(GLASGOW, Scotland.) — COP26 is underway with President Biden looking to put the United States back at the center of the global effort on climate change.
After leading the globe with the signing of the Paris Climate Accords, a groundbreaking climate agreement changed signed by nearly 200 countries during the Obama presidency, The United States took a step back when President Trump was in office. The former president pulled the United States out of the Paris agreement, removed clean water protections, and opened up federal land for gas and oil drilling.
President Biden has put climate change at the center of his domestic agenda and foreign policy and has re-entered the Paris agreement. The president has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030, and the president’s human infrastructure bill would put $555 billion toward clean energy and climate investments.
Climate experts say that may not be enough.
“We do need to find a way to increase our ambition in the US,” said Radley Horton, a climate scientist at Columbia University. “People are looking to the US. Historically, the US has been responsible for an outsized share per capita of greenhouse gas emissions.”
President Biden will sit down with world leaders at COP26, but he will not be able to sit down with the leaders of two high-pollution, China and Russia. Both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping will be participating virtually, citing the Covid situation in each country.
The goal of COP26 is to set new targets for cutting emissions to limit warming to 1.5 degrees celsius and recommitting to help developing nations tackle climate change.
“Responsibility rests with each and every country, and we must all play our part. Because on climate, the world will succeed, or fail, as one,” said Alok Sharma, President of COP 26, during a recent speech.
Climate activists are calling for immediate, large-scale action to cut emissions and reverse global warming trends.
“They need to show they’ve understood the science, listen to their people and go much further than they’ve been stating thus far,” said Jennifer Morgan, the executive director of Greenpeace International.
World leaders hope to build on the 2015 Paris agreement when they pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to limit the warming of the planet to below 2 degrees Celsius, the number scientists say is needed to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
But experts say the commitments are inadequate.
“It’s been estimated that very few countries, just a handful, had large enough ambitious enough targets, to begin with,“ said Horton.
A recent analysis by the United Nations found that even if nations meet their current promises, the planet will still be on pace to see an average temperature increase of 2.7 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. The UN Emissions Gap report found that current commitments will only reduce greenhouse gases by 7.5% by 2030 when 55% percent is needed to achieve the Paris goal.
“The climate crisis is pummeling the planet,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said during his speech at the UN General assembly.
Climate activists say the Glasgow Summit needs to produce significant actions and not just rhetoric from world leaders.
“All we hear from our so-called leaders is words — words that sound great but so far has led to no action,” said teen activist Greta Thunberg, during the Youth4Climate conference in Milan, Italy earlier this month. “Our hopes and dreams drown in their empty words and promises.”
The United States has seen the effects of climate change first hand this year. Nearly every part of the country has seen record-breaking wildfires, storms, or flooding this year.
“[The] extreme weather that we’re seeing is only going to come more frequently and with more ferocity,” the president said during a trip to Colorado in September. “We’re blinking code red as a nation.”
As of October 8th, the United States has seen 18 weather or climate events that have caused at least a billion dollars in damages, according to NOAA. This year is outpacing 2021, which had 22 billion-dollar disasters, the most of all time.
(MEXICO CITY) — A large explosion attributed to a gas leak in east-central Mexico’s Puebla state has left at least one dead, 15 injured and damaged between 30 to 50 buildings, local government authorities are reporting.
Search and rescue crews are working to find people who could be trapped under collapsed buildings.
Around 1:34 a.m. local time, a gas leak was reported and around 2,000 people within 1 kilometer of the leak were evacuated, Puebla State Government officials said at a press conference Sunday.
The first of three explosions happened at 2:50 a.m., which officials said may have been caused by an illegal tap.
Of those hospitalized, four are minors and seven are adults. Five people are listed in serious condition, officials said.
“It is regrettable that one person has lost his/her life so far, and fifteen more are injured, due to the explosion of a Pemex pipeline in Puebla,” Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said in a statement Sunday. “Pemex has the fire under control and will ensure that families evicted from their homes remain safe.”
ABC News’ Anne Lauren contributed to this report.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Photo by Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images
(VATICAN CITY) — As President Joe Biden embarked on only his second overseas trip, he started with a personally poignant audience with Pope Francis on Friday, the first time in more than half a century that a Roman Catholic U.S. leader has met at the Vatican with the head of the Catholic Church.
The White House said the private meeting lasted about 90 minutes, unusually long.
Biden, only the second Catholic elected president after John Fitzgerald Kennedy, spoke of the moment’s significance last month.
“I happen to be a practicing Catholic and one of the things I like about my pope today is he’s all about renewal and forgiveness, that’s what that’s what he’s about. And I look forward to — I hope I get to see him in the not-too-distant future,” Biden said in September.
