#northern-sea-route

#northern-sea-route

Ust-Luga, a key oil-export outlet in Russia's west, stopped at the end of March as Ukraine stepped up attacks on energy infrastructure along the Baltic coast.

The study highlights how rapid Arctic warming increases the frequency of extreme weather events, particularly concurrent heatwaves across Europe and eastern Asia.

Attempting to eke out the remaining oil and gas from the North Sea was not the answer to the challenges facing the UK. It will not bring down the price for consumers, nor will it deliver long-term energy security. The international markets will determine the price and destination; that is not energy independence.

Special forces assisted by French helicopters boarded the ship in a clandestine operation in the North Sea on Saturday night, Belgium's defence minister, Theo Francken, said on Sunday. Prosecutors said the tanker, identified as the Ethera, was falsely flying the flag of Guinea and was believed to be on its way back to Russia when it was seized in Belgium's exclusive economic zone.

It's one step forward, one step back in Europe's relations with the US. Just hours after the Coalition of the Willing made a big step towards providing Ukraine with long-awaited security guarantees with potential UK and French troops deployments and all briefly seemed to be going in the right direction once again, the White House said that using US military is always an option for acquiring Greenland.

ICE has designs on every major US city. It plans to not only occupy existing government spaces but share hallways and elevator bays with medical offices and small businesses. It will be down the street from daycares and within walking distance of churches and treatment centers. Its enforcement officers and lawyers will have cubicles a modest drive away from giant warehouses that have been tapped to hold thousands of humans that ICE will detain.

In the pristine High Arctic sits the Kitsissut island cluster, also known as the Carey Islands, nestled between northwest Greenland and northeast Canada. The surrounding seas are perilous, and traveling there is difficult even with modern boats. But new archaeological evidence suggests ancient humans managed to sail to the islands, too. Early settlers lived on the islands between 4,500 and 2,700 years ago.

We are getting better prepared all the time, and we have already reached a certain level, General Peter Boysen, head of the Danish Army, told EL PAIS. We will fight with what we have, but we need to accelerate and reinforce our forces, and that is what we are doing. Bornholm Island, in the Baltic Sea, is Denmark's easternmost point. Russia is 300 kilometers (186 miles) away, and that's where the threat General Boysen is concerned about originates.

(Screengrab via X) Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted dramatic footage of the moment US Coast Guard aided by military assets seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the North Atlantic on Wednesday, ending a two week pursuit after a failed attempt to take the vessel on December 20, when the vessel was apparently bound for Venezuela.

President Donald Trump's relentless and escalating drive to acquire Greenland from Denmark, whose government- along with that of Greenland-emphatically rejects the idea, has unnerved, offended, and outraged leaders of countries considered allies for decades. It's the latest, and perhaps most significant, eruption of an attitude of disdain towards allies that has become a hallmark of the second Trump administration, which has espoused an America First approach to the world.

Markets reacted with speed and force. Gold jumped as much as 2.1% to a record $4,690 per troy ounce, while silver surged 4.4% as investors rush into havens. European equities opened sharply lower, with the Stoxx Europe 600 down 1.5%. Read more related news: Trump warns Norway he will not 'think exclusively about peace' US futures tracking the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 fell 0.9% and 1.2% respectively, even with US cash markets closed for Martin Luther King Jr Day.

"It's in that spirit that we can still talk about a fracturing, more dangerous, world, in which the U.S. is less vaunted, the USD loses its reserve currency status, and where the U.S. focuses instead on the Western Hemisphere as its sole and defendable redoubt," the pair explained.

Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, can rarely be described as looking happy. His brick wall of a face and somber voice, worn down by many years of smoking Marlboros, have earned him the nickname "Minister No." But when the question of Greenland came up yesterday at his press conference in Moscow, Lavrov seemed to come alive, even permitting himself a smile and a chuckle as he talked about President Trump's imperial designs on the Danish territory and the response from NATO allies.

Global warming is thawing the Arctic and igniting a high-stakes race for the riches beneath its ice. Global warming is heating up the Arctic, and global powers like the United States, Russia and China are manoeuvring to stake a claim to the resources under its melting ice. Some experts say the region, once known as an exception an island of international cooperation in the midst of geopolitical struggles is becoming the site of a second cold war.