Middle East live updates: Thousands walk and drive into northern Gaza

(WASHINGTON) — In a major development, the Pentagon on Monday announced the transfer 11 Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo Bay to Oman, a move that now leaves only 15 detainees still at the detention facility.

“The United States appreciates the willingness of the government of Oman and other partners to support ongoing U.S. efforts focused on responsibly reducing the detainee population and ultimately closing the Guantanamo Bay facility,” said a DOD statement.

In recent weeks, the Pentagon had transferred out four other detainees from Guantanamo including a detainee who was brought to the detention facility at the base in Cuba the day that it opened, but was never charged.

The transfer of the 11 Yemeni detainees is the largest transfer to take place under President Joe Biden’s administration.

Of the remaining 15 detainees still at Guantanamo Bay, three are eligible for transfer; three are eligible for a Periodic Review Board; seven are involved in the military commissions process; and two detainees have been convicted and sentenced by military commissions.

Among the detainees who will remain at Guantanamo is Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attack, who on Friday will appear at a hearing at the base where he is expected to plead guilty in return for the death penalty being withdrawn. The following week, two other 9/11 plotters are expected to plead guilty under the same plea agreement.

Just last week, a military appeals court reaffirmed that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin could not withdraw the plea agreements worked out with Mohammad, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin ‘Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi.

According to the Pentagon statement, Austn notified Congress on Sept. 15, 2023, of “his intent to repatriate these 11 Yemeni detainees to the Government of Oman and, in consultation with our partners in Oman, we completed the requirements for transfer.”

The 11 detainees identified by their name and corresponding detainee identification number are : Uthman Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Uthman (ISN 27), Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi (ISN 28), Khalid Ahmed Qassim (ISN 242), Suhayl Abdul Anam al Sharabi (ISN 569), Hani Saleh Rashid Abdullah (ISN 841), Tawfiq Nasir Awad Al-Bihani (ISN 893), Omar Mohammed Ali al-Rammah (ISN 1017), Sanad Ali Yislam Al Kazimi (ISN 1453), Hassan Muhammad Ali Bib Attash (ISN 1456), Sharqawi Abdu Ali Al Hajj (ISN 1457), and Abd Al-Salam Al-Hilah (ISN 1463).

Attorneys for Shaqawi Al Hajj, 51, said in a statement that their client was flown to Oman this week after spending nearly 21 years in the prison at Guantánamo and more than two years in CIA sites.

“Our thoughts are with Mr. Al Hajj as he transitions to the free world after almost 23 years in captivity. His release is hopeful for him and for us. We are grateful to Oman and to the individuals in the administration who made this transfer happen, and to the many people over the years whose work and advocacy paved the way for this moment,” said Pardiss Kebriaei, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who represents Al Hajj.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Assad regime in Syria came toppling down in lightning speed after rebel forces led a days-long offensive across the country and captured the capital, Damascus, on Sunday, with President Bashar Assad ultimately fleeing to Russia.

How did it happen so quickly?

Some Syrian analysts, as well as the Biden administration, have pointed to Assad’s chief backers — Iran, Russia and Hezbollah — as having been “weakened and distracted” in recent months. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in September said the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was a “historic turning point.”

Other close watchers of Syria have also pointed to another key factor: a tiny white pill with a pair of interlocking half-moons on one side.

The pill is the synthetic stimulant fenethylline or fenetylline, known by the brand name Captagon, that overtook the Middle East as a popular drug. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s World Drug Report last year, “the main departing area for ‘captagon’ shipments” continues to be Syria and Lebanon, and, “[a]ssuming that all amphetamine seizures reported in the subregion are of ‘captagon,’ seizures doubled from 2020, reaching a record high of 86 tons in 2021.”

Caroline Rose, who studies the Captagon trade at the Washington-based think tank New Lines Institute, told ABC News the drug has a “licit” history and is incorrectly perceived as not being dangerous, and therefore doesn’t garner the stigma of party drugs like cocaine or ecstasy. It’s also popular in Muslim countries where alcohol is banned by the Quran, she said.

