NEW YORK (AP) — Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced his resignation Tuesday over a barrage of sexual harassment allegations in a fall from grace a year after he was widely hailed nationally for his detailed daily briefings and leadership during some of the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

By turns defiant and chastened, the 63-year-old Democrat emphatically denied intentionally mistreating women and called the pressure for his ouster politically motivated. But he said that fighting back in this “too hot” political climate would subject the state to months of turmoil.

“The best way I can help now is if I step aside and let government get back to governing,” Cuomo said in a televised address.

The third-term governor’s resignation, which will take effect in two weeks, was announced as momentum built in the Legislature to remove him by impeachment and after nearly the entire Democratic establishment had turned against him, with President Joe Biden joining those calling on him to resign.

The decision came a week after New York’s attorney general released the results of an investigation that found Cuomo sexually harassed at least 11 women.

Investigators said he subjected women to unwanted kisses; groped their breasts or buttocks or otherwise touched them inappropriately; made insinuating remarks about their looks and their sex lives; and created a work environment “rife with fear and intimidation.”

At the same time, Cuomo was under fire over the discovery that his administration had concealed thousands of COVID-19 deaths among nursing home patients.

Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a 62-year-old Democrat and former member of Congress from the Buffalo area, will become the state’s 57th governor and the first woman to hold the post. She said Cuomo’s resignation was “the right thing to do and in the best interest of New Yorkers.”

The #MeToo-era scandal cut short not just a career but a dynasty: Cuomo’s father, Mario Cuomo, was governor in the 1980s and ’90s, and the younger Cuomo was often mentioned as a potential presidential candidate. Even as the scandal mushroomed, he was planning to run for reelection in 2022.

Republicans exulted in Cuomo’s departure but still urged impeachment, which could prevent him from running for office again. “This resignation is simply an attempt to avoid real accountability,” state GOP chair Nick Langworthy said.

At the White House, Biden said: “I respect the governor’s decision.” At the same time, he said Cuomo had “done a helluva job” on infrastructure and voting rights, and “that’s why it’s so sad.”

“From the beginning, I simply asked that the governor stop his abusive behavior,” Lindsey Boylan, the first woman to accuse Cuomo publicly of harassment, tweeted Tuesday. “It became abundantly clear he was unable to do that, instead attacking and blaming victims until the end.”

Cuomo still faces the possibility of criminal charges, with a number of prosecutors around the state continuing to investigate him. At least one of his accusers has filed a criminal complaint.

The governor prefaced his resignation with a 45-minute defense from his lawyer and his own insistence that his behavior — while sometimes insensitive, off-putting or “too familiar” — had been used against him as a weapon in a political environment where “rashness has replaced reasonableness.”

“I am a fighter, and my instinct is to fight through this controversy because I truly believe it is politically motivated. I believe it is unfair and it is untruthful,” he said, but added that he didn’t want “distractions” to consume the state government as it grapples with the pandemic and other problems.

The string of accusations began in news reports last December and went on for months. Cuomo called some of the allegations fabricated and denied he touched anyone inappropriately. But he acknowledged making some aides uncomfortable with comments he said he intended as playful, and he apologized for some of his behavior.

He portrayed some encounters as misunderstandings attributable to “generational or cultural” differences, invoking his upbringing in an affectionate Italian American family.

The attorney general’s investigation backed up the women’s accounts and added lurid new ones, turning up the pressure on Cuomo. Investigators also said that the governor’s staff retaliated against Boylan by leaking confidential personnel files about her.

As governor, Cuomo proclaimed himself a “progressive Democrat” who gets things done: Since taking office in 2011, he helped push through legislation that legalized gay marriage, began lifting the minimum wage to $15 and expanded paid family leave benefits. He also backed big infrastructure projects, including a new Hudson River bridge that he named after his father.

At the same time he was engaging in the behavior that got him into trouble, he was publicly championing the #MeToo movement and surrounding himself with women’s rights activists. He signed into law sweeping new protections against sexual harassment and lengthened the statute of limitations in rape cases.

His resignation is “a testament to the growing power of women’s voices since the beginning of the #MeToo movement,” said Debra Katz, a lawyer for one of his accusers, Charlotte Bennett.

Cuomo’s national popularity soared during the harrowing spring of 2020, when New York was the lethal epicenter of the nation’s coronavirus outbreak and he became President Donald Trump’s chief antagonist in the minds of many Americans.

Cuomo’s tough-minded but compassionate rhetoric made for riveting television well beyond New York, as he sternly warned people to stay home and wear masks while Trump often brushed off the virus. Cuomo’s briefings won an international Emmy Award, and he went on to write a book on leadership in a crisis.

But those accomplishments were soon tainted when it emerged that the state’s official count of nursing home deaths had excluded many victims who had been transferred to hospitals before they succumbed. A Cuomo aide acknowledged the administration feared the true numbers would be “used against us” by the Trump White House.

Also, Cuomo’s administration was fiercely criticized for forcing nursing homes to accept patients recovering from the virus.

