World

 (WASHINGTON) — The United States will not send an official delegation to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, the White House announced Monday, citing China’s human rights record.

The diplomatic boycott means that U.S. athletes will still compete in the Games, which will start in February.

The Chinese government responded with swift condemnation of President Joe Biden’s decision — saying the Olympics shouldn’t be “a stage for political shows” and warning of “resolute countermeasures.”

But the Biden administration said it would not send senior U.S. government officials because of China’s mass detention camps and forced sterilization campaign against Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities in the country’s western province — policies that the U.S. government has determined constitute genocide and crimes against humanity.

Biden has been under growing pressure domestically to take some kind of action against the Beijing Games because of China’s increasingly authoritarian policies at home and aggressive actions across the region. The decision to not send a delegation stops short of an outright boycott of the Games, as U.S. athletes will be participating.

“The athletes on Team USA have our full support. We will be behind them 100 percent, as we cheer them on from home,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki, but the administration didn’t think “it was the right step to penalize athletes who have been training, preparing for this moment.”

“We will not be contributing to the fanfare of the Games,” Psaki added.

Sending prominent officials or public figures to the Olympics is a long tradition, with first lady Jill Biden leading a delegation to the Tokyo Games this past summer.

The Biden administration has said it is consulting U.S. allies on a path forward, but so far, no other country has announced a similar diplomatic boycott. Psaki said the U.S. informed allies of the decision before announcing it. Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and others are said to be weighing boycotts as well.

Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., took to Twitter to respond to the announcement, saying that “politicians calling for [a] boycott … are doing so for their own political interests and posturing.”

“In fact, no one would care about whether these people come or not, and it has no impact whatsoever on the #Beijing2022 to be successfully held,” Liu tweeted Monday.

Beijing has repeatedly blasted any talk of a boycott, denouncing it as an affront to the “Olympic spirit” while denying any wrongdoing in its human rights record.

“U.S. politicians continue to hype diplomatic boycotts of the Beijing Winter Olympics. They are completely wishful-thinking, grandstanding and politically manipulative,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a press conference Monday, ahead of the Biden administration’s announcement.

It’s also unclear if any U.S. officials were formally invited to the Games, where they usually attend the opening or closing ceremonies. Zhao said Monday that “American politicians” were not invited, without specifying who exactly or whether foreign delegations in general were.

Biden has tried to stabilize U.S.-Chinese relations, which have nosedived in recent years as Washington has grown increasingly concerned about Chinese aggression. He and Chinese leader Xi Jinping held a meeting last month via video teleconference, marking small progress on issues like China’s travel bans on dual citizens and journalists visas.

But tensions have remained high over China’s development of hypersonic and nuclear weapons, its menacing of Taiwan, and its human rights record, from the crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong, religious practice across the country, and especially the Uighurs in Xinjiang province. The detention of over one million Uighurs, the sterilization of Uighur women, and their forced labor in these camps has drawn U.S. sanctions and international condemnation.

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(WASHINGTON) — Biden is expected to warn of consequences for invading, an official said.

President Joe Biden was expected to press Russian President Vladimir Putin during a video meeting Tuesday that there would be consequences for invading its neighbor Ukraine, as Russia amasses troops on the Ukrainian border.

During the meeting, the first conversation between the leaders since July, Biden planned to threaten “substantial economic countermeasures” if Russia prepared to proceed with a military invasion, a senior Biden administration official said Monday.

“What I am doing is putting together what I believe to be–will be the most comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives to make it very, very difficult for Mr. Putin to go ahead and do what people are worried he may do,” Biden told ABC News White House correspondent MaryAlice Parks on Friday.

The senior administration official said the U.S. was watching a series of events unfold similar to the lead-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, when it annexed the Crimean Peninsula. That included moving troops to its border with Ukraine coupled with a “significant spike” in anti-Ukrainian propaganda on social media, the official said.

But, according to the official, the U.S. had not determined whether Putin had decided yet if he would attack.

“We do not know or have a clear indication that President Putin has actually made an–given an affirmative order here,” the official said in a call with reporters. “It is more about planning intentions and then the kinds of movements that we have seen.”