“It makes you feel invincible,” Rose said. “It staves [off] hunger and helps keep you up late at night, and you have taxi drivers, university students, poor people in bread lines, wealthy people who want to lose weight — you have fighters who are using it because it keeps you up late, it gives you energy and you can survive on one MRE [meals ready to eat] a day.”

The world’s leader in Captagon trade has been Syria, generating an estimated $10 billion for the country — and an estimated $2.4 billion a year directly for the Assad regime, according to a 2023 study conducted by the Observatory of Political and Economic Networks, a nonprofit that conducts research on organized crime and corruption in Syria.

One person who has had a very close eye on the Captagon trade from Syria in recent years is Rep. French Hill, one of dozens of lawmakers who co-sponsored the bipartisan Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019, which proposed to place heavy sanctions on Assad and his closest allies. The bill ultimately passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2020.

Hill subsequently introduced the Captagon Act in 2021, which he told the publication The New Arab in 2022 was designed to “disrupt and dismantle the Assad regime’s production and trafficking of the lethal narcotic.”

“In my view, the Assad regime turning to narcotics production for its main source of revenue was a sign that the world treating Assad like a pariah was working,” Hill told ABC News. “It is clear after last week’s events that the rot in Assad’s military and finances ran deep.”

According to Rose, the booming Captagon trade was a “zombie economy” born out of the stiff sanctions imposed on Syria by the United States and Europe — and it was also lining the pockets of the Assad regime.

“If there ever was a perfect case for a narco-state, I think it was Syria, because you had the state security and political apparatus defending Captagon production and putting out a public narrative that there wasn’t Captagon but then using the president’s brother, all its security apparatus and the Fourth Armored Division all involved in carrying out the trade,” Rose said.

Meanwhile, Turkey and Saudi Arabia grew frustrated with their efforts to normalize relations with Assad, and their borders were being flooded with the drug, according to a recent report by the Carnegie Endowment.

According to Rose, in recent negotiation efforts for normalization, Assad was trying to use the power he wielded over the trade of Captagon as leverage over them, and it backfired.

“In many of my discussions with high-level officials in Gulf countries, they said the Assad regime used it [the Captagon trade] as a leverage tool for normalizations, and that the regime often explicitly acknowledged their connection to the Captagon trade,” Rose said. “This was a strategy to garner a transactional deal between Gulf states and Damascus, to incentivize them to pay the regime in return for lessened Captagon flows. And that frustrated Gulf states because it really was not the way they wanted to start normalization discussions.”

“They believed that after isolating the regime, sanctions and severed diplomatic relations, the regime should be the actor accepting their demands, not the other way around,” she added.

Matthew Zweig, a sanctions expert at the lobbying arm of the think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, pointed to another question related to Captagon that may have also ultimately contributed to Assad’s downfall.

“The question is whether Assad could even control the trade,” Zweig told ABC News. “Or did the trade control him? And the same question can be applied to the transitional government. Can they control the trade or will the trade control them? There is a lot of money.”

On Sunday, just hours after the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, captured Damascus and took power, its leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani stood up in front of a crowd of supporters inside the capital’s historic Umayyad Mosque and declared: “Syria has become the biggest producer of Captagon on Earth, and today, Syria is going to be purified by the grace of God.”

The future remains uncertain when it comes to the powerful forces of a cartel economy driven by billions of dollars, high demand and a fragile transitional government. 

The experts, as well as Hill, conveyed hope to ABC News that Syria would be able to pivot toward a better future with a normalized economy.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — The climate crisis is not a distant threat; it’s happening right now and affecting what matters most to us. Hurricanes intensified by a warming planet and drought-fueled wildfires are destroying our communities. Rising seas and flooding are swallowing our homes. And record-breaking heat waves are reshaping our way of life.

The good news is we know how to turn the tide and avoid the worst possible outcomes. However, understanding what needs to be done can be confusing due to a constant stream of climate updates, scientific findings, and critical decisions that are shaping our future.