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating the state’s handling of data on nursing home deaths. In addition, the state attorney general is looking into whether Cuomo broke the law in using members of his staff to help write and promote his book, from which he stood to make more than $5 million.

The governor also faced increasing criticism over his rough and sometimes vindictive treatment of fellow politicians and his own staff, with former aides telling stories of a brutal work environment.

Cuomo has been divorced since 2005 from author and activist Kerry Kennedy, a member of the Kennedy family, and was romantically involved up until 2019 with TV lifestyle personality Sandra Lee. He has three adult daughters and appealed to them as he stepped down.

“I want them to know, from the bottom of my heart: I never did, and I never would, intentionally disrespect a woman or treat any woman differently than I would want them treated,” he said. “Your dad made mistakes. And he apologized. And he learned from it. And that’s what life is all about.”

Cuomo got his start in politics as his father’s hard-nosed and often ruthless campaign manager, then was New York attorney general and U.S. housing secretary under President Bill Clinton before getting elected governor in 2010.

New York has seen a string of high-level politicians brought down in disgrace in recent years.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in 2008 in a prostitution scandal. Rep. Anthony Weiner went to prison for sexting with a 15-year-old girl. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman stepped down in 2018 after four women accused him of abuse. And the Legislature’s top two leaders were convicted of corruption.

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Story: Marina Villeneuve. Villeneuve reported from Albany, New York. Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz in New York and Josh Boak in Washington contributed.

GENEVA (AP) — The U.N.-appointed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a new report Monday summarizing the latest authoritative scientific information about global warming. Here are five important takeaways.

BLAMING HUMANS

The report says almost all of the warming that has occurred since pre-industrial times was caused by the release of heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. Much of that is the result of humans burning fossil fuels — coal, oil, wood and natural gas.

The authors say global temperatures have already risen by 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 19th century, reaching their highest in over 100,000 years, and only a fraction of that increase can have come from natural forces.

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PARIS GOALS

Almost all countries have signed up to the 2015 Paris climate accord, which aims to limit global warming to an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial average by the year 2100. The agreements says that ideally the increase would be no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

But the report’s 200-plus authors looked at five scenarios and concluded that all will see the world cross the 1.5-degree threshold in the 2030s — sooner than in previous predictions. Three of those scenarios will also see temperatures rise 2 degrees Celsius.

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DIRE CONSEQUENCES

The 3,000-plus-page report concludes that ice melt and sea level rise are already accelerating. Wild weather events — from storms to heat waves — are also expected to worsen and become more frequent.

Further warming is “locked in” due to the greenhouse gases humans have already released into the atmosphere. That means even if emissions are drastically cut, some changes will be “irreversible” for centuries, the report said.

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SOME HOPE

While many of the report’s predictions paint a grim picture of humans’ impact on the planet and the consequences that will have going forward, the IPCC also found that so-called tipping points, like catastrophic ice sheet collapses and the abrupt slowdown of ocean currents, are “low likelihood,” though they cannot be ruled out.

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BIG CATCH

Although temperatures are expected to overshoot the 1.5-degree-Celsius target in the next decade, the report suggests that warming could be brought back down to this level through what are known as “negative emissions.” That means sucking more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere than is added, effectively cooling the planet again. The panel said that could be done starting about halfway through this century but doesn’t explain how, and many scientists are skeptical it’s possible.

TOKYO (AP) — They’ll always have Paris.

That thought, full of promise, has been a lifebuoy for athletes to cling to as they coped, as best they could, with thickets of restrictions at the pandemic-hit Tokyo Games that severely crimped their Olympic experience — and left some hungry for more.

Barred from bringing family and friends with them to Japan, playing in empty arenas and not allowed to sightsee in Tokyo, some athletes found themselves day-dreaming about the French capital’s Olympic rendezvous in 2024. If the coronavirus is tamed by then, the Paris Games could quickly become the party games. Already, there is palpable pent-up eagerness among athletes to make up for Tokyo and its disappointments.

“When Paris happens, I’ll be like, ’OK, wow, like this is a whole new energy. This is it,'” said U.S. skateboarder Mariah Duran. “Maybe I had to have the appetizer before the whole meal.”

For now, Paris officials say they’re betting that the pandemic will be over when their turn comes. “Normally, we’ll be able to party,” the city’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, said Sunday on French TV when Tokyo passed the baton.

But if the coronavirus is still ruining the best-laid plans, then Tokyo has served up a model of how to hold an Olympics even as infections are surging. It pared the games down to their most essential ingredient: competition. No spectators. No city-wide partying. Very little mingling between Olympians and their hosts. Paris officials were watching closely and say that while they hope for the best, they’ll also plan for the worst.

Toughest for many Tokyo Olympians was not being accompanied to Japan by loved ones who had no choice but to watch them compete on TV. American surfer Carissa Moore said it was “a huge challenge” being separated from her husband and his “strong constant voice.”