Ahead of the call, both the White House and Kremlin sought to lower expectations.

“It is very important not to have some overexcited, emotional expectations here,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russia’s Channel One on Monday.

Asked by ABC News White House correspondent Karen Travers if the White House’s message was also to not have high expectations, White House press secretary Jen Psaki replied, “I think it is.”

“The president is not going to hold back in conveying his concern,” Psaki told another reporter.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday that Russia’s “escalation” was “an immediate threat.”

“The stakes for the president’s call couldn’t be clearer,” McConnell said during remarks on the Senate floor.

In addition to Ukraine, Biden also planned to speak with Putin about cyber issues, “strategic stability” and other regional issues, according to the White House.

The White House has made clear the U.S. is ready to support allies in the region if Russia decides to move forward with a military invasion in Ukraine.

“I think you could anticipate that in the event of an invasion, the need to reinforce the confidence and reassurance of our NATO allies and our eastern flank allies would be real, and the United States would be prepared to provide that kind of reassurance,” the senior official said Monday. “That’s just sort of applying the lessons of 2014 to 2021.”

Notably, the official wouldn’t specify whether that “reassurance” would come in the form of sanctions, U.S. forces, capabilities, or all of the above, nor what the hair trigger is for the support.

The official wouldn’t go so far as to say outright that Biden would warn Putin the U.S. military could be used if the Russian military moves into Ukraine.

After Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, the U.S. and the European Union leveled economic sanctions against Russia, and Russia was kicked out of the “Group of Eight” industrialized nations.

The United States also sent 600 troops to eastern Europe in a show of solidarity with Baltic nations on Russia’s border. That deployment has morphed into a rotating set of relatively small U.S. deployments to eastern European nations.

“I don’t want to use a public press call to talk about the particular sensitive challenges that President Biden will lay out for President Putin,” the official said of Tuesday’s call. “But I would say that the United States is not seeking to end up in a circumstance in which the focus of our countermeasures is the direct use of American military force, as opposed to a combination of support for the Ukrainian military, strong economic countermeasures, and substantial increase in support and capability to our NATO allies to ensure they remain safe.”

In short: Biden will “make clear that there will be very real cost should Russia choose to proceed, but he will also make clear that there is an effective way forward with respect to diplomacy,” the official said.

The administration’s preferred option for response to any Russian aggression would be a series of economic sanctions in concert with European partners, and the official warned those would be “severe.”

“We believe that we have a path forward that would involve substantial economic countermeasures by both the Europeans and the United States that would impose significant and severe economic harm on the Russian economy, should they choose to proceed. I’m not going to get into the specific details of that, but we believe that there is a way forward here that will allow us to send a clear message to Russia, that there will be genuine and meaningful and enduring costs to choosing to go forward should they choose to go forward with a military escalation in Ukraine,” the official warned.

Ahead of his call with Putin, Biden spoke with several European leaders Monday, according to the White House: France’s President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

“The leaders discussed their shared concern about the Russian military build-up on Ukraine’s borders and Russia’s increasingly harsh rhetoric,” the White House said, adding that “they called on Russia to de-escalate tensions and agreed that diplomacy” was “the only way forward.”

“The leaders underscored their support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the White House said.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday ahead of Biden’s call with Putin, and Zelensky tweeted that he had “agreed positions” with Blinken.

“Grateful to strategic partners & allies for the continued support of our sovereignty & territorial integrity,” Zelensky wrote.

Biden himself will call Zelenskyy to provide a readout of his conversation with Putin afterward, the official said.

ABC News’ Tanya Stukalova, Patrick Reevell and Trish Turner contributed reporting.

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(NEW YORK) — Billionaire investor and philanthropist Michael Steinhardt was forced to surrender $70 million worth of stolen antiquities and comply with a lifetime ban on collecting antiquities on Monday, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office said.

Steinhardt had to give up 180 stolen antiquities, which court records said were looted and illegally smuggled out of 11 countries, trafficked by 12 criminal smuggling networks, and lacked verifiable provenance prior to appearing on the international art market.

