Biden announces $2.5 billion in Ukraine defense assistance
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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden announced on Monday that the United States would offer almost $2.5 billion in defense assistance to Ukraine, a move that will bring an “immediate influx of capabilities” as the country defends itself against Russia’s assault.
“At my direction, the United States will continue to work relentlessly to strengthen Ukraine’s position in this war over the remainder of my time in office,” Biden said in a statement.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(LONDON) — Former Syrian President Bashar Assad on Monday made his first official statement since being topped by a rebel offensive and fleeing the country for Russia, declaring that he left Syria after a Russian request to do so.
“My departure from Syria was neither planned nor did it occur in the final hours of the battles,” Assad said in a statement posted to the presidency’s official Telegram channel.
“As terrorist forces infiltrated Damascus, I moved to Latakia in coordination with our Russian allies to oversee combat operations,” Assad said.
“Upon arrival at the Khmeimim air base that morning, it became clear that our forces had completely withdrawn from all battle lines and that the last army positions had fallen,” the statement continued.
“As the field situation in the area continued to deteriorate, the Russian military base itself came under intensified attack by drone strikes. With no viable means of leaving the base, Moscow requested that the base’s command arrange an immediate evacuation to Russia.”
“This took place a day after the fall of Damascus, following the collapse of the final military positions and the resulting paralysis of all state institutions,” Assad said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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(LONDON) — North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency on Tuesday claimed a successful test a new type of intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile, with leader Kim Jong Un touting the weapon as a major military achievement.
KCNA said the successful test took place on Jan. 6. The launch marked Pyongyang’s first missile test of 2025 and came with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the region for what is expected to be his last foreign trip as America’s top diplomat.
Kim personally oversaw the test, KCNA said.
Kim said the missile’s hypersonic glide vehicle travelled more than 930 miles at 12 times the speed of sound. It reached two different peaks of 62 miles and 26.4 miles before hitting a simulated target at sea, the North Korean leader said.
The development of the weapon is “mainly aimed to steadily put the country’s nuclear war deterrent on an advanced basis by making the means of changing the war situation, the weapon system to which no one can respond, the linchpin of strategic deterrence,” Kim said, as quoted by KCNA.
“This is clearly a plan and effort for self-defence, not an offensive plan and action,” Kim added.
“The performance of our latest intermediate-range hypersonic missile system cannot be ignored worldwide and the system can deal a serious military strike to a rival while effectively breaking any dense defensive barrier,” the leader added.
The launch “clearly showed” Pyongyang’s “rivals” that the country is “fully ready to use even any means to defend our legitimate interests,” Kim continued.
“The hypersonic missile system will reliably contain any rivals in the Pacific region that can affect the security of our state,” he said.
North Korea has embarked on an intense program of weapons tests in recent years, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, medium-range rockets and hypersonic weapons. The increase in tests came as relations with the U.S. and its regional allies deteriorated and Pyongyang pulled closer to Russia.
North Korea has been testing hypersonic weapons — which fly at more than five times the speed of sound, their speed and trajectory making them difficult to intercept — since 2021.
South Korea cast doubt on its neighbor’s purported test. Lee Sung Joon, the spokesperson for South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Seoul’s military believed Pyongyang was exaggerating its capabilities, the Associated Press reported.
Lee said the missile covered a shorter distance than Kim claimed and that there was no second peak.
The latest test came as Blinken visited South Korea and Japan — two key American regional allies.
Blinken on Monday condemned North Korea’s launch as “yet another violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions,” and again criticized Pyongyang for its materiel and personnel contributions to Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine.
ABC News’ Will Gretsky contributed to this report.
(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.
Biden bans offshore oil and gas drilling in 625 million acres of ocean
Just days before he leaves office, President Joe Biden is taking executive action to ban offshore oil and gas drilling in more than 625 million acres of ocean.
