Almost 200 nations accepted a contentious climate compromise Saturday aimed at keeping a key global warming target alive, but it contained a last-minute change that watered down crucial language about coal.Several countries, including small island states, said they were deeply disappointed by the change promoted by India to “phase down,” rather than “phase out” coal power, the single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions.Nation after nation had complained earlier on the final day of two weeks of U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland about how the deal did not go far or fast enough, but they said it was better than nothing and provided incremental progress, if not success.Negotiators from Switzerland and Mexico called the coal language change against the rules because it came so late. However, they said they had no choice but to hold their noses and go along with it.Swiss environment minister Simonetta Sommaruga said the change will make it harder to achieve the international goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times.“Our fragile planet is hanging by a thread,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. “We are still knocking on the door of climate catastrophe.”Many other nations and climate campaigners pointed at India for making demands that weakened the final agreement."India’s last-minute change to the language to phase down but not phase out coal is quite shocking,” said Australian climate scientist Bill Hare, who tracks world emission pledges for the science-based Climate Action Tracker. “India has long been a blocker on climate action, but I have never seen it done so publicly.”Others approached the deal from a more positive perspective. In addition to the revised coal language, the Glasgow Climate Pact included enough financial incentives to almost satisfy poorer nations and solved a long-standing problem to pave the way for carbon trading.The agreement also says big carbon polluting nations have to come back and submit stronger emission-cutting pledges by the end of 2022.“It’s a good deal for the world,” U.S. climate envoy John Kerry told The Associated Press. “It’s got a few problems, but it’s all in all a very good deal.”Before the India change, negotiators said the deal preserved, albeit barely, the overarching goal of limiting Earth's warming by the end of the century to 1.5 degrees. The world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to preindustrial times.Ahead of the Glasgow talks, the United Nations had set three criteria for success, and none of them were achieved. The U.N.‘s criteria included pledges to cut carbon dioxide emissions in half by 2030, $100 billion in financial aid from rich nations to poor, and ensuring that half of that money went to helping the developing world adapt to the worst effects of climate change.“We did not achieve these goals at this conference,” Guterres said Saturday night. “But we have some building blocks for progress."Negotiators Saturday used the word “progress” more than 20 times, but rarely used the word “success” and then mostly in that they’ve reached a conclusion, not about the details in the agreement. Conference President Alok Sharma said the deal drives “progress on coal, cars, cash and trees’’ and is “something meaningful for our people and our planet.’’Environmental activists were measured in their not-quite-glowing assessments, issued before India’s last-minute change.“It’s meek, it’s weak and the 1.5 C goal is only just alive, but a signal has been sent that the era of coal is ending. And that matters,” said Greenpeace International Executive Director Jennifer Morgan, a veteran of the U.N. climate talks known as the Conferences of Parties.Former Irish President Mary Robinson, speaking for a group of retired leaders called The Elders, said the pact represents “some progress, but nowhere near enough to avoid climate disaster... People will see this as a historically shameful dereliction of duty.”Next year’s talks are scheduled to take place in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Dubai will host the meeting in 2023.___Aniruddha Ghosal, Karl Ritter and Ellen Knickmeyer contributed to this report.