Moore ultimately found her footing to win gold in surfing’s debut as an Olympic sport. As painful as separation was, Tokyo was also a learning experience for the Hawaiian. “I’m very proud of myself, to be here and stand on my own two feet,” she said.

Traveling without her parents for the first time at age 17, U.S. skateboarder Brighton Zeuner compensated by staying closely connected even during her competition, video-calling her father from the Olympic skate bowl “between every single run I did.”

To limit infection risks, organizers also asked athletes to arrive in Tokyo no earlier than five days before competing and leave within 48 hours of being done — a rapid turnaround that further truncated the Olympic experience.

Belgian skateboarder Axel Cruysberghs, who competed in week one, and his skateboarding wife Lizzie Armanto, who competed in week two, passed each other like ships in the night. As she took off for Tokyo, his flight back to their home was 20 minutes from landing.

“It worked out for our puppy,” she joked. But it wasn’t the fairy-tale Olympics they’d planned before the pandemic.

“We’d hoped to like be here for a month together and, you know, I could see his event and he could stay for mine,” Armanto said. “But because of COVID and everything … ”

Armanto came away from Tokyo having not made up her mind about whether she wants to go again in Paris. In an Instagram livestream from the Olympic residential compound where athletes were largely confined when not training or competing, she was wrestling with cabin fever, complaining of rooms that “feel a little prison-like” and wishing that organizers hadn’t barred athletes from going to watch sports other than their own in their downtime.

“I’ve circled the perimeter quite a few times because what else do you do here?” Armanto asked.

Not being able to pass the time at sports venues was a common complaint.

“That’s something I would have liked to have experienced as an Olympian, to go watch my other teammates, other than wrestlers, compete,” said Elias Kuosmanen of Finland, who wrestled in the Greco-Roman heavyweight class.

At the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Canadian volleyball player Nicholas Hoag took in gymnastics and track and field on off days, went out for drinks with teammates and otherwise absorbed the Olympic experience. But on days with no matches in Tokyo, “I was watching TV pretty much all day, watching all the sports.”

Another Canadian volleyballer, Ryan Sclater, said the pandemic games were “a real mix of amazing things and weird things” and somewhat blunted by social distancing and mask wearing. Athletes were asked not to mingle outside their teams and avoid “unnecessary” hugs, high-fives and handshakes — guidance they frequently ignored in the heat and joy of competition.

“We are not quite connecting in the same way that we normally could,” Sclater said. “It’s funny being so close to all these amazing people who are here to compete but then not quite getting to know them in the same way as you might at a different Olympics.”

But because the pandemic delayed Tokyo by a year, Paris is now only a three-year waitinstead of the usual four.

“That is exciting, yes, to think about being able to do this again,” Sclater said. “To see even more of the beauty and coolness of people coming together and being able to really connect to the Olympics.”

Story: John Leicester

TOKYO (AP) — Nagasaki on Monday marked the 76th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of the Japanese city with its mayor urging Japan, the United States and Russia to do more to eliminate nuclear weapons.

In his speech at the Nagasaki Peace Park, Mayor Tomihisa Taue urged Japan’s government to take the lead in creating a nuclear-free zone in Northeast Asia rather than staying under the U.S. nuclear umbrella — a reference to the U.S. promise to use its own nuclear weapons to defend allies without them.

Taue also singled out the United States and Russia — which have the biggest arsenals by far — to do more for nuclear disarmament, as he raised concern that nuclear states have backtracked from disarmament efforts and are upgrading and miniaturizing nuclear weapons.

“Please look into building a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Northeast Asia that would create a ‘non-nuclear umbrella’ instead of a ‘nuclear umbrella’ and be a step in the direction of a world free of nuclear weapons,” Taue said as he urged Japan’s government to do more to take action for nuclear disarmament.

At 11:02 a.m., the moment the B-29 bomber dropped a plutonium bomb, Nagasaki survivors and other participants in the ceremony stood in a minute of silence to honor more than 70,000 lives lost.

The Aug. 9, 1945, bombing came three days after the United States made the world’s first atomic attack on Hiroshima, killing 140,000. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, ending World War II.

The mayor also called Japan’s government and lawmakers to quickly sign the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that took effect in January.

Tokyo renounces its own possession, production or hosting of nuclear weapons, but as a U.S. ally Japan hosts 50,000 American troops and is protected by the U.S. nuclear umbrella. The post-WWII security arrangement complicates the push to get Japan to sign the treaty as it beefs up its own military while stepping up defense cooperation with other nuclear-weapons states such as Britain and France, to deal with threats from North Korea and China, among others.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said the security environment is severe and that global views are deeply divided over nuclear disarmament, and that it is necessary to remove distrust by promoting dialogue and form a mutual ground for discussion.

Taue also called for a substantial progress toward nuclear disarmament made at next year’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty conference, “starting with greater steps by the U.S. and Russia to reduce nuclear weapons.”

He asked Suga’s government to step up and speed up medical and welfare support for the aging atomic bombing survivors, or hibakusha, whose average age is now over 83 years.

Story: Mari Yamaguchi