In a statement after Friday’s meeting, the White House said “President Biden thanked His Holiness for his advocacy for the world’s poor and those suffering from hunger, conflict, and persecution. He lauded Pope Francis’ leadership in fighting the climate crisis, as well as his advocacy to ensure the pandemic ends for everyone through vaccine sharing and an equitable global economic recovery.”
At one point, the two men exchanged gifts.
“I’m not sure this is appropriate, but, there is a tradition in America that the president has what is called a command coin that he gives to warriors and leaders, and you are the most significant warrior for peace I’ve ever met,” Biden can be heard explaining to Francis in edited footage released by the Vatican, as an interpreter shares the message with the pope. The Vatican did not allow U.S. news photographers inside.
Biden described the symbols on the coin, and the personal connection it has to his late son, Beau, telling Francis he knew Beau would want him to have it.
“It has the U.S. seal in the front. … I know my son would want me to give this to you because on the back of it, I have the state of Delaware in the 261st Unit my son served with,” Biden said.
Later, at a photo op with Italian President Sergio Mattarella, ABC’s Ben Gittleson asked Biden how the meeting went.
“Wonderful,” Biden replied. When asked what they discussed, he answered, “A lot of personal things.”
Overshadowing the meeting, though, was criticism from conservative U.S. bishops over Biden’s political position on abortion.
This is not the first time the two have met. In fact, the pair have spent more time together than perhaps any previous U.S. president and pope — a distinction not lost on Shaun Casey, a senior fellow at Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University.
“They’ve known each other for the entire papacy. And this will not be their first meeting, which I think makes it fairly unique in American presidential history, it may be even in papal history that these two guys know each other to a degree that no other analogous pair do.” said Casey, who served as a special representative for religion, and global affairs to Secretary of State John Kerry during the Obama administration.
“These guys know each other, and I think they’re comfortable with each other and they have a relationship that seems to be very warm and very genuine.”
Biden and the pope
As vice president, Biden attended Francis’ inauguration in 2013, and helped shepherd him during his visit in Washington in 2015, before once again meeting Francis at the Vatican in 2016 for a conference on regenerative medicine.
Francis’ visit to the United States was particularly touching for Biden, coming just a few months after the passing of his son, Beau, from glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, that May.
“He asked to meet with the family in the hangar in the airport as he was leaving in Philly,” Biden recalled of Francis in an interview with CBS “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert last year.
“He came in. We had 16 family members there, and he didn’t just speak about Beau, he spoke in detail about Beau, about who he was and about family values and about forgiveness and about decency. I mean, he is — I am a great admirer of His Holiness, I really am,” Biden continued.
He keeps a photo of himself and Francis in the Oval Office.
Yet, Biden’s political views have sometimes put him at odds with the church on issues like gay marriage and abortion, issues that still divide him and Francis. Despite that, the two men share similar views when it comes to helping the poor, the need to address climate change and combatting the pandemic.
According to Casey, Francis places the church’s “pastoral” role above its “theological” one — an outlook that bonds him with the American president.
“Biden draws meaning and sustenance and healing from how the church has been with him during his grief over his long public career. And so in essence, there’s a pastoral bond there, in addition to the sort of social teachings bond that they share.
Francis is not the only pope Biden has met in his nearly 50 years in Washington. Biden also met with Pope Benedict XVI in 2011, and in 1980, the then-senator met for 45 minutes with Pope John Paul II.
“He kept kidding me about how young I am,” Biden told The Dialogue, the newspaper of the Wilmington, Delaware, diocese following the meeting.
Biden also recalled “discussions with the pope were relatively uninterrupted, even though several times during their conversation aides knocked on the library door, only to be waved away by John Paul.”
‘My religion defines who I am’
Biden is perhaps the most publicly religiously observant president the country has seen since Jimmy Carter. He attends Mass almost every weekend and on holy days of obligation, very often accompanied by family members, and wears Beau’s rosary beads on his wrist.
“My religion defines who I am,” Biden said during the 2012 vice presidential debate. “I’ve been a practicing Catholic my whole life. And it has particularly informed my social doctrine. Catholic social doctrine talks about taking care of those who — who can’t take care of themselves, people who need help.”
Biden attended Catholic school growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Claymont, Delaware, and has cited his faith as helping him to weather some major traumas in his life, including the death of his young wife and daughter in a 1972 traffic accident, and his son in 2015.
“I never miss Mass,” Biden said last August. “It is part of who I am. It’s what gets me through the very difficult times in my life, and I believe it very strongly.”