That’s why the ABC News Climate and Weather Unit is cutting through the noise by curating what you need to know to keep the people and places you care about safe. We are dedicated to providing clarity amid the chaos, giving you the facts and insights necessary to navigate the climate realities of today — and tomorrow.

More than three-quarters of the planet’s land is now permanently drier due to climate change

Humans are dependent on the land for our very survival. If we can’t farm, we don’t eat. However, much of that precious soil is in danger due to human-amplified climate change, according to a new report.

In its new report, the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) found that 77.6% of the Earth’s land has become permanently drier over the last three decades leading up to 2020. During the same period, drylands expanded by more than 1.6 million square miles and now cover more than 40% of the planet (excluding Antarctica).

Drylands are regions characterized by low rainfall and moisture, resulting in scarce water and arid land. Drier land can result in insufficient food production, increased wildfire activity, water scarcity and land degradation, according to the report.

“Unlike droughts—temporary periods of low rainfall—aridity represents a permanent, unrelenting transformation,” UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw said in a press statement. “Droughts end. When an area’s climate becomes drier, however, the ability to return to previous conditions is lost. The drier climates now affecting vast lands across the globe will not return to how they were and this change is redefining life on Earth.”

The report says human-amplified climate change is the primary reason for this transformation. The UNCCD finds that greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation, transportation, industry and land use changes are warming the planet and affecting rainfall, evaporation and plant life. They say those changes create the ideal conditions for increased dryness.

And it’s not just dry areas getting drier. The researchers found that more than 7% of global lands were transformed from non-drylands to drylands or from less arid areas to more arid. They warn that another 3% of the world’s humid areas could become drylands by the end of the century if we don’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“Without concerted efforts, billions face a future marked by hunger, displacement, and economic decline. Yet, by embracing innovative solutions and fostering global solidarity, humanity can rise to meet this challenge. The question is not whether we have the tools to respond—it is whether we have the will to act,” Nichole Barger, chair of the UNCCD’s science-policy interface, said in a statement.

The report makes several recommendations, including better monitoring, improved land use policies and investing in new water efficiency technologies. But they make it clear that the world must curb global warming if they are to stop the future damage and the threats that come from it.

-ABC News Climate Unit’s Matthew Glasser

Report finds that geothermal energy could meet 15% of global energy demand through 2050

The Earth produces a lot of heat. Scientists believe our planet’s inner core is nearly as hot as the sun. Radioactive particles in rocks slowly decay, constantly replenishing the heat. Geothermal energy harnesses that heat to create energy and warm homes and buildings.

However, geothermal energy isn’t widely used despite being clean and renewable. It’s expensive and often location-specific, usually near tectonic plate boundaries.

But according to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), geothermal power could become a significant source of electricity for the world. The intergovernmental organization found that “geothermal energy could meet 15% of global electricity demand growth between now and 2050 if project costs continue to decline.”

That would be enough power to meet the current demand of the United States and India combined. Unlike wind and solar, the IEA says geothermal can provide 24/7 energy generation. It also has the added benefit of heat production and storage.

“New technologies are opening new horizons for geothermal energy across the globe, offering the possibility of meeting a significant portion of the world’s rapidly growing demand for electricity securely and cleanly,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a press statement.

The IEA says with more financial investment, the cost of geothermal energy could fall by 80%. And at a time when finding workers with green energy skills can be challenging, the report states “up to 80% of the investment required in geothermal involves capacity and skills that are transferrable from existing oil and gas operations.”

“Geothermal is a major opportunity to draw on the technology and expertise of the oil and gas industry. Our analysis shows that the growth of geothermal could generate investment worth $1 trillion by 2035,” Birol added.

November was the 2nd warmest on record

With less than three weeks to go before 2025, global temperatures in November have made it all but certain that 2024 will be the warmest year ever recorded.

According to NOAA’s monthly climate assessment, last month was the second warmest November globally, with temperatures 2.41 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average. Temperatures were above average across much of the world, with Asia experiencing its warmest November ever recorded. Oceania and South America were second-warmest.