The Larnax, a small coffin from the islands of Crete, Greece, dating back to 1400 BCE, was among the surrendered pieces.

The Larnax is valued at $1 million and was bought by Steinhardt for $575,000 in October 2016 from known antiquities trafficker Eugene Alexander, the DA said.

Payments for the piece were made using Seychelles-headquartered FAM Services and Satabank, a Malta-based financial institution that was suspended for money laundering, according to the DA’s office.

While complaining about a subpoena requesting provenance documentation for another stolen antiquity, Steinhardt pointed to the Larnax and said to an Antiquities Trafficking Unit investigator, “You see this piece? There’s no provenance for it. If I see a piece and I like it, then I buy it.”

The 180 pieces will now be returned expeditiously to their rightful owners in 11 countries: Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Syria and Turkey.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office conducted a multi-year, multi-national investigation into Steinhardt’s criminal conduct beginning in February 2017.

“For decades, Michael Steinhardt displayed a rapacious appetite for plundered artifacts without concern for the legality of his actions, the legitimacy of the pieces he bought and sold, or the grievous cultural damage he wrought across the globe,” Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance said Monday.

“His pursuit of ‘new’ additions to showcase and sell knew no geographic or moral boundaries, as reflected in the sprawling underworld of antiquities traffickers, crime bosses, money launderers, and tomb raiders he relied upon to expand his collection,” Vance added.

Investigators from the DA’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit learned that Steinhardt possessed looted antiquities at his apartment and office.

They initiated a grand jury criminal investigation into his acquisition, possession and sale of more than 1,000 antiquities since at least 1987.

There were 17 judicially-ordered search warrants and they conducted joint investigations with law enforcement authorities in the 11 countries mentioned above.

Vance said the investigation developed compelling evidence that 180 were stolen from their country of origin and “exhibited numerous other evidentiary indicators of looting.”

“Mr. Steinhardt is pleased that the District Attorney’s years-long investigation has concluded without any charges, and that items wrongfully taken by others will be returned to their native countries,” Steinhardt’s lawyers said in a statement Monday. “Many of the dealers from whom Mr. Steinhardt bought these items made specific representations as to the dealers’ lawful title to the items, and to their alleged provenance. To the extent these representations were false, Mr. Steinhardt has reserved his rights to seek recompense from the dealers involved.”

Most of the 180 seized antiquities first surfaced in the possession of individuals who law-enforcement authorities later determined to be antiquities traffickers — some of whom have been convicted of antiquities trafficking, and many of the seized antiquities were trafficked following civil unrest or looting.

Other items that were surrendered included the Stag’s Head Rhyton, valued currently at $3.5 million and the Ercolano Fresco, valued at $1 million.

 

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(BRUZGI, Belarus) — Parsa Akram now lives with her mother, father and brother under a warehouse shelf. The space is about 2 meters wide. The 18-year-old and her mother sleep in a tent, her brother and father on the ground.

They are among hundreds of people — mostly from Iraqi Kurdistan — now living in a warehouse about a mile from Belarus’ border with Poland, caught up in the migration crisis that, although eased, has not ended.

The warehouse in Bruzgi is not a refugee center; it is just a packing warehouse, the kind Amazon or FedEx would use to store goods. People are now living on the stacks of shelves that would normally hold packages. Whole families like the Akrams are packed into the spaces under the shelving; others have clambered up to make nest-like beds in the higher levels.

“It’s not a camp,” Parsa said. “[It’s] a chicken house!”

For months, thousands of migrants, mostly from the Middle East, have found themselves trapped between Belarus and Poland amid a crisis allegedly engineered by Belarus’ authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, who is accused of luring them to Europe’s border in an effort to retaliate against the European Union for its support for Belarus’ pro-democracy movement.

The migrants, mainly trying to reach western Europe, have been blocked by Poland and neighboring Lithuania, stranding them in forests along the border often for weeks, without food or shelter.