But even as he acknowledges the profound impact his religious devotion has had on his life, Biden largely deems his faith to be a “private matter” and not open for public discussion.
“I don’t proselytize. This is just a private thing with me and I feel very — my faith … means a great deal to me. And it’s been sort of my salvation,” Biden said in 2019.
But Biden’s private faith has become the subject of a major public debate during his presidency. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has criticized him for his stance on abortion, and voted to draft guidance on who should be able to receive the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist — the consecrated host Catholics believe is the Body of Christ.
Biden, who campaigned on codifying Roe v. Wade, and announced his opposition to the Hyde Amendment, which prevents the use of public funds for abortions, during the 2020 campaign, has drawn a line between his public and private views of the issue.
“My position is that I am personally opposed to abortion, but I don’t think I have a right to impose my view on the rest of society,” Biden wrote in his 2007 memoir.
That position has caused problems for Biden in the past. In 2019, Biden was denied Communion at a South Carolina Catholic church while campaigning for president.
“Any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself or herself outside of Church teaching. As a priest, it is my responsibility to minister to those souls entrusted to my care, and I must do so even in the most difficult situations. I will keep Mr. Biden in my prayers,” Rev. Robert Morey of St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in Florence, South Carolina, said in a statement.
For his part, Biden brushed off the incident as a one-off event, saying, “it’s not a position I’ve found anywhere else, including from the Holy Father who gives me Communion.”
A vote on the new guidance for Eucharistic eligibility, pushed by conservative bishops, is set to take place in mid-November, and would require support from two-thirds of the conference to be implemented, but the effort has not been received warmly by the Vatican.
Francis has made clear that Holy Communion is “not a prize for the perfect,” and does not believe in denying Communion.
“What must the pastor do?” Francis asked aboard the papal plane in September. “Be a pastor, don’t go condemning. Be a pastor, because he is a pastor also for the excommunicated.”
“The bishops here in the U.S. cannot miss the symbolism of the warm embrace of Joe Biden by Pope Francis,” Casey said of the visit.
Even if approved, implementation would be up to local bishops. The Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Wilton Gregory, has also said he does not support denying Communion, as has Holy Trinity Catholic Church, which Biden attends in Washington.
“As a parish which has a long history of welcoming all, we concur with and support the pastoral approach of our Archbishop. Holy Trinity Catholic Church will not deny the Eucharist to persons presenting themselves to receive it,” the parish said in a statement.
When Biden was asked about the effort earlier this year, he simply replied, “That’s a private matter, and I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
(NEW YORK) — Britain’s Prince Andrew faces a deadline Friday to file a response to a sexual assault lawsuit filed against him in New York by an alleged victim of deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Virginia Giuffre, 38, claims she was directed by Epstein and his former associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, to have sex with the prince at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion and elsewhere in 2001, before she turned 18.
Prince Andrew and Maxwell have both denied Giuffre’s allegations.
According to a letter filed earlier this week by Andrew Brettler, a California-based attorney for the prince, the second son of Queen Elizabeth II, intends to file a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
During a telephonic hearing in the case earlier this month, Brettler assailed Giuffre’s lawsuit as “baseless, non-viable and potentially unlawful.”
Among the royal’s arguments for dismissal is his claim that a settlement agreement Giuffre signed with Epstein in 2009 “releases [the prince] and others from any and all liability, including any purported liability arising from the claims Ms. Giuffre asserted against Prince Andrew here.”
But Giuffre’s attorneys contend that the prince’s attempt to rely on the previous settlement agreement with Epstein to forestall the case is destined to fail.
“There is no evidence from any of the parties to the release, or Prince Andrew, that the release was ever intended to include Prince Andrew, and we believe the evidence will be that it wasn’t,” wrote Giuffre’s lawyer, David Boies, in a court filing earlier this month.
The prince’s legal team recently received a copy of the 2009 settlement from Giuffre’s attorneys, but it will not be filed publicly this week. The deal’s contents have been placed under seal by another judge in a related lawsuit. Any references to the particulars of the agreement are expected to be redacted from the prince’s submissions to the court.
Giuffre’s lawsuit, filed on Aug. 9, seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages and accuses Andrew, 61, of sexual assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
“Twenty years ago, Prince Andrew’s wealth, power, position, and connections enabled him to abuse a frightened, vulnerable child with no one there to protect her. It is long past the time for him to be held to account,” the lawsuit states.
Giuffre, now a 38-year-old mother living in Australia, first accused the prince of sexual abuse in public court filings in December 2014, in a case brought by alleged Epstein victims against the U.S. Department of Justice. That lawsuit challenged Epstein’s lenient deal with federal prosecutors in Florida in 2008.