Year-to-date, the world is experiencing its warmest period on record. That means there’s a more than 99% chance that 2024 will break the yearly temperature record currently held by 2023, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information.

According to NOAA, global tropical cyclone activity matched the long-term record with 12 named storms this year. The Atlantic saw three hurricanes in November, including Rafael, which peaked as a Category 3 storm.

Global sea ice area was the second smallest in 46 years and more than one million square miles less than the 1991-2020 average.

-ABC News Climate Unit’s Matthew Glasser

Wildfire smoke: A significant contributor to air pollution in some US communities

In recent years, wildfire smoke has emerged as a significant cause of diminished air quality across many cities in the United States, according to a new recent study presented at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

The findings, which have not yet been peer-reviewed, suggest that wildfire smoke can contribute to as much as 50% of annual air pollution in certain parts of the U.S. Regions in Oregon, Nevada, California, Washington, North Dakota and Minnesota were identified as some of the most affected by this smoke-related air pollution.

The researchers say the impact of wildfire smoke doesn’t just stop in remote areas; it’s also impacting major urban centers. Some of the country’s largest cities, including New York, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta and Washington, D.C., reported significant smoke exposure in 2023. Los Angeles, Phoenix and Riverside experienced their highest smoke levels in 2020. The researchers say this year-to-year variation between locations underscores the unpredictable nature of wildfire seasons and their far-reaching consequences on air quality.

The researchers analyzed data collected from more than 800 particle monitors in over 350 areas, representing nearly 90% of the U.S. population. The team combined data from the NOAA Hazard Mapping System Fire and Smoke Product with surface PM2.5 readings to explore how these smoky days affect overall pollution levels. PM2.5 is a type of particulate matter pollution smaller than human hair that can cause a number of health problems, such as asthma and heart disease.

The results from the study raise important questions about public health and environmental policy, especially as climate change intensifies wildfire seasons. According to a study from researchers at the University of Tasmania, extreme wildfire events have more than doubled in frequency and magnitude globally over the past two decades. And the Environmental Protection Agency has found that the U.S. wildfire season has grown longer and shifted earlier in recent decades due to warmer springs, longer summer dry seasons and drier vegetation.

-ABC News Climate Unit’s Matthew Glasser and ABC News Medical Unit’s Vinh-Son Nguyen, MD

The rapidly warming Arctic tundra is now contributing to climate change

For thousands of years, the vast Arctic tundra has acted as a critical carbon sink. That means it absorbed more carbon dioxide than it produced. As a result, it has been removing a heat-trapping greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. However, rapidly warming conditions and increasing wildfire activity have now turned the region into a source of carbon dioxide emissions, according to a new report released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The Arctic region is warming much faster than the global average, and rapidly warming temperatures are fueling the troubling shift in several ways.

First, increasing temperatures are thawing the permafrost, releasing carbon that’s been stored in the soil into the atmosphere. Second, warmer conditions promote vegetation growth, contributing to more frequent wildfires in the region and additional carbon dioxide emissions.

The Arctic’s warmest years on record have all occurred within the last nine years. The persistent warming trend has contributed to declining snow cover and a shortening snow season. According to the report, last winter brought the shortest snow season in 26 years for portions of Arctic Canada, and overall, Arctic snow melt is occurring one to two weeks earlier than historical averages.

Less snow promotes further warming and increases the wildfire threat in the region. And these compounding factors create an unsettling cycle that feeds on itself, boosting global warming while making it increasingly difficult to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Rick Spinrad, NOAA’s administrator, said the addition of the Arctic tundra as a source of carbon dioxide emissions “will worsen climate change impacts.”

Local ecosystems are already having to adapt. According to the report, food sources for ice seal populations are shifting due to water temperature changes and warmer and wetter weather is devastating inland caribou herds.