The crisis came to a head three weeks ago, when Belarus marched hundreds of migrants to a crossing point with Poland. Scenes of migrants sleeping in the open air in freezing temperatures and then violent clashes with Polish border guards, that Belarus was accused of inciting, attracted global attention.

Following the clashes, Belarus moved about 2,000 of the migrants to the warehouse, raising hopes the crisis might be easing.

Although better than the forest, the warehouse is not set up to house hundreds of people and after two weeks, conditions inside have rapidly deteriorated. When ABC News reporters visited this weekend, people were sleeping on the floor in sleeping bags and sometimes thin tents, huddled together in dirty clothes. There is almost no sanitation, just a few chemical toilets. People wash themselves from two portable water tanks set up in a yard slick with mud and slush.

There are dozens of children, including some a few months old, and pregnant women.

This week, Belarus’ military brought a mobile sauna in a tent to allow people to wash, for many, the first time in a month. Belarus is also feeding people, giving them portions of buckwheat porridge twice a day. Food trucks, selling bread and snacks, are also set up.

Many people in the camp said they were sick. Several told ABC News they were suffering from food poisoning that they blamed on expired tinned food they said Belarusian authorities had given them.

There are also fears COVID-19 is in the camp. Belarusian authorities — who have been accused of undercounting COVID cases more generally — claim only two cases have been recorded in the warehouse. But the sound of coughing there is constant and ABC News reporters met a man being hospitalized with pneumonia on Sunday.

“People cannot wait any longer because the weather is getting really really cold. And all the people in here, they’re all sick, they’re getting sick so bad,” said Zanyar Dishad, an 18-year-old from Kurdistan who was with his family.

Lukashenko visited the camp last Friday, accompanied by state television cameras. In a speech, he told the migrants he would not force them to go home and would do everything to help them reach Europe. He also demanded Poland and Germany take them in.

Belarusian authorities told the migrants European countries will soon take them, though there is no indication when or if this will happen. Several migrants said they believed Lukashenko was holding talks with the EU to get them across the border and many were unaware of the reasons behind his conflict with Europe.

“He’s a very good man,” said Karwan Jamal, 26, who is living now in a tent with his wife and 7-year-old son.

“He’s very kind,” his wife Narin added. “Because Belarus all the time helps all people in here.”

In reality, Belarusian authorities refused to allow migrants out of the forests for weeks. Migrants in recent weeks have told ABC News that Belarusian border guards beat and robbed them, forcing them to cross back into Poland after being pushed back.

But EU efforts to cut off the flow of migrants to Belarus seem to be having an effect. The number of new arrivals has sharply and visibly dropped off. Belarus also appears to now be allowing people to leave the border area.

Hundreds of Iraqi citizens have also returned home in the last week on voluntary repatriation flights organized by Iraq’s government, which said 1,800 people have returned already.

Among them was Balsam Khalaf, 51, who said he had given up after five months of being pushed back and forth across the border, saying he had been roughed up by Belarusian, Polish and Lithuanian guards.

“We turned to a bouncing ball between both sides,” he said in an interview in Baghdad this week.

It is unclear how many migrants are still in Belarus, but it estimated to be at least a few thousand, including in the forests. Polish authorities accuse Belarus’ security forces of continuing to try to push dozens of people across the border each night.

Iraq’s government said it would hold a final repatriation flight this week because it said no one else wished to return. It said 3,000 people in total had expressed a desire to return.

At the camp, most people said they would not go back, despite the wretched conditions.

“Never ever,” said Narin.

ABC News’ Bader Katy contributed to this report from Baghdad and Tanya Stukalova contributed from Bruzgi, Belarus.

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(WASHINGTON) — Global health authorities are urging against the use of “blanket” travel bans in response to the threat of new coronavirus variants, as some nations have rushed to shutter incoming travel from southern African countries where the omicron variant has been detected.

The same health officials also warn that travel bans could have a negative effect on global efforts to respond to the pandemic, as nations may not wish to report new data and variants if they worry they could be seemingly punished for it by other countries barring their nationals from travel.

