in an enemy drone attack last night,” Samara governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said on social media.He earlier said “fuel and energy facilities” were targeted, without specifying the damage.Ukrainian General Staff said “strategic objects of the Russian aggressor were struck”, adding its forces “inflicted damage” on the Saratov Oil Refinery and struck the Novokuybyshevsk Oil Refinery in the Samara region.”Preliminary information indicates that explosions and fires were recorded at the site as a result of the strike,” it said on social media.The Russian defence ministry said on Saturday its air defence alert systems “intercepted and destroyed” 149 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 27 over the Saratov region and 15 over the Samara region.Three rounds of direct peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul have failed to yield anything more than large-scale prisoner exchanges.Russia has maintained a series of hardline demands, including that Ukraine fully cedes the eastern Donbas region — parts of which it still controls.Kyiv has rejected territorial concessions and wants European troops to be deployed to Ukraine as a peacekeeping force, something Moscow sees as unacceptable.

US President Donald Trump hailed on Friday a call with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, claiming a deal to sell blockbuster app TikTok could be a “formality” and saying he would visit China, which gave a more cautious assessment of their talks.The leaders of the world’s two largest economies spoke by telephone for the second time since the return to the White House of Trump, who has tried to keep a lid on tensions despite his once virulent criticism of China.The United States has forcefully sought to take TikTok, the social media platform hugely popular with young Americans that Trump has also used to garner support, out of Chinese hands.Trump said that Xi “approved” the deal during the phone call, but later said: “We have to get it signed… I guess it could be a formality.” China did not confirm any agreement.”We’re going to have a very, very tight control,” Trump said. “There’s tremendous value with TikTok, and I’m a little prejudiced because I frankly did so well on it.”He also said that Xi promised to work with the United States on ending the war in Ukraine, where China is accused by Western nations of indirectly supporting Russia’s invasion, even though Beijing says it is a neutral party.Trump said earlier in a post on Truth Social that he and Xi “made progress on many very important issues” including TikTok.He said he would meet Xi on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea starting at the end of next month and that he would travel to China next year.Trump said Xi would also visit the United States at an unspecified time and that the two leaders would speak again by telephone.- Chinese warning on ‘market rules’ -China offered a sterner take on the talks.”On the TikTok issue, Xi noted that China’s position is clear: the Chinese government respects the will of enterprises and welcomes them to conduct business negotiations based on market rules, to reach solutions that balance interests and comply with Chinese laws and regulations,” a statement said.”China hopes the US side will provide an open, fair, and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese companies investing in the United States,” it added.It described the call as “frank and in-depth.”Last year, during Joe Biden’s presidency, the US Congress passed a law to force TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to sell its US operations or face the app’s ban, citing national security concerns.US policymakers, including in Trump’s first term, have warned that China could use TikTok to mine data from Americans or exert influence on what they see on social media.But Trump, an avid social media user, on Tuesday once again put off a ban of the app.In a statement early on Saturday, ByteDance thanked Xi and Trump “for their concern about TikTok.””ByteDance will move forward with the relevant work in accordance with Chinese law, ensuring that TikTok US continues to serve its vast American user base,” the company said.Investors reportedly being eyed to take over the app include Oracle, the tech firm owned by Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.Ellison is a supporter of Trump, meaning TikTok could become the latest media or social media app to come under the influence of the president.- China ‘hardball’ -Wendy Cutler, a former US trade official who is now senior vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute, said that many details, including who would control the algorithm powering TikTok, were still unclear and many other irritants remained.”Beijing is displaying a willingness to play hardball, and a need to get paid by Washington for any concessions it makes,” she said.While on the campaign trail, Trump bashed China relentlessly as an enemy, but since returning to office he has spoken of his strong relationship with Xi.Both sides dramatically hiked tariffs against each other during a months-long dispute earlier this year, disrupting global supply chains.Washington and Beijing then reached a deal to reduce levies, with the United States imposing 30 percent duties on imports of Chinese goods and China hitting US products with a 10 percent tariff. The deal expires in November.The phone talks came after Trump accused Xi of conspiring against the United States with a major military parade to mark the end of World War II that brought the leaders of Russia and North Korea to Beijing.The Chinese statement said Xi voiced appreciation to Trump for the US role in World War II.burs-sct/sla/mjw/fox

