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(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.”

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(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.

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(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.”

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(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.

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(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.

 

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(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.

 

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(LONDON) — Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II is back at work less than a week after an overnight hospital stay.

The 95-year-old monarch was seen smiling on Tuesday as 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 was forced to cancel a trip to Northern Ireland under orders from her medical team to rest.

She was hospitalized on the night of Oct. 20 for “preliminary investigations,” according to a spokesperson for Buckingham Palace.

By the following afternoon, the queen was back at her desk at Windsor Castle and undertaking light duties, the spokesperson said.

No further details about her condition were released by the palace.

The day before her hospitalization, 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.

She did not attend church on Sunday, so Tuesday’s appearance was the first public sighting of the queen since her hospitalization.

Queen Elizabeth is still scheduled to travel to Glasgow, Scotland, next week with other members of the British royal family for the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference.

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(CAIRO) — After initially being put under house arrest by military forces Monday, Sudan’s acting Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and his wife Muna Abdalla were “kidnapped” at dawn from their Khartoum residence, according to the prime minister’s office.

The move happened after the military forces arrested several top civilian officials, including cabinet ministers. Soon after, Sudan’s de facto leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan declared a state of emergency and dissolved the ruling transitional sovereign council and the government on Monday. It led to a backlash from the opposition and the United States.

Opposition figures said bridges and roads were blocked and that the internet was cut off in Khartoum. Videos posted on social media showed a large number of protesters taking to the streets, setting tires on fire and chanting against the apparent coup.

“What happened today in Khartoum is an attempt to erode the democratic gains of our December 2018 revolution,” Ismail El Taj, a leading member of the Sudanese Professionals Association, one of the main coalitions that rose up against the autocratic regime of Omar al-Bashir, told ABC News. “We will resist this coup with all peaceful means, such as peaceful marches, sit-ins and civil disobedience. The trembling hands that are trying to turn back the clock will not succeed.”

Both the U.S. embassy in Khartoum and the U.S. special envoy for the Horn of Africa issued statements condemning the military takeover.

On Saturday, U.S. special envoy for Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman met with Hamdok and coup leader Gen. Burhan together and “urged all actors to recommit to working together to implement the constitutional declaration and Juba Peace Agreement.” The agreement lays out the transition to democratic rule, according to the embassy.

“The US is deeply alarmed at reports of a military take-over of the transitional government,” Feltman said in a statement Monday. “This would contravene the Constitutional Declaration and the democratic aspirations of the Sudanese people and is utterly unacceptable. As we have said repeatedly, any changes to the transitional government by force puts at risk U.S. assistance.”

Following Monday’s military takeover, the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum urged Americans to shelter in place in Monday and to avoid traveling to the embassy or international airports. It said armed forces were “blocking certain areas in and around Khartoum” and that internet in the capital is “non-functional.”

“There are unverified reports of violence against protesters. Flights are not leaving the country,” the embassy said in an alert.

The U.N. secretary-general called on the immediate release of the prime minister and all others who have been detained.

“The unlawful detention of the PM, government officials, and politicians is unacceptable and contravenes the constitutional document, and the partnership critical for the success of Sudan’s transition,” a spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement Monday.

Regardless of the objections by other parties and the international community, coup leader al-Burhan said in a live television statement Monday that he was keen on completing a transition to democracy, adding that “a government of independent competent figures will be formed to lead the country until the elections (in July 2023). The equitable representation of all the people of Sudan, its factions and groups shall be taken into account.”

Sudan’s information ministry said military forces had stormed state TV offices in Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman on Monday.

The prime minister’s office condemned the military forces’ move, saying the military leaders of the Sudanese state “bear the criminal, legal and political consequences of the unilateral decisions they have taken.” In a statement, they describe it as “a complete coup against the gains of the revolution and our people, who sacrificed their blood in search of freedom, peace and justice.”

ABC News’ Conor Finnegan contributed to this report.

 

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(VICTORIA, British Columbia) — Sixteen people have been evacuated from a container ship that caught fire off the coast of Canada, according to officials.

A fire broke out in 10 containers on the MV Zim Kingston near Victoria, British Columbia, on Saturday, according to the Canadian Coast Guard.