“Blanket travel bans will not prevent the international spread, and they place a heavy burden on lives and livelihoods,” the World Health Organization said in a statement Tuesday. “In addition, they can adversely impact global health efforts during a pandemic by disincentivizing countries to report and share epidemiological and sequencing data.”

Rather than blanket travel bans, the United Nations’ public health body urges countries to apply an “evidence-informed and risk-based approach” when implementing new travel restrictions.

The WHO’s advice comes after it said some 56 countries were reportedly implementing travel measures aimed at potentially delaying the importation of the omicron variant.

In the U.S., Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House’s chief medical adviser, told ABC News’ “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos this past Sunday that travel bans could “slow things down,” but they won’t prevent a new variant from coming into the country.

“What you can do is you can delay it enough to get us better prepared,” Fauci said. “And that’s the thing that people need to understand. If you’re going to do the travel ban the way we’ve done now and that we’re implementing right now, utilize the time that you’re buying to fill in the gaps.”

Fauci’s remarks notably came before the U.S. confirmed the first case of the omicron variant in California on Wednesday.

“Travel bans are a very weak measure at best, but they’re most valuable very, very early on in the emergence of a new variant,” said Dr. John Brownstein, a professor at Harvard Medical School, chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.

Travel bans can “buy you a little time,” he said, but only if they are implemented quickly and uniformly.

“The problem that we have here is that detection doesn’t mean being the epicenter of where the outbreak is,” Brownstein said. “Just because South Africa had incredible capacity to detect sequence doesn’t mean that necessarily this is where the most amount of cases occur.”

Some South African officials and scientists are calling the travel bans aimed at their country discriminatory and punitive.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa echoed the WHO’s sentiments in remarks to reporters while traveling to Nigeria on Tuesday, saying South Africa should not be “punished” for travel bans after being transparent with its omicron detection and research.

“These bans must be removed, they must be lifted,” Ramaphosa said. “And in fact, we have advanced in the world to a point where we now know when people travel, they should be tested like I was tested last night, and I’m happy to be tested when I arrive again. We’ve got the tools we’ve got the means to be able to deal with this.”

Ramaphosa added that the open travel is critical for the tourism industry around the world, which he said has been “really devastated.”

“And for us, the tourism industry is one of the key industries for southern Africa as well,” he said. “So, this is unfair, this is discriminatory against us, and they are imposing a very unfair punishment.”

One of the South African scientists who helped identify the omicron variant similarly blasted the travel bans imposed on southern African countries as a result of their discovery.

Tulio de Oliveira, director of the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation in Stellenbosch, South Africa, tweeted Monday night that he had “spent a big part” of his day speaking with genomic and biotech companies because “soon” his team “will run out of reagents as airplanes are not flying to South Africa.”

In a series of tweets last week, de Oliveira urged the world to “provide support to South Africa and Africa and not discriminate or isolate it.”

“We have been very transparent with scientific information. We identified, made data public, and raised the alarm as the infections are just increasing. We did this to protect our country and the world in spite of potentially suffering massive discrimination,” he tweeted.

In an interview with the New Yorker, de Oliveira added that he was “very upset” with the events that took place after the discovery, specifically related to travel bans.

“The U.K., after praising us for discovering the variant, then put out this absolutely stupid travel ban, and it has hoarded vaccines for the last year,” he told the outlet. “It’s trying to put the blame on vaccine hesitancy. It’s looking for a reason to fault Africa.”

Brownstein, who also noted that countries would feel penalized, rather than incentivized, for reporting new variants, suggested that testing pre- and post-travel and “intense surveillance” would be “incredibly helpful and probably more valuable than the travel restrictions.” Travel bans, he said, are “not the best tool.”

“We have really robust testing, we have other tools at our disposal,” he said. “We should be in a position where we don’t need to implement these things.”

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, said in remarks Tuesday that it was “deeply concerning” that countries “are now being penalized by others for doing the right thing.”

“I well understand the concern of all countries to protect their citizens against a variant that we don’t yet fully understand,” he said. “But I am equally concerned that several Member States are introducing blunt, blanket measures that are not evidence-based or effective on their own, and which will only worsen inequities.”