A criminal complaint filed by a police investigator with a court in Albany has accused former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo of committing a misdemeanor sex crime, though there were reports Friday that the document might have been submitted in error.The brief complaint, filed by an investigator with the Albany County Sheriff's Office, accused Cuomo of putting his hand under a woman's shirt on Dec. 7, 2020. The document didn't name the woman but Cuomo had been publicly accused of groping an aide, Brittany Commisso, at the executive mansion in Albany last year.The Albany County district attorney’s office and Albany County Sheriff did not immediately return messages but the Times Union, of Albany, quoted unnamed officials as saying the complaint had been issued "prematurely" by the court and that a final decision hadn't been made about whether Cuomo would face charges.Related video above: Full video of Andrew Cuomo announcing resignation.Cuomo's lawyer and spokesperson didn't immediately return messages seeking comment.Commisso, who was an executive assistant for Cuomo, says he reached under her shirt and fondled her when they were alone in a room at the governor's mansion in Albany late last year.She said Cuomo pulled her in for a hug as she prepared to leave the governor’s office at the mansion. When she told him, "you’re going to get us in trouble," Cuomo replied, "I don’t care," and slammed the door shut, according to her account. Commisso said Cuomo slid his hand up her blouse and grabbed her breast.Cuomo has adamantly denied groping her, saying once, "I would have to lose my mind to do such a thing."The Associated Press doesn’t usually identify alleged sexual assault victims unless they decide to tell their stories publicly, as Commisso has done in newspaper and television interviews.Commisso filed a complaint with the county sheriff in August in the same week a report from state Attorney General Letitia James concluded the Democratic governor sexually harassed 11 women and worked to retaliate against one of his accusers. Other accusations outlined in the report range from planting unwanted kisses to asking unwelcome personal questions about sex and dating.Cuomo announced his resignation a week after the release of the blistering report, marking a dramatic downfall for the third-term governor who had been seen as a beacon of sturdy competence during his daily COVID-19 briefings in 2020.Commisso was referred to as "Executive Assistant #1" in the report but publicly revealed her identity after its release. She is the only woman mentioned in the attorney general's report known to have filed a criminal complaint.Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple at the time promised a "very comprehensive" investigation in partnership Albany County District Attorney David Soares.Cuomo attorney Rita Glavin has said that Commisso's "story changed over time."The complaint filed by the sheriff's department investigator said evidence in the case included police blackberry messages, cell phone records, building security records and a text message from Cuomo's mobile phone.District attorneys in Oswego, Manhattan, suburban Westchester and Nassau counties also had said they asked for investigative materials from the attorney general’s inquiry to see if any of the allegations could result in criminal charges.Also, the Assembly Judiciary Committee is completing a wide-ranging impeachment investigation of Cuomo that began before he resigned. The also were looking at the administration’s handling of COVID-19 data and efforts to rush COVID-19 testing for Cuomo’s inner circle in spring 2020.

Related video above: The future of Jeffrey Epstein's Zorro Ranch in New MexicoThe two Bureau of Prisons workers tasked with guarding Jeffrey Epstein the night he killed himself in a New York jail have admitted they falsified records, but they will skirt any time behind bars under a deal with federal prosecutors, authorities said Friday.The prison workers, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, were accused of sleeping and browsing the internet instead of monitoring Epstein the night he took his own life in August 2019.They were charged with lying on prison records to make it seem as though they had made required checks on the financier before he was found in his cell. New York City’s medical examiner ruled Epstein’s death a suicide.As part of the deal with prosecutors, they will enter into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department and will serve no time behind bars, according to a letter from federal prosecutors that was filed in court papers Friday. Noel and Thomas would instead be subjected to supervised release, would be required to complete 100 hours of community service and would be required to fully cooperate with an ongoing probe by the Justice Department’s inspector general, it says.The two have "admitted that they 'willfully and knowingly completed materially false count and round slips regarding required counts and rounds'" in the housing unit where Epstein was being held, the letter says.The deal would need to be approved by a judge, which could happen as soon as next week. Attorneys for the guards did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.Sen. Ben Sasse, a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who has been a vocal critic of the Justice Department’s handling of Epstein’s case, called the deal "unacceptable" and said the public deserves to see a report detailing the prison agency’s failures."One hundred hours of community service is a joke — this isn’t traffic court," Sasse said in a statement. "The leader of an international child sex trafficking ring escaped justice, his co-conspirators had their secrets go to the grave with him, and these guards are going to be picking up trash on the side of the road."Prosecutors alleged that Noel and Thomas sat at their desks just 15 feet from Epstein’s cell, shopped online for furniture and motorcycles, and walked around the unit’s common area instead of making required rounds every 30 minutes.During one two-hour period, both appeared to have been asleep, according to the indictment filed against them.Both officers who were guarding Epstein were working overtime because of staffing shortages. One of the guards, who did not primarily work as a correctional officer, was working a fifth straight day of overtime. The other guard was working mandatory overtime, meaning a second eight-hour shift of the day.Before they were arrested, both officers had declined a plea deal with federal prosecutors.Epstein's death and the revelation that he was able to kill himself while behind bars at one of the most secure jails in America was a major embarrassment for the Bureau of Prisons and cast a spotlight on the agency, which has also been besieged by serious misconduct in recent years.Staffing shortages at the agency are so severe that guards often work overtime day after day or are forced to work mandatory double shifts. Violence leads to regular lockdowns at federal prison compounds across the U.S. And a congressional report released in 2019 found that "bad behavior is ignored or covered up on a regular basis."The falsification of records has been a problem throughout the federal prison system. Union officials have long argued that the reduction of staff is putting both guards and inmates in danger, but they’ve faced an uphill battle getting attention.