Her claims were met then with vehement denials from Maxwell and from Buckingham Palace on behalf of the prince.
“It is emphatically denied that [Prince Andrew] had any form of sexual contact or relationship with [Giuffre]. The allegations made are false and without any foundation,” the palace said in a statement.
After Epstein’s death while awaiting trial on child sex-trafficking charges, the prince once again found himself under scrutiny for his prior association with the disgraced financier.
In a 2019 interview with the BBC, Andrew denied having sexual contact with Giuffre and claimed to have no recollection of ever meeting her.
“I’ve said consistently and frequently that we never had any sort of sexual contact whatever,” the prince said, responding to a question about allegations from Giuffre.
U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who is overseeing Giuffre’s case, has scheduled the next hearing for Nov. 3.
(WASHINGTON) — As President Joe Biden jets off to Europe to meet with allies, some of the United States’ closest partners are still wondering if America is truly “back” as Biden proclaimed earlier this year.
Cautious about Biden’s domestic standing, and smarting from his lack of coordination on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, they are concerned whether his presidency truly represents a break from the isolationist, confrontational foreign policies of his predecessor, President Donald Trump, according to U.S. foreign policy experts.
Biden’s second trip abroad as president will take him to Rome and Scotland, where he’ll attend international summits aimed at tackling the coronavirus pandemic, global finance and the climate crisis.
But the excitement over Biden’s arrival on the world stage has belied the fact that he’s continued some key Trump policies, such as tariffs on China and a general pivot — started under President Barack Obama — toward Asia and the Pacific. Congressional inaction on fighting climate change also has the potential to weaken Biden’s hand.
“I think there was probably too high expectation that we could just turn the page of the last four years, or maybe we attributed to Trump some policies that were more structural, such as the U.S. shift to China and to the Indo-Pacific,” Benjamin Haddad, the senior director of the Europe Center at the Atlantic Council, told ABC News.
Is America really ‘back’?
When the president took to the world stage for his first trip abroad, with a June trip to the United Kingdom, Belgium and Switzerland, he and other world leaders celebrated the United States’ changed tone.
Biden preached multilateralism, which Trump had maligned for four years. And European allies rejoiced.
When Macron met the U.S. president during a summit in England, the French leader told reporters that he “definitely” believed “America is back.”
“I think it’s great,” Macron said, “to have the U.S. president part of the club and very willing to cooperate.”
But French-U.S. relations hit a major snag last month when the Biden administration announced it would sell Australia nuclear submarines — resulting in Australia canceling a major defense deal with France.
France recalled its ambassador from Washington in response to the so-called “sub snub,” and its foreign minister compared Biden’s style to Trump’s.
But since then, Biden and Macron have sought to repair ties: They held a phone call last week, have launched meetings between senior officials from both countries, and on Friday, plan to meet in Rome. Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Paris next month, too, according to her office.
“In many ways, this is not just about the French,” Célia Belin, an expert on trans-Atlantic relations at the Brookings Institution, told ABC News. “It goes to the core of the conversation that the U.S. should be having with their allies, which is, what do you actually expect from European allies in the Indo-Pacific?”
What’s at stake in Rome and Glasgow
Before those major hiccups, Biden’s reception in Europe stood in stark contrast with the constant spats — both personal and policy-wise — between U.S. allies and Trump.
Calling his foreign policy “America First,” Trump actively sought to lessen American commitments abroad.
He pulled the United States out of international organizations and treaties and publicly called on allies to pay more for defense. His fights with foreign leaders marred the international summits he did attend.
Biden campaigned in large part on reversing the damage he said Trump had caused, and when he won the presidency, U.S. allies rattled by years of instability from Washington had high hopes of a return to the pre-Trump years.
“The decisions that the administration has taken, very much and consistent with the domestic mood and polarization, have left them quite disappointed,” Heather Conley, the director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said.
Allies are now facing the decision of whether to work independently of the United States on certain issues, uncertain whether Biden’s young administration will truly restore America’s relationship with the world, Conley said.
“I think the question for me is, moving forward, has the administration understood that these decisions have profoundly challenged and questioned our allies as far as our credibility?” she said. “Can we restore that trust?”
Biden planned to arrive in Rome late Thursday ahead of a Friday meeting with Macron, and another meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican.
In the Italian capital, the president also planned to attend a summit of the leaders of rich and developing nations known as the Group of 20, or G-20, where he plans to formalize an international agreement on a 15% minimum tax for corporations. The global response to the coronavirus pandemic and other global finance issues are also expected to take center stage.