Ultimately, Ghebreyesus called on nations to take “rational, proportional risk-reduction measures, in keeping with the International Health Regulations.”

“The global response must be calm, coordinated and coherent,” he added.

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(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. is “deeply concerned by evidence that Russia has made plans for significant aggressive moves against Ukraine,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday.

In the most urgent warning yet, Blinken said the U.S. and its NATO allies would impose a steep cost on Moscow if it attacked its neighbor.

But that cost would be economic and political, with the top U.S. diplomat threatening “a range of high-impact economic measures that we’ve refrained from using in the past.” But he and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stopped short of mentioning the use of force to defend Ukraine, which is not a member of the military alliance.

“We don’t know whether President Putin has made the decision to invade. We do know he’s putting in place the capacity to do so in short order,” Blinken said — the clearest statement to date of Western worries of an invasion, as Russia masses approximately 100,000 troops, along with heavy equipment, near Ukraine’s border.

Blinken will meet his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, on the sidelines of a summit on European security Thursday, as well as Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

It will be the latest high-level engagement between the U.S. and Russia amid heightened concern about Russia threatening Ukraine. President Joe Biden deployed his CIA Director Bill Burns to Moscow last month to convey U.S. concerns in person, Blinken said, declining to specify whether he would lay out precisely what those “high-impact” sanctions would be with Lavrov.

Russia has denied it is mounting any attack on Ukraine and instead accused Ukraine, the U.S. and NATO of menacing forces near its borders. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday his government is seeking guarantees from the West that it not move troops or weapons systems “in close vicinity to the Russian territory,” while Lavrov called the presence of Ukrainian troops “alarming.”

Blinken literally laughed off that latter comment, telling reporters after a two-day NATO summit in Latvia that it was “perplexing,” “profoundly wrong” and “misguided.”

“The idea that Ukraine represents a threat to Russia would be a bad joke if things weren’t so serious,” he added, warning that Russia may “claim provocation for something that they were planning to do all along.”

To that end, Blinken said, Russia has not only massed combat forces, it’s also “intensified disinformation to paint Ukraine as the aggressor” — increasing anti-Ukrainian propaganda by more than tenfold to levels not seen since its 2014 invasion.

Russia’s “plans include efforts to destabilize Ukraine from within, as well as large-scale military operations,” he added — the former, a possible reference to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s claim that Russia is behind a potential coup attempt to overthrow his government. The top U.S. diplomat for Europe said last Friday that the U.S. was in touch with Ukrainian authorities “to obtain additional information” and verify Zelenskiy’s statement.

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(NEW YORK) — Scientists are continuing to discover ways in which climate change is already affecting animal species around the world — including how it’s changing the phenology, or timing of biological events.

Grey seals are the latest species to see phenological shifts due to warming ocean waters, a new study published Tuesday in the Royal Society Journals has found.

Researchers who monitored grey seals in the U.K.’s Skomer Marine Conservation Zone for three decades found that climate change has caused older seal mothers to give birth to pups earlier, an observation that favors the hypothesis that climate affects phenology by altering the age profile of the population.

When the researchers first began surveying grey seals in 1992, the midpoint of the pupping season was the first week of October. By 2004, the pupping season had advanced three weeks earlier, to mid-September, according to the study.

Warmer years were also associated with an older average age of mothers, the scientists found. Grey seals typically start breeding around 5 years old and can continue for several decades after. But the older the seals got, the earlier they gave birth, the researchers said.

The changes were not isolated to the U.K. There have been observable changes in the timing of seal life throughout the Atlantic and the world, according to the study.

Climate change has also recently been linked to a rising divorce rate in albatross couples, which mate for life, and to the shrinking of dozens of species of Amazonian birds, which are evolving to have smaller bodies and longer wing spans.

The causes and consequences of phenological shifts across ecosystems and geographical regions as a result of climate change have become a major area of interest in recent years, according to the study.