If this trend continues, cascading impacts could reach far beyond the Arctic region. “What happens in the Arctic has wide-reaching implications for the entirety of North America and Eurasia,” Dr. Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a press statement.

-ABC News meteorologist Dan Peck

The US just experienced its warmest autumn on record

Another season, another climate milestone. According to a new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), persistent above-average to record-warm conditions across much of the United States made meteorological autumn, which lasts from September to November, the warmest ever recorded.

The record-warm fall season makes it more likely that 2024 will end up as one of the nation’s warmest, if not the warmest, years on record. As of November 2024, the contiguous U.S. year-to-date temperature was 3.3 degrees Fahrenheit above average.

Despite December’s chilly start for much of the country, with widespread below-average temperatures in many regions, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center says that the cold will ease during the second half of the month with above-average temperatures favored from the West to the Northeast.

The stretch of abnormally warm temperatures was accompanied by extremely dry weather across much of the country, fueling dangerous wildfire conditions in regions like the Northeast. A very dry start to the season brought drought conditions to more than half of the lower 48 states by late October.

Fortunately, several significant rainfall events in November brought notable drought relief to large swaths of the country, reducing overall drought coverage by nearly 10.5% and suppressing the wildfire danger.

-ABC News meteorologist Dan Peck

Nearly one-third of the planet’s species risk extinction because of climate change

Nearly one-third of the world’s species could be at risk for extinction because of climate change if the world does nothing to reduce global warming, according to a new analysis from Science.

University of Connecticut researcher and biologist Mark Urban found that while some species are adapting to climate change, 160,000 species are already at risk. Many are now facing declining populations because of changes in our climate.

According to the study, with current global temperatures at 1.3 degrees Celsius above industrial levels, 1.6% of species are projected to become extinct. As the temperatures warm even more, Urban found the extinction rate would also increase, with the most severe scenario included (5.4 degrees Celsius of warming) putting the extinction risk at 29.7%.

“The increased certainty of predicted climate change extinctions compels action,” Urban wrote. “Extinction represents just the final endpoint of a species’ existence; even when extinction is avoided, declining abundances and shrinking ranges can strongly affect many other species, including humans.”

Urban defines the risk of extinction as the probability that any one species will go extinct without mitigation efforts. Urban found that extinction rates could increase dramatically if global temperatures rise over 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to industrial levels.

1.5 degrees Celsius is the warming limit set by the world’s nations under the Paris Agreement after the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that crossing that benchmark would lead to more severe climate change impacts.

Risks varied across geographic areas in the study, with Australia/New Zealand and South America facing the highest risks (15.7% and 12.8%, respectively) and Asia facing lower risks (5.5%).

-ABC News Climate Unit’s Kelly Livingston

Antarctic sea ice hits new low during Earth’s 2nd warmest November on record

Imagine you have a swimming pool with ice cubes filling it. Now, measure the total area of the pool that has ice on the surface, even if the ice cubes don’t cover it completely. Because ice often spreads out unevenly, leaving water between the chunks, scientists count areas where at least 15% of the surface is covered. So, because your pool is loaded with ice cubes, it would be considered ice covered. In the real world, scientists call it sea ice extent.

While you can add ice to your pool, you can’t to the ocean. And according to a new report by Copernicus, the European Union’s Climate Change Service, the sea ice extent in the Antarctic has dipped to its lowest value on record for the month of November. It is 10% below average. This occurred during a stretch of near-record global land and sea surface temperatures.

Last month ranked as the second warmest November on record globally, with an average temperature of 14.10 degrees Celsius, or 57.38 degrees Fahrenheit.

Copernicus noted the new data not only makes it virtually certain that 2024 will surpass 2023 as Earth’s warmest year on record, but it will likely be the first year to be 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) than the pre-industrial average of 1850-1900.

The Paris Agreement aims to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius to prevent the worst outcomes of climate change.

As of November 2024, the average global year-to-date temperature was 0.14 degrees Celsius (or 0.25 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than it was in 2023, which is the warmest year ever recorded.

-ABC News meteorologist Dan Peck

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