Biden then plans to travel to Glasgow, Scotland, where on Monday and Tuesday, he is scheduled to attend the U.N. climate change conference known as COP26. The U.S. is pushing countries to cement emissions-reduction targets they had set as part of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
He won’t have the opportunity to meet in person with two leaders who play a key role on climate and security issues: Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. They plan to attend the summits virtually, citing the COVID-19 situation in their countries.
‘It’s nice to have a win’
Biden had hoped to travel abroad with two major pieces of legislation in his pocket: his bipartisan $1 trillion physical infrastructure bill, which has already passed the Senate, and his larger social package — which he calls the “Build Back Better” bill and is full of Democratic priorities like universal pre-kindergarten, expanded healthcare, guaranteed paid leave and programs to combat the climate crisis.
Strong climate provisions, in particular, could lend him credibility at COP26, showing the United States put its money where its mouth is as it hectors developing nations to commit to lowering emissions — and others to fulfill their pledges.
A recent report by the New York-based research institute Rhodium Group — frequently cited by the White House — found that the only way the U.S. could meet its goal of halving its 2005 emissions levels by 2030 would be with congressional action. Experts have questioned whether the climate provisions in the “Build Back Better” bill will have enough teeth to help the U.S. meet that target.
“I’m presenting a commitment to the world that we will, in fact, get to net zero emissions on electric power by 2035 and net zero emissions across the board by 2050 or before,” Biden said last week during a town hall hosted by CNN, referencing COP26. “But we have to do so much between now and 2030 to demonstrate what we’re going to — that we’re going to do.”
Twin legislative victories would also show allies that Biden had political strength and could push through the policies he champions when abroad. They could also help him with sagging poll numbers at home.
“For messaging purposes, it’s nice to have a win when you’re abroad that you can brag about a little bit,” Amanda Rothschild, who served as a speechwriter on the Trump White House’s National Security Council, told ABC News.
Putting money where his mouth is
The president had made clear that he wanted his $1 trillion physical infrastructure deal to pass Congress by the time he departed, and that he also wanted a deal on his larger social bill — which is expected to contain massive climate-related investments.
When it became clear in recent days that might not be possible in time for the trip, the White House has emphasized, instead, that Democratic lawmakers’ negotiations seem to be coming to a conclusion soon.
Biden’s top national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters Tuesday that U.S. allies are “excited” about the investments the president is pursuing in climate change, clean energy, infrastructure, and domestic economic growth.
“They want to see the United States making these investments,” Sullivan said. “They also recognize that the United States has a set of democratic institutions, has a Congress; that this is a process; that it needs to be worked through.”
Sullivan, though, said world leaders understood the ups and downs of policy-making.
“I think you’ve got a sophisticated set of world leaders,” he said, “who understand politics in their own country, and understand American democracy, and recognize that working through a complex, far-reaching negotiation on some of the largest investments in modern memory in the United States — that that takes time.”
Haddad, of the Atlantic Council, said European allies were less interested in the nitty gritty of legislating and more on practical matters like Republicans blocking the confirmation of most of Biden’s ambassadorial nominees.
“I don’t think the day-to-day negotiations in Congress are really being noticed in Europe,” Haddad said. “But the domestic political paralysis does have an impact on U.S. leadership.”
But if Biden arrives in Europe without those pieces of legislation in hand, “it’s going to be much harder for him to make the case, you know, the U.S. is back,” Matthew Goodman, an expert on international economic policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said.
Still, Biden’s not Trump — and even if allies are nervous, the fledgling administration still has time to gain its footing on the international front, after spending much of its time focused on the domestic economic recovery, according to Goodman, who served in the White House and State Department under President Barack Obama.
“I think the rest of the world is going to be relieved that, you know, it’s not Donald Trump at the table, frankly,” Goodman, who served in the Obama administration, said. “He was considered a very disruptive force, and so I think, by comparison, Biden’s going to be well received in that sense.”
(SEOUL, South Korea) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has seemed to have lost 44 pounds in the past two years, according to South Korean lawmakers who were briefed by the country’s intelligence agency in a closed-door meeting.
The massive weight loss has prompted rumors and conspiracies that North Korea was using a Kim Jong Un body double, which South Korea said is untrue.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service conducted the assessment “based on various scientific methods including artificial intelligence” using super-resolution video analysis and a stereometry analysis model that gauges facial fat and weight, Rep. Kim Byung-Kee of the ruling Democratic Party told reporters.
Kim’s often-reported health problems do not pose any serious issues, South Korea said. The analysis also concluded that the conspiracy theories suggesting North Korea may have been exposing a Kim Jong Un look-alike are not credible.
The most noticeable change was the disappearance of the official portraits of his father and grandfather, former leaders Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, from the main walls of official meetings. Instead, the communist regime religiously hung the two portraits in all public areas and individual homes.