These changes can have a domino effect. Since species do not live in isolation, phenological changes can cascade through biological communities through trophic, competitive and mutualistic interactions, according to the study. This can be especially apparent in “mismatches in seasonal events,” such as those between predator and prey populations or flowering plants and their pollinators.

Eventually, phenological shifts in life-history events, such as breeding and pupping, can decouple biological communities and lead to critical transitions in population structure and even the collapse of ecosystems, the scientists said.

 

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(WASHINGTON) — Iran returned to negotiations over its nuclear program on Monday — meeting for the first time in over five months, with the country’s new hard-line government now in control.

Its chief negotiator emerged from closed doors bullish, as Tehran demands its concerns about continued U.S. sanctions be addressed first after former President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal.

But the U.S. and the deal’s European signatories are warning that after months of stalling, Iran is facing its last opportunity to revive the 2015 deal that placed constraints on its nuclear program in exchange for international sanctions relief.

A top European Union diplomat who is coordinating the indirect talks between the U.S. and Iran expressed some guarded optimism afterward — and much urgency.

“There is clearly a will on all the delegations to listen to the Iranian positions brought by the new team, and there is clearly a will of the Iranian delegation to engage in serious work to bring JCPOA back to life,” said Enrique Mora, the senior EU diplomat, using an acronym for the nuclear deal’s formal name — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

“I feel positive that we can be doing important things for the next weeks to come,” Mora added after delegations from Iran, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France and Germany met in Vienna, Austria.

Whether or not the U.S. and its European allies are willing to wait weeks is an open question — especially since Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s new president who is a conservative cleric close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has delayed the resumption of talks since he won election in June.

“These talks are the last opportunity for the Iranians to come to the table and agree the JCPOA,” British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said Monday. “We will look at all options if that doesn’t happen.”

Patience is all but out in Israel, whose defense minister warned Monday that Iran is “dashing towards a nuclear weapon.”

Israeli officials shared intelligence with the U.S. and other allies showing that Iran is nearing a nuclear weapon, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said.

Since Trump’s exit, Iran has increasingly taken steps in violation of the deal, including by enriching more uranium, enriching uranium to higher levels, using more advanced centrifuges and more of them, and enriching uranium metal. The United Nation’s nuclear watchdog — the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA — reported this month that Iran has enriched 39 pounds of uranium to 60%, which is a short technical step from weapons-grade 90%.

Under the nuclear deal, Iran’s enrichment was capped at 3.67% for 15 years.

The State Department declined to comment on reports that Iran may be moving toward 90% enrichment levels, but deputy spokesperson Jalina Porter told reporters that “obviously would be a provocative act, and I’ll just underscore that we’ve made clear that Iran’s continued nuclear escalations are unconstructive and they’re also inconsistent with what’s stated in the goal of returning to a mutual compliance with the JCPOA.”

But ahead of talks resuming, Iran has used sharper language rejecting the idea of “mutual compliance” — increasingly arguing that the U.S. must act first because it was Trump that first exited the deal back in 2018.

“The principle of ‘mutual compliance’ cannot form a proper base for negotiations since it was the U.S. government which unilaterally left the deal,” Iran’s chief negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, wrote in an editorial Sunday, calling for a “clear and transparent mechanism to ensure that sanctions will be removed” and U.S. “compensation for the violation of the deal, which includes the removal of all post-JCPOA sanctions.”

The Biden administration has said it will not lift sanctions first, and the idea of compensating Iran for U.S. sanctions is politically toxic in Washington.

It’s unclear if those demands are just Iran posturing before sitting down, or if those are red lines. Out of Monday’s meetings, Bagheri claimed a “considerable achievement” by saying the remaining parties to the deal agreed to address U.S. sanctions first. But that doesn’t mean they agreed those sanctions need to be lifted before Iran’s own non-compliance is addressed. The working-level discussions will address U.S. sanctions on Tuesday and Iran’s nuclear program Wednesday, according to Mora.

The State Department has not yet provided a readout from special envoy for Iran Rob Malley’s meetings in Vienna, where the previous six rounds of talks were held as well.

Beyond Mora’s optimism, Russia’s envoy Mikhail Ulyanov said the talks “started quite successfully” and reached agreement on “further immediate steps,” without specifying what they were.

