Trump’s assertions that the U.S. must acquire or control Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory, have long strained relations between Washington and Copenhagen — both founding NATO members — and more broadly U.S. ties with Europe

International News via Reuters:

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday Greenland should be controlled by the United States, not Denmark, reaffirming a stance that has caused tensions among NATO allies just as leaders of the alliance gathered for a summit in Turkey. 

Trump’s assertions that the U.S. must acquire or control Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory, have long strained relations between Washington and Copenhagen — both founding NATO members — and more broadly U.S. ties with Europe. The issue has since moved to a diplomatic track.

“That should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark,” Trump said of Greenland in comments to reporters during a meeting with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.

Hours later, also speaking in Ankara, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she expected allies to respect the sovereignty of the Danish kingdom and accept that Greenland was not for sale.

“It is a well-known position of the United States that it wants to own and take over Greenland. I hope that it is equally well-known everywhere that this is not going to happen,” Frederiksen said.

She added that there were no plans to discuss in Ankara issues concerning the High North, the Arctic or Greenland.

Greenland’s Foreign Minister Mute Egede said in a post on Facebook that Greenland’s future should be decided by its people.

“That’s how it has always been. And that’s how it always will be,” he said, adding that Greenland should continue close cooperation with its allies.

Trump said the issue of control over Greenland had harmed U.S. ties with NATO. 

“That’s what hurt my relationship with NATO, because Greenland doesn’t help Denmark. Denmark doesn’t spend money to really help Greenland, but it’s an important part for the United States, and it’s surrounded by China ships and Russian ships, and that’s not going to happen,” he said. 

“They (Denmark) wouldn’t go along with it, and with all the money we spend to help them with Russia.”

U.S. Secretary of State Rubio said in June that conversations with Denmark and Greenland were continuing on a monthly basis.

Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Louise Rasmussen; writing by Katharine Jackson; Editing by Doina Chiacu, David Ljunggren and Gareth Jones

Le Pen’s presidential hopes had been in limbo since March 2025, when she received a five-year electoral ban for using money from the European Parliament to pay wages for staff at her anti-immigrant National Rally (RN) party in France

International News via Reuters:

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen was cleared on Tuesday to run for president in 2027 by an appeals court that shortened her sentence for misusing EU funds but ordered her to wear an electronic tag for a year.

Le Pen’s presidential hopes had been in limbo