“Kim seems to have been working on building a people-friendly image by releasing photos of him drinking beer and smoking together with high-level officials,” Byung-Kee said.
Kim has been more active in public appearances this year compared to the year before. So far, he has been seen through North Korean state media for a total of 70 days in 2021. In contrast, he appeared 49 times during the same time in 2020.
(TEHRAN, Iran) — Iran has agreed to restart negotiations over its nuclear program next month, its chief negotiator said Wednesday.
Those talks, in which Iran and the U.S. have engaged through intermediaries, come as the Obama-era nuclear deal hangs by a thread and amid warnings about Iran’s nuclear advances since Iran halted talks in June.
It’s unclear whether an agreement has been reached to resume talks, when they would begin and whether Iran still has preconditions like sanctions relief. Iran’s top negotiator, deputy foreign minister Ali Bagheri Kani, said the “exact date will be announced next week.”
A State Department spokesperson told ABC News the administration had “seen the reports but do not have any further details about a possible return to Vienna talks in November.”
Iran had halted those talks in the Austrian capital right before its presidential election in June, saying for months now that the new administration of hardliner Ebrahim Raisi needed time to transition and formulate his team.
But during that halt, Iran has advanced its nuclear program — expanding its stockpile of enriched uranium, enriching uranium to higher levels, spinning more centrifuges and more advanced ones — alarming U.S. officials.
It has also obstructed the work of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, whose chief said last week its monitoring ability is “no longer intact.”
The Biden administration has increasingly warned that while the door is still open to diplomacy, time is running out before restoring the deal would be pointless because of how advanced Iran’s nuclear program had become.
“This window will not remain open forever as Iran continues to take provocative nuclear steps, so we hope that they come to Vienna to negotiate quickly and in good faith,” the State Department spokesperson said Wednesday in a statement.
To critics, that window should have already been closed, while many analysts warned that Iran is still stalling, even as it talks about resuming negotiations.
“If they continue to stall while advancing their nuclear program, there may come a time when the U.S. or Israel turn to ‘plan B’,” tweeted Nicholas Miller, a Dartmouth College professor who researches nuclear proliferation.
The top U.S. negotiator, special envoy for Iran Rob Malley, said Monday there’s “shared impatience” with Iran among the U.S. and other negotiating parties — Russia, China, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the European Union, which coordinated the previous six rounds of talks.
“Time is not on our side. The JCPOA cannot survive forever,” Malley added, using an acronym for the nuclear deal’s formal name.
But there’s still a “strong preference for diplomacy, for an effort to revive the JCPOA,” he said, and said there’s “willingness” and “determination” from the Biden administration to make it happen.
On Wednesday, Bagheri met with Enrique Mora, a senior European Union diplomat who had been facilitating the talks. After their “serious and constructive conversation,” Bagheri tweeted, Iran “agreed to start negotiations by the end of November.”
But his boss, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian, also said Wednesday that while Iran would restart talks, it would not resume them with what had been agreed upon by June — jettisoning months of previous negotiations. He also called on the U.S. to release $10 billion of Iranian funds frozen by U.S. sanctions to build confidence ahead of any agreement.
That’s a sign of how far apart the new U.S. and Iranian governments are. Even if the parties convene again in Vienna, it will be a long road ahead to revive the deal.
As Abdollahian reiterated, Iran has demanded that the U.S. lift sanctions first, since it was former President Donald Trump who first violated the deal by exiting and reimposing sanctions. But President Joe Biden has committed to not lifting any sanctions until Iran returns to compliance — what his administration calls a “mutual return” to the deal — amid continued domestic criticism of the original agreement in Washington.
In the meantime, as Iranian centrifuges continue to spin, Iran hawks in the U.S. and Israel warn that it’s too late for diplomacy and that other options, including a possible military strike, must be considered.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has not engaged questions about a strike but told reporters two weeks ago the Biden administration was considering “every option to deal with the challenge posed by Iran.”
“We, of course, retain all other options to be able to deal with this program as necessary,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Tuesday. “But beyond that, I’m not going to comment further because we believe there still is an opportunity to resolve this diplomatically.”
(LONDON) — A college at the University of Cambridge is set to return an artifact looted by British soldiers to Nigeria, in a move described as “the first institutional return of its kind.”
On Wednesday, Jesus College Cambridge will hand over a statue of a cockerel — a young rooster — to Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments. The statue is a Benin Bronze, part of a collection of artifacts stolen from the Kingdom of Benin in modern-day Nigeria by British soldiers in 1897. Many of the other Benin Bronzes are on display at the British Museum.