Crews mobilized to the location to rescue crew members and contain the fire. An emergency zone was set up for 2 nautical miles surrounding the ship, and rescue efforts continued into Sunday.

A navigational warning was issued overnight by the Canadian government reporting that the ship was on fire and expelling toxic gas. Two fallen containers are floating in the vicinity of the vessel.

Overnight, the tug Seaspan Raven cooled the hull of the MV Zim Kingston by spraying the hull with cold water. Due to the nature of chemicals on board the container ship, applying water directly to the fire is not an option.

Photos showed smoke billowing from a row of stacked containers that had collapsed.

There was no safety risk to people on land, according to the Canadian Coast Guard. No injuries were reported, according to a statement from Danaos Shipping Co, the company that manages the ship.

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(NEW YORK) — Princess Mako, niece to Japan’s enthroned emperor, Naruhito, is planning to leave the imperial family, moving out of her family’s estate on Oct. 26 when her marriage to Fordham-educated Kei Komuro is officially registered.

Female members of Japan’s imperial family must renounce their royalty when marrying a commoner. After the high-profile scandal surrounding their courtship, Japanese royalty is being forced to consider not just its dwindling numbers but its future.

Komuro’s mother, involved in an unresolved financial dispute, has been portrayed as a gold digger in tabloids, which have harshly criticized the couple. Princess Mako, an imperial household spokesperson told ABC News, is now suffering from PTSD because of the scrutiny.

Some among the nation’s citizenry are questioning whether maintaining an emperor as a living symbol of the state is still necessary. In 2019, the aging but popular Emperor Akihito abdicated, citing his age and declining health. His son, Naruhito, assumed the throne to reserved fanfare.

The latest scandal surrounding the princess’ fiance has left a bad taste in the mouths of many. Naotaka Kimizuka, a professor at Kanto Gakuin University who specializes in modern British and European political diplomatic history, said the Princess Mako courtship kerfuffle will take a historic toll on the Chrysanthemum Throne, adding: “The pair have already disgraced the heritage of Japan’s imperial household.”

Although Princess Mako has pledged to make a clean break from royalty, refusing the taxpayer-funded, one-time entitlement of 150 million yen (about $1.35 million), distrust remains. Many citizens aren’t convinced they won’t still be on the hook, even after the princess and her husband move to New York.

“The taxpayers will be paying for this in one way or expected to another,” one Tokyo resident told ABC News. “If one is in the imperial family, they’ll always be in the imperial family.”

Japan’s royal family, believed to be the world’s oldest continuous hereditary monarchy, has seen its numbers dwindle. Currently, women can’t ascend to the throne, so royal women marry commoners due to a lack of viable imperial suitors. Children from those marriages are then excluded from the imperial family line.

Hirokazu Matsuno, a government spokesperson, said in response to the question of dwindling numbers among Japanese royals: “The marriage of Princess Mako is scheduled for the 26th of this month. We wish her happiness, and prosperity for the imperial family. An expert panel has been established to address the issue [of dwindling numbers] in the imperial family. Detailed discussions are ongoing.”

More than 80% of Japanese citizens, according to a Kyodo poll, said they’d readily accept either a male or female ascending to the throne, or even a male who descended just from a female member of the imperial family. Most conservatives, including Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, disagree. The question of female ascension is a common clash in Japan of liberal vs. conservative values.

Japan ranked 120th in a global gender-equality ranking of 156 countries, according to a 2021 World Economic Forum report. Attorney Kazuko Ito, secretary general of Human Rights Now, said she believes living human beings can never be a symbol.

“I think the treatment toward the royal family and system as a whole is inhuman,” she added. “Exclusion from the royal family might be a good thing for female family members since they will get freedom for the first time as a human being, not as a restricted virtual role model.”

Hideya Kawanishi, an associate professor of Japanese history at Nagoya University, believes that keeping together the imperial family helps keep together Japan.

“There is no doubt that the emperor of Japan is a symbol of Japan’s unity as a nation,” he said. “In fact, it can be said that the emperor is somehow holding together the fragmented Japanese society. I believe that the same phenomenon is occurring in the royal families of Europe, and that a monarchy is needed in the 21st century world and in Japan.”

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