Venezuela on Friday accused the United States of waging an “undeclared war” in the Caribbean and called for a UN probe of American strikes that have killed over a dozen alleged drug traffickers on boats in recent weeks.Washington has deployed warships to international waters off Venezuela’s coast, backed by F-35 fighters sent to Puerto Rico in what it calls an anti-drug operation.”It is an undeclared war, and you can already see how people, whether or not they are drug traffickers, have been executed in the Caribbean Sea. Executed without the right to a defense,” Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez said as he attended a military exercise in response to the US “threat.”His remarks came just hours before US President Donald Trump announced another military strike on a boat, claiming three more alleged “narcoterrorists” were killed, bringing the total number of deaths in recent weeks to 17.He did not say when the attack took place, and only specified that it occurred in the US Southern Command area of responsibility, which includes Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean.The strikes have prompted debate over the legality of the killings, with drug trafficking itself not a capital offense under US law.Washington has also not provided specific details to back up its claims that the boats targeted have actually been trafficking drugs.Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab claimed that “the use of missiles and nuclear weapons to murder defenseless fishermen on a small boat are crimes against humanity that must be investigated by the UN.”The biggest US naval deployment in the Caribbean in decades has stoked fears the United States is planning to attack Venezuelan territory.On Wednesday, Venezuela launched three days of military exercises on its Caribbean island of La Orchila in response to the perceived threat from a US flotilla of seven ships and a nuclear-powered submarine.La Orchila is close to the area where the United States intercepted and held a Venezuelan fishing vessel for eight hours over the weekend.- ‘Imperial plan’ -Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom the United States does not recognize as legitimate and accuses of running a drug cartel, has urged citizens to join militia training to “defend the homeland.”Late Thursday, he announced that troops will provide residents of low-income neighborhoods with weapons training.Maduro, for whom Washington has issued a $50 million bounty on drug trafficking charges, suspects the Trump administration of planning an invasion in pursuit.Trump had said on Tuesday that US forces “knocked off” three boats crossing the Caribbean, but Washington only provided details and video footage of two of the strikes.Maduro accused the United States of hatching “an imperial plan for regime change and to impose a US puppet government… to come and steal our oil.”He has repeatedly vowed Caracas will exercise its “legitimate right to defend itself” against US aggression.Opposition figure Henrique Capriles, a two-time presidential candidate and staunch Maduro critic, said Friday he would not support any US invasion.”I continue to believe that the solution is not military, but political,” he said, adding that Trump’s actions were counterproductive and “entrenching those in power.”He called for the release of nearly a thousand dissidents locked up under Maduro, and for the Venezuelan government to show goodwill in foreign relations.

The rights and wrongs of the horse-drawn carriages that carry tourists around New York’s Central Park have been loudly debated for years, but the mayor has signalled they may be at the end of the track.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 rides, which cost $150 for 45 minutes to several hundred dollars for a marriage proposal (no refunds), are popular with visitors to the Big Apple’s most famous natural attraction, which draws 42 million people annually.Native New Yorkers however have been calling for the rides to banned “for so long,” according to animal rights campaign group PETA’s outreach director, Ashley Byrne.The group leading the charge against tourist carriages, NYCLASS, was founded in 2008 and, in 2022, a survey found 71 percent of New York voters were against them.Mayor Eric Adams recently weighed in on the emotive debate and called on the city council to rein in the practice as he cannot do so himself.He also signed an order allowing for the voluntary surrender of carriage licenses and supporting the re-employment of the 170 people involved in the carriage trade while also hardening animal welfare and safety checks.- Hurdles to reelection -The summer season proved decisive in sounding the death knell for the Manhattan carriages, Byrne said.”This has been a summer where the danger and cruelty of this industry has been on full public display. Between (carriage horse) Lady dropping dead in the streets, four different incidents — that we know of — of horses breaking loose, spooking and running wild,” she said.The Central Park Conservancy, which manages the US’s most visited urban park, also threw its weight behind the calls for a ban.”With visitation to the Park growing to record levels, we feel strongly that banning horse carriages has become a matter of public health and safety for Park visitors,” Conservancy chief executive Elizabeth W. Smith wrote to city leaders.One way to phase out the carriages would be for the city council to adopt legislation first proposed in 2022 by councillor Robert Holden, who applauded the mayor’s intervention. But the union representing carriage drivers says “developers have long sought to see the carriage-horse stables…vacated so they can build skyscrapers” and that Adams “has betrayed working class New Yorkers.”Carriage driver Christina Hansen added that “this is good work for horses” which number about 200 and benefit from comprehensive veterinary care and “are highly regulated.”Hansen says that the far greater threat to park users are the ubiquitous ebikes and escooters.As early as 2007, a democratic city councilor unsuccessfully sought a ban after failing to garner support from powerful then-mayor Michael Bloomberg.His successor Bill de Blasio campaigned on a ban — but only managed regulation of the industry which bills itself as a custodian of New York’s cultural heritage.But Adams’s window to abolish the carriages is closing — New York goes to the polls on November 4 and polling suggests the sitting mayor is unlikely to clear the final fence.