The return comes amid growing pressure in Western countries to return artifacts looted during colonization.
“This is an historic moment,” Sonita Alleyne, Master of Jesus College, said in a statement. “We look forward to welcoming representatives from Nigeria and Benin to the handover ceremony and to celebrating the return of this Bronze.”
“This is the right thing to do out of respect for the unique heritage and history of this artifact,” she added.
The Nigerian government has welcomed the return of the statue.
“We thank Jesus College for being a trailblazer and we look forward to a similar return of our artifacts by other institutions that are in possession of them,” Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the Minister for Information and Culture, said in a statement.
This week, British media reported that the Nigerian government had sent a formal letter to the British Museum, which holds the largest collection of Benin Bronzes, requesting the return of the artifacts.
In France, the Quai Branly Museum is also set to return 26 Benin Bronzes, with the collection on display until the end of the month before they are sent to Nigeria. Germany is also set to return hundreds of looted artifacts to Nigeria.
“This return offers new hope for amicable resolution in cultural property ownership disputes,” Professor Abba Isa Tijani, the Director-General of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments of Nigeria, said. “We hope that it will set a precedent for others around the world who are still doubtful of this new evolving approach whereby nations and institutions agree with source nations on return without rancour.”
“On our part, the National Commission for Museums and Monuments is receiving this antiquity for the benefit of the Benin people and the people of Nigeria,” he added.
(LONDON) — Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II will not travel to Scotland next week as planned as she continues to follow doctors’ advice to rest.
The queen had been scheduled to attend an evening reception next Monday at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP26, in Glasgow.
Instead, Queen Elizabeth, 95, will stay at Windsor Castle and deliver an address to attendees via a recorded video message, Buckingham Palace said in a statement Tuesday.
The palace noted the queen was “disappointed not to attend” and said she has been “undertaking light duties” at Windsor Castle and “following advice to rest.”
The queen spent one night in the hospital last week for “preliminary investigations.” She was released the next day, on Oct. 21, and was back at her desk at Windsor Castle that afternoon, a palace spokesperson confirmed last week.
The queen made her first public appearance since her hospitalization on Tuesday, when she held a virtual audience at Windsor Castle to receive South Korea’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Gunn Kim.
The queen, wearing a yellow dress and a pearl necklace, spoke with the ambassador via video link from the royal residence in England’s Berkshire county, where she has been staying since her hospitalization.
Last week, Queen Elizabeth hosted a reception at Windsor Castle for a global investment summit where she met with leaders, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and U.S. climate envoy John Kerry.
Just prior to her hospitalization, Queen Elizabeth was also forced to cancel a trip to Northern Ireland under orders from her medical team to rest.
(YAKUTSK, Russia) — Thirty years ago, the road out from the village of Mai was flat. So were the fields around it, enough that local people used to play football on them.
But today, the road and fields around this town in the remote Siberian region of Yakutia, are strangely warped, an expanse of wavy ground and weird bubble-like mounds, that a drive over will bounce passengers out of their seats.
“This plot of land was very flat. In 1994, we played football, volleyball on it,” Petr Yefremov, a local scientist who grew up in the village, told ABC News. “And you see, in that time, it’s fallen like that.”
The odd ground around the village is a sign of how in Siberia climate change is literally re-shaping the landscape, as rapidly warming temperatures start to alter what has long been a given in much of Russia’s vast hinterland: that the ground is frozen.
Around two-thirds of Russia is covered by permafrost — permanently frozen ground that never thaws, even during summers. It runs from just below the surface of much of Siberia for sometimes thousands of meters underground, kept frozen by the region’s fierce colds.
But Siberia is warming and faster than almost anywhere else on Earth. Russia’s average annual temperatures are currently rising two and a half times faster than the global average, according to Russian government data.
In Yakutia, the vast region where Mai is located, the warming is causing permafrost to start thawing. As it does, swamps and lakes are mushrooming around the region, as well as the strange landscapes like that around the village.
“The changes are noticeable,” Pavel Konstatinov, head of the laboratory at the Melnikov Permafrost Institute in Yakutia’s capital Yakutsk, about 3,000 miles from Moscow, told ABC News.
Stretching down from the Arctic, Yakutia would be larger than most countries if it was independent and is one of the coldest inhabited places on Earth, with winter temperatures routinely reaching below -70 Fahrenheit.
But Yakutia’s average temperatures have risen by around 2 to 3 degrees Celsius in the past 40 years, according to local scientists. Like much of the Arctic, it is already well ahead of the 1.5 degrees Celsius that scientists have said the earth’s temperature must not breach to avoid already catastrophic climate change.
