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CAMBRIDGE BAY, ​Nunavut — Since U.S. President Donald Trump’s barrage of threats to seize Greenland, authorities on the frozen island have been seeking help from a northern ally: Canada.

A reserve unit of the Canadian armed forces called the Rangers has long maintained a year-round presence in mostly inaccessible Arctic communities. For three years, authorities in Greenland and Denmark have consulted with Canadian officials on how to set up their own version of the Rangers — conversations that grew more urgent with Trump’s threats and growing fears of Russian hostility in the Arctic.

“The rhetoric coming out of the White House has ⁠sped up efforts to rebuff the idea that Arctic communities need the U.S. to come in and save them,” said Whitney Lackenbauer, an honorary lieutenant-colonel Canadian Ranger involved in the talks, who spoke with Reuters during a recent 5,000-kilometer Arctic snowmobile trek by the Rangers.

“The Nordic countries and Canada, we’re increasingly realizing we can come together in military and diplomatic ways to send a message that carries moral weight.”

As Canada attempts to pivot away from relying on the U.S. to protect its vast Arctic, Prime Minister Mark Carney is strengthening ties and exchanging security tips with the Nordic countries, which he describes as trusted partners.

Canada’s increased defense collaboration with the Nordics is part of Carney’s effort to strengthen alliances between what he calls “middle powers” in a world where ⁠the United States is considered a less reliable partner.

The White House said Trump’s leadership has prompted allies “to recognize the ​need to ⁠meaningfully contribute to their own defense” and that the Arctic is a critical region for U.S. national security and the economy.

“The administration is participating in diplomatic high-level technical talks with the governments of Greenland and Denmark to address the United States’ national security interests in Greenland,” a White House spokesperson said in an email.

Alliances are shifting in the Arctic as climate change makes it more accessible. Russia ⁠has far more military bases than any other nation there and in recent years China has started to increase its presence in the mineral-rich area, mostly in partnership with Russia.

While Carney says ​Canada will no longer rely ⁠on any other nation to protect its own territory, he says the Arctic’s greatest ‌threat is from Russia – and the Nordics have been boosting their own defenses since Russia invaded Ukraine.

In March, Canada and the five Nordic countries — Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden — agreed to deepen their cooperation in military procurement and ramp up defense production to deal with security threats, including cyberattacks.

A plan for how Greenland might adapt the Canadian Rangers is expected by the end of this year, according to government policy documents. Canadian Foreign ‌Affairs Minister Anita Anand told Reuters she meets regularly with Nordic officials to work on collective defense and Arctic security.

Canada’s ‌partnership with the United States through NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, remains critical, she said. But Canada is focused on bolstering new alliances. That includes the opening of a Canadian consulate in Nuuk in February and an invitation to her Nordic counterparts to visit Canada’s Arctic this year.

“We have to build something new, and it has to be a world order that is built on the values that we represent,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told Carney during the Nordic-Canadian summit in Oslo in March.

In April, Alexander Stubb became the first Finnish president to visit ⁠Canada in a dozen years and signed several agreements on Arctic cooperation. Stubb and Carney took to the ice in Ottawa for a hockey practice, and afterward Stubb said he and Carney message each other almost every day.

The two national leaders sometimes chat about hockey or baseball, Stubb told reporters, but “most of the time it’s about NATO or Ukraine or Iran.”

No more ‘free pass’

Lackenbauer, the honorary Canadian Ranger lieutenant-colonel, is also an Arctic expert at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. He said Canada should overhaul its approach to Arctic security just as Nordic countries did after Russian troops marched into Ukraine in 2022.

“The more we can go and help Canada’s allies in northern Europe, the more hostile nations will get the message that they do not get a free pass in the Arctic,” he said.

Among the eight countries that share the Arctic, Canada’s investment in defending the territory has consistently been near the bottom, trailing Russia, the U.S., Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, according to the Arctic Business Index, a network of far north research institutions and analysts. Along with Greenland, ‌Canada has historically spent the least.

Last year, Canada hit the NATO target of spending 2% of its GDP on defense, around C$63 billion ($45 billion USD), after repeated complaints from Trump. That compared to ​a low point of just 1% in 2014.

Neil O’Rourke, Director General at Canada’s Coast Guard for Fleet and Maritime Services, said he and a Danish defense colleague realized years ago that if ‌either country had a serious incident in the Arctic, their first phone call should be to ⁠each other.

“Up north, we’re just across the water and it makes much more sense to share resources than to get help from down south,” O’Rourke said in an interview. He said Canada ⁠is also trying to learn more from Norway about how its maritime services handle emergency towing of vessels.

Rob Huebert, an Arctic expert at the University of Calgary, said working with the U.S. remains critical, noting that the country produces arguably the most advanced military weaponry and that Canada’s ‌military remains highly dependent on the U.S. for protecting its northernmost ​regions.

“If we are talking about war-fighting capability, that means working with the U.S. military,” he said. Huebert said Carney’s ‌March trip to observe a Norwegian-led NATO exercise in Bardufoss is perhaps an indication the country’s approach ​is changing.

“Until very recently, Canada’s participation in NATO’s Arctic exercises in the Nordics has been very token,” he said. “But then all of a sudden because of Trump, we decide we’d better do something with the Nordics.”

A new era

‘Don’t fight the White House’

Not in almost half a century has any U.S. president been responsible for this many best and worst market days during their time in office, per Fundstrat. If it weren’t for the five best days driven by Trump in his second term, the S&P 500 would only be 1% higher since his taking office. That’s as opposed to the index being up 23.5% from that inauguration date.