Using a provision in the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act that gives the president the authority to ban drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf ocean zone, Biden declared the entire U.S. East Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California and portions of the Northern Baring Sea in Alaska off limits to future oil and natural gas leasing.
“My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses, and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs. It is not worth the risks,” Biden said in a statement.
The decision is not unprecedented. President Barack Obama used the act to ban oil and gas production in parts of the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans. And President Donald Trump used it to prohibit drilling off both Florida coasts and the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina. Trump also tried to overturn the Obama decision in 2019, but a U.S. District Court judge ruled that it would require an act of Congress to undo the ban. With that ruling, Trump may have difficulty ridding himself of the ban.
Environmental groups are praising the decision, and one senior administration official told ABC News that the ban is “one of the most significant climate actions the president could take” regarding climate protection and natural resource protection.
The American Petroleum Institute panned the move, saying, “American voters sent a clear message in support of domestic energy development, and yet the current administration is using its final days in office to cement a record of doing everything possible to restrict it.”
The group, which represents America’s natural gas and oil industry, is urging “policymakers to use every tool at their disposal to reverse this politically motivated decision and restore a pro-American energy approach to federal leasing.”
But Biden is pushing back on the criticism, and the White House says hundreds of municipalities and thousands of elected officials have formally opposed offshore drilling in these areas because of health, environmental and economic threats.
“We do not need to choose between protecting the environment and growing our economy, or between keeping our ocean healthy, our coastlines resilient, and the food they produce secure and keeping energy prices low. Those are false choices,” Biden added in his statement.
While the eastern Gulf of Mexico is considered a lucrative region for drilling, the oil and gas industry has not shown much interest in developing some of the other areas receiving the new protection. And there’s been bipartisan pressure to protect many of these locations as many legislators don’t want oil platforms near their beaches.
-ABC News Climate Unit’s Matthew Glasser and ABC News White House Correspondent MaryAlice Parks
Could the UK be a model for clean electricity production?
When it comes to curbing climate change, scientists have been clear. The world needs to stop burning fossil fuels. However, much of the world still depends on significant amounts of oil, gas and coal for its energy needs.
England kicked off the coal power revolution in 1882 and, for the next 142 years, burned the greenhouse gas-emitting energy source. But last year, the U.K. became the first G7 country to phase out coal power plants. When the Ratcliffe-on-Soar plant in Nottinghamshire closed in September, it marked the end of an era for the most-polluting fossil fuel in that region.
A new analysis by Carbon Brief, a U.K.-based climate publication, found that by eliminating coal and adopting more clean energy sources, the U.K. has significantly cleaned up its electricity generation, meaning it’s generating the least amount of greenhouse gas emissions in its history.
According to the analysis, in 2024, renewable energy sources reached a record-high 45% in the country, while fossil fuels made up 29%. Nuclear energy accounted for another 13%. Over the last decade, renewable energy sources have more than doubled. As a result, carbon emissions have plunged by two-thirds over that time.
While gas-fired power plants are still the U.K.’s single-largest source of electricity, wind power has almost caught up. However, the analysis found that when new wind projects come online in the coming months, the U.K. will likely generate more power from wind than gas in 2025.
While the incoming Trump administration calls for more drilling and fossil fuel use, including coal, in the United States, the U.K. just had its cleanest year ever for electricity generation. The combination of sunsetting coal power plants and increasing the amount of renewable energy is moving the country in the direction scientists say is crucial for stopping the worst impacts of human-amplified climate change.
-ABC News Climate Unit’s Matthew Glasser
New York will make polluters pay for climate change damage
New York State is establishing a “Climate Superfund” that will make companies that release large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions financially responsible for some of the damage that climate change caused to the state’s infrastructure, communities and ecosystems.
On Thursday, Gov. Kathy Hochul, signed a bill into law requiring large fossil fuel companies to “pay for critical projects that protect New Yorkers.” Citing the hundreds of billions of dollars the state will have to spend on climate adaptation through 2050, the law requires that the companies responsible for most carbon emissions, more than a billion metric tons, between 2000-2018 pay nearly $3 billion annually for the next 25 years.