Yakutia is seeing milder winters — though still bitterly cold — and in summer increasingly extreme heat, according to Russian government meteorological data. For the past four years, it has suffered record drought and heatwaves, which this summer contributed to colossal wildfires, some of the biggest ever anywhere in recorded history.
“Since the start of the 1980s, it has very sharply increased and the average annual air temperature for five years has jumped up 2, 3 degrees and until now stands at that level,” said Konstantinov.
Yefremov, also a scientist at the Permafrost Institute, has studied permafrost for three decades. He and a team from the institute have sunk temperature monitors several meters into the permafrost near Mai.
Yefremov said that when the team first took measurements in the mid-1990s, the frozen soil’s temperature 10 meters below ground was around -3. Now, it is closer to -1, he said.
“You see already how much it has fallen. Within 30 years, it’s fallen from -3 to -1 degrees,” he told ABC News during a visit to the monitors in August.
As the permafrost melts, it retreats further beneath the surface. In places like Mai, the receding ice leaves hollows underground. Over time, the top layer of earth begins to fall in, leaving little valleys that create the strange, uneven mounds. From above, the files look almost like giant scales. Eventually, the mounds all fall in together to form large pits that usually become lakes.
The land affected becomes largely useless for agriculture or building.
The amount of thawing in Yakutia varies drastically from place to place, depending on other ground conditions. It is far faster in areas where the permafrost is mixed with unfrozen ground and where there is water and some human activities.
Vladimir Romanovsky, a professor of geophysics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said that there was not yet “massive thawing” of permafrost but that we are now crossing the threshold into it.
“Ten or 20 years from now, that will be a different picture,” he told ABC News. “If the trajectory will continue the same— we will have massive thawing of permafrost in warmer, discontinuous permafrost zone.”
“Discontinuous” permafrost refers to areas where it is mixed with stretches of unfrozen land, unlike parts of the Arctic where the permafrost stretches as an unbroken mass.
Romanovsky said in Alaska, where conditions are somewhat different to Yakutia, he estimated around 50% of permafrost in the state’s interior had begun to show signs of thawing in the past five years.
Scientists at Yakutia’s Permafrost Institute this year estimated as much of 40% of Yakutia’s territory is at risk of “dangerous” melting. Permafrost Konstantinov said some projections suggested even in moderate scenarios, a third to a quarter of southern Yakutia’s permafrost would melt by the end of the century.
Some scientists worry that it also poses a profound threat for the rest of the world. The frozen soil holds hundreds of billions of tons of greenhouse gases, like methane and CO2, which are released as it slowly thaws.
The fear is that as the thawing unlocks more of the gases, they will further warm the planet, in turn triggering more melting. The amount of gases held in the permafrost dwarf those already put into the atmosphere by humans, and the fear of a cataclysmic feedback loop has led some scientists to call Siberia’s melting permafrost a possible “methane time bomb.”
Scientists caution there is still insufficient evidence to know how much melting greenhouse gas could be released by melting permafrost, but most experts believe it is a concern.
In Russia, the shifting ground is already posing enormous consequences, putting at risk roads, buildings and infrastructure across Siberia.
When frozen, permafrost is as hard as concrete and so most buildings in Yakutsk are constructed without foundations.
For that reason in Yakutsk, most buildings sit on stilts that raise them about a meter off the ground. Otherwise, heat from the buildings would thaw the permafrost beneath them, essentially turning their foundations into sand and causing them to subside.
Some older buildings in Yakutsk give a preview of what happens when the permafrost melts under them.
On a central street, one block is slowly collapsing. Huge cracks started appearing in the walls around five years ago. Local authorities declared the building unsafe for habitation a few years ago. Residents said and some of them had already been re-settled, but others remained, unable to find anywhere else to go.
Fedor Markov lives and works in a studio in one of the building’s upper floors. He is a sculptor of miniatures made from mammoth tusks, fragments of which are widely found across Yakutia, where the permafrost sometimes preserves Ice Age creatures almost entirely intact. Markov’s studio has large cracks in its walls and ceiling, including a gaping hole in its plaster, he said was caused by the building subsiding.
“The house is shaking,” said Markov.
In another neighborhood further out of the city, residents have had to abandon a group of older barracks buildings. One building has a huge crack running to the roof, splitting the structure almost in half.
Russia’s government has estimated the damage from the melting ground could cost tens of billions of dollars and there are increasing calls for action to mitigate the effects.
“Yakutia is already not like Yakutia,” Markov said. “In general, nature was excellent in my childhood. Summer was summer, winter was winter. Even though it was strong frosts, the people all the same could put up with it. Now we’re starting to get scared,” he said.