President Donald Trump said late Friday that a top Islamic State group commander has been killed in Africa in a joint operation with Nigeria’s armed forces.

Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, the second-in-command of the militant group, was killed, Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

“Tonight, at my direction, brave American forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed a meticulously planned and very complex mission,” Trump said.

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu confirmed the operation and said al-Minuki was killed alongside “several of his lieutenants, during a strike on his compound in the Lake Chad Basin.”

The “highly complex precision air-land operation” was carried out during three hours of darkness early Saturday, according to Nigerian military officials.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tied the operation to a previous instruction from Trump to “help protect Christians in Nigeria,” adding: “For months, we hunted this top ISIS leader in Nigeria who was killing Christians, and we killed him — and his entire posse.”

He added: “This should serve as a reminder that we will hunt down those who wish to harm Americans or innocent Christians, wherever they are.”

No U.S. service members were harmed in the operation, according to the U.S. military’s Africa Command. The force’s commander, U.S. Air Force Gen. Dagvin Anderson, said the operation alongside Nigeria “was made possible through the cooperation and coordination of our forces in recent months.”

The Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, has wreaked havoc in Iraq, Syria and other parts of the world where supporters have carried out terror attacks.

Its elusive leader, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, was killed in 2019.

Abu Hafs al Qurayshi was named leader of the group in August 2023, the U.S. Congressional Research Service said in a report.

In 2023, the U.S. State Department designated al-Minuki as a “specially designated global terrorist,” which imposes sanctions on any property in the U.S. and restricts transactions.

While the Islamic State suffered military setbacks and the loss of a stronghold in Syria, last year’s annual U.S. threat assessment said it “remains the world’s largest Islamic terrorist organization.”

In 2024, a spokesman for the group “publicly hailed the group’s Africa expansion,” the report said.

Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert suggested that Donald Trump blocked funds for a clean drinking water project in her state over the prosecution of election denier Tina Peters.

Colorado’s governor, Jared Polis, commuted Peters’ nearly nine-year prison sentence on Friday, ordering her release on 1 June. The former Colorado county clerk had allowed unauthorized people to access voting records amid efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, in which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Boebert welcomed the commutation the same day, taking some credit, but giving even more to Trump.

“I’m proud of the relentless pressure my office and I applied, working hand-in-hand with President Donald Trump, to highlight Tina’s case and demand fairness,” the congresswoman wrote. “This outcome would not have been possible without the continued pressure and advocacy from President Trump who always knew Tina deserved fairness under the law.”

In comments to 9News Denver on Friday, Boebert also said that she hoped the release of Peters would convince Trump to stop blocking funds for a federal project to bring clean drinking water to Colorado. “We were told that Tina was the reason we couldn’t get water,” Boebert said, an apparent reference to Trump exerting on Colorado’s governor the same kind of pressure he put on Ukraine’s president in 2019, when he withheld congressionally mandated military aid to try to force Ukraine to open a sham investigation into Joe Biden. Trump was impeached for that scheme in 2019.

In January, the president had vetoed a bill that would have funded a drinking water project in Boebert’s Colorado district, after it passed the House and Senate unanimously. Boebert, like all other Colorado lawmakers, had supported the bill, which would have supported clean water for 50,000 people in the region.

Trump cited financial concerns, but Boebert pointed out on the House floor that Trump supported the project before he promised retaliation against Colorado for keeping Peters in jail and Boebert joined the effort to force the administration to release files on Jeffrey Epstein, the late child sexual offender Trump socialized with for nearly two decades.

When the House of Representatives upheld Trump’s veto at the time, she criticized her colleagues, but not the president.

“I am disappointed to see the lack of leadership, the amount of people that will fold, that will cave, that will not take a stand,” Boebert said. “This is a bill that in policy, no one in that chamber disagreed with. This was purely political and it’s very unfortunate.”

“Folks are afraid of getting a mean tweet or attacked. And I came here to deliver for my constituents,” Boebert said.

Published  May 16, 2026 8:55am EDT

Following his state visit to China, President Donald Trump continued to stress that Iran cannot possess nuclear weapons. 

During an interview with FOX News’ Bret Baier, the president said Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed, and said the U.S. did not need any assistance from China to find a resolution to the war in Iran.

“He would like to help…but we don’t need help,” Trump said. “You know the problem with help? When somebody helps you, they always want something on the other side. That’s the way help works.” 

‘I don’t think about anybody,’ Trump says

The ongoing war’s ripple effects continues to cause pain at the pump for Americans, but Trump stood by his statement he made before his trip to China, saying high gas prices were worth the sole goal of preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons. 

What they’re saying:

“When people hear me say it, everybody agrees,” Trump told Baier, saying that higher gasoline prices were just “short-term pain.”

Trump had responded to a reporter’s question on Tuesday outside the White House by saying, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

He told Baier that the question that prompted the earlier response was “fake.”

Here’s the latest from Saturday: 

Putin to visit Chinese leader days after Trump

8:50 a.m. ET: Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with Jinping on a two-day trip to Beijing next week, the Kremlin said Saturday.

The announcement comes less than 24 hours after U.S. President Donald Trump finished his own state visit to China, where he also met Xi to discuss trade and the U.S. and Israel’s war in Iran.

In a statement, the Kremlin said that Putin’s trip, planned for May 19-20, had been scheduled to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the 2001 Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship.

It said that the two leaders would discuss bilateral relations as well as “key international and regional issues” and economic cooperation.

The Source: Information for this article was taken from FOX News, previous reporting by The Associated and previous FOX Local reporting.

Iran War