Iraq Says US to Return 17,000 Artifacts Looted after Invasion

Iraqi Foreign Minister Fouad Hussein speaks with Iraqi Culture Minister Hassan Nadhim during a news conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, Iraq August 3, 2021. REUTERS/Saba Kareem
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fouad Hussein speaks with Iraqi Culture Minister Hassan Nadhim during a news conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, Iraq August 3, 2021. REUTERS/Saba Kareem
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Iraq Says US to Return 17,000 Artifacts Looted after Invasion

Iraqi Foreign Minister Fouad Hussein speaks with Iraqi Culture Minister Hassan Nadhim during a news conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, Iraq August 3, 2021. REUTERS/Saba Kareem
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fouad Hussein speaks with Iraqi Culture Minister Hassan Nadhim during a news conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, Iraq August 3, 2021. REUTERS/Saba Kareem

The United States is returning more than 17,000 ancient artifacts looted and smuggled out of Iraq after the US invasion in 2003, including a 3,500-year-old clay tablet bearing part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Iraq said on Tuesday.

Tens of thousands of antiquities disappeared from Iraq after the 2003 invasion that toppled leader Saddam Hussein. Many more were smuggled or destroyed by ISIS, which held a third of Iraq between 2014 and 2017 before it was defeated by Iraqi and international forces.

US authorities working to recover the artifacts recently reached an agreement with Baghdad to return items seized from dealers and museums in the United States, the Iraqi culture and foreign ministries said.

"The US government seized some of the artifacts and sent them to the (Iraqi) embassy. The Gilgamesh tablet, the important one, will be returned to Iraq in the next month after legal procedures are finalized," Culture Minister Hassan Nadhim told Reuters.

US authorities seized the Gilgamesh tablet in 2019 after it was smuggled, auctioned and sold to an arts dealer in Oklahoma and displayed at a museum in Washington, D.C., the Department of Justice said. A court ordered its forfeiture last month, it said.

It said that a US antiquities dealer had bought the tablet from a London-based dealer in 2003. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a 3,500-year-old Sumerian tale considered one of the world's first pieces of literature.

Nadhim said other artifacts being returned included other tablets inscribed in cuneiform script.



EU Scientists: May Was World's Second-hottest on Record

FILE PHOTO: A man sits on a tangle of branches in the Sacramento River while staying cool during a heat wave in Sacramento, California, US May 30, 2025. REUTERS/Fred Greaves/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A man sits on a tangle of branches in the Sacramento River while staying cool during a heat wave in Sacramento, California, US May 30, 2025. REUTERS/Fred Greaves/File Photo
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EU Scientists: May Was World's Second-hottest on Record

FILE PHOTO: A man sits on a tangle of branches in the Sacramento River while staying cool during a heat wave in Sacramento, California, US May 30, 2025. REUTERS/Fred Greaves/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A man sits on a tangle of branches in the Sacramento River while staying cool during a heat wave in Sacramento, California, US May 30, 2025. REUTERS/Fred Greaves/File Photo

The world experienced its second-warmest May since records began this year, a month in which climate change fueled a record-breaking heatwave in Greenland, scientists said on Wednesday.

Last month was Earth's second-warmest May on record - exceeded only by May 2024 - rounding out the northern hemisphere's second-hottest March-May spring on record, the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in a monthly bulletin, according to Reuters.

Global surface temperatures last month averaged 1.4 degrees Celsius higher than in the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period, when humans began burning fossil fuels on an industrial scale, C3S said.

That broke a run of extraordinary heat, in which 21 of the last 22 months had an average global temperature exceeding 1.5C above pre-industrial times - although scientists warned this break was unlikely to last.

"Whilst this may offer a brief respite for the planet, we do expect the 1.5C threshold to be exceeded again in the near future due to the continued warming of the climate system," said C3S director Carlo Buontempo.

The main cause of climate change is greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. Last year was the planet's hottest on record.

A separate study, published by the World Weather Attribution group of climate scientists on Wednesday, found that human-caused climate change made a record-breaking heatwave in Iceland and Greenland last month about 3C hotter than it otherwise would have been - contributing to a huge additional melting of Greenland's ice sheet.

"Even cold-climate countries are experiencing unprecedented temperatures," said Sarah Kew, study co-author and researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.

The global threshold of 1.5C is the limit of warming which countries vowed under the Paris climate agreement to try to prevent, to avoid the worst consequences of warming.

The world has not yet technically breached that target - which refers to an average global temperature of 1.5C over decades.

However, some scientists have said it can no longer realistically be met, and have urged governments to cut CO2 emissions faster, to limit the overshoot and the fueling of extreme weather.

C3S's records go back to 1940, and are cross-checked with global temperature records going back to 1850.