Any optimism has run face first into dire warnings from Israel, whose Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has vocally opposed the restoration of the nuclear deal.

“Iran deserves no rewards, no bargain deals, and no sanctions relief in return for their brutality. I call upon our allies around the world: Do not give in to Iran’s nuclear blackmail,” Bennett said Monday.

Malley told NPR last week the U.S. and Israel don’t agree on the deal, but do agree on the need to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon: “We’re not going to wait and see them get so close,” he said, but the U.S. hopes “that this could be resolved diplomatically, and it should be.”

Amid warnings that Iran could stall by prolonging these talks, Malley added the U.S. will not “sit idly by” if the country moves toward a nuclear bomb.

But the U.S. and European allies have pulled their punches at the IAEA, declining again last week to censure Iran for not just its violations of the deal but its growing obstruction of the IAEA’s work.

Iran has barred inspectors from accessing certain sites, harassed inspectors with invasive security searches and failed to explain still the detected presence of uranium at three undeclared locations, IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi told the U.N. body last Wednesday.

Grossi visited Tehran last week — his first trip under the Raisi government — but he did not reach a deal to address these issues, he told reporters Wednesday. A previous ad-hoc arrangement with Iran to keep international eyes at its declared nuclear sites is coming apart, he warned. Iran agreed to keep IAEA cameras and other monitoring equipment in place and turn the tapes over to the agency when a deal was reached. That equipment needs servicing to “guarantee continuity of knowledge,” Grossi said, but Iran has blocked IAEA inspectors so far.

“Such a long period of time without us getting access, knowing whether there are operational activities ongoing, is something in itself that would prevent me from continuing to say I have an idea of what’s going on,” he said at a press conference. “We must reach an agreement. We must do it.”

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(LONDON) — A British inn and pub officially bid “fond farewell” to 61 guests Monday after a blizzard stranded them for days inside.

Located 270 miles north of London, Tan Hill Inn in Yorkshire, England, had arranged an event for an Oasis tribute band on Friday. Later that night, however, the region was hit hard by a late autumn storm which blocked local roads with heavy snow.

“The last time we had our costumers locked in was four or five years ago, but that was just for one night. This time it was a very different experience with four days,” Nicola Townsend, the pub manager, told ABC News.

The staff and guests came up with spontaneous ideas “to kill the boredom,” Townsend said. They organized a movie event, a quiz night and karaoke.

“Customers started to develop bonds from the second day on by hanging out, making friends and exchanging numbers. And they were so cooperative in running the affairs. Like they felt home indeed,” she said, adding, “Our staff are exhausted, but very happy that our guests had fun. Some of them said they had so much fun that they did not want to go back home when the roads were cleared.”

Now the group has agreed to a reunion next year.

The storm, named “Arwen,” also left thousands in Scotland without power for several nights.

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(JOQUICINGO, Mexico) — At least 19 people are dead and dozens more injured after a bus crash in central Mexico Friday.

The accident occurred on a highway in Joquicingo, a township in the State of Mexico that’s approximately 45 miles southwest of Mexico City.

A tour bus heading to a religious site in the State of Mexico crashed into a building after the brakes went out, the State of Mexico’s Ministry of Health said in a statement.

Officials said 19 people were reported dead and 32 injured following the crash.

Six people, including two minors, were flown to a hospital in Toluca, while others were transported to several hospitals in the region, officials said. Those injured included multiple women and children, with injuries ranging from broken bones to head trauma, according to the Ministry of Health.

Multiple agencies responded to the site of the crash, including the Red Cross and the Emergency Service of the State of Mexico.

Alfredo Del Mazo, the governor of the State of Mexico, said in a statement on Twitter that he has instructed the heads of the Civil Protection, Security, Rescue and Health agencies to support the impacted families.

Officials said the bus was with the tourism company Turismo Tejeda and was heading from the municipality of Sahuayo, Michoacán, and bound for the Santuario del Señor de Chalma, a place of worship that is a Christian pilgrimage site.

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