“With nearly every record rainfall, heatwave, and coastal storm, New Yorkers are increasingly burdened with billions of dollars in health, safety, and environmental consequences due to polluters that have historically harmed our environment,” Hochul said in a press statement.
The new law calls climate change “an immediate, grave threat to the state’s communities, environment, and economy.” According to NASA, 97% of climate scientists believe human activity, specifically burning fossil fuels, is the primary driver of climate change and global warming. And those changes to the climate have resulted in more intense and more frequent extreme weather events.
The New York legislature said the “Climate Superfund” was now possible because scientific research enables them “to determine with great accuracy the share of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere by specific fossil fuel companies over the last 70 years or more, making it possible to assign liability to and require compensation from companies commensurate with their emissions during a given time period.”
“The governor’s approval of the Climate Change Superfund Act is a welcome holiday gift for New York taxpayers,” said Blair Horner, executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, in a statement. “Until her approval, New York taxpayers were 100% on the financial hook for climate costs. Now Big Oil will pay for much of the damages that they helped cause.”
The state anticipates collecting up to $75 billion over 25 years, and the law requires that at least 35% of the funds go to disadvantaged communities.
New York State Senator Liz Krueger said the new legislation was modeled after the federal Superfund law that requires polluters to pay for toxic waste cleanups.
But not everyone is cheering the new legislation. In a letter to Gov. Hochul, urging her to veto the bill, the Business Council of New York State, which represents more than 3,000 companies, chambers of commerce and associations, wrote, “The bill discriminates by targeting only the largest fossil fuel extraction and processing firms, including petroleum, natural gas, and coal.”
The Council added, “This legislation ignores the near universal use and benefits associated with fossil fuel.” They argued that the new law would do nothing to address what they said is the primary cause of carbon emissions: “consumption.”
There are still a lot of specifics that have yet to be determined, and the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation is responsible for figuring out the program’s details over the next few years. With legal challenges all but certain, it will be some time before the companies actually have to pay up.
-ABC News Climate Unit’s Matthew Glasser
Could climate change bring more earthquakes?
Earthquakes are usually triggered by seismic activity deep beneath the Earth’s surface and far beyond the influence of atmospheric conditions. However, according to new research, there may be instances where climate change can impact seismic activity.
A recent Colorado State University study suggests that melting glaciers could impact earthquake activity in some areas. Researchers analyzed southern Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains during the last ice age. They found the active fault responsible for triggering earthquakes was held in place by the weight of glaciers sitting on top of it.
Thousands of years ago, as the last ice age ended and the planet began to naturally warm, glaciers in this region began to melt. The study found that as the ice melted, there was less pressure on the quake-prone fault, which triggered an increase in earthquake activity. Basically, the glacier was holding the fault in place — less ice, less weight.
There is limited scientific evidence linking changes in Earth’s climate to earthquake activity. Still, this study demonstrates that, in some cases, climate-related events, like melting glaciers, could influence seismic events.
Sean Gallen, Geosciences associate professor and senior author of the study, highlights that this research helps us better understand the factors that can drive earthquakes.
Even though the study focused on investigating links between Earth’s natural climate variability (an ice age) and seismic activity, this research shows how other glacier-adjacent faults worldwide could respond as greenhouse gas emissions accelerate global warming.
As human-amplified climate change continues to drive global glacier melt, earthquake activity along these faults could increase as glaciers recede.
“We see this in the rapid mountain glacial retreats in Alaska, the Himalayas and the Alps,” said Cece Hurtado, an author of the study. “In many of these regions, there are also active tectonics, and this work demonstrates that as climate change alters ice and water loads, tectonically active areas might see more frequent fault movements and earthquakes due to rapidly changing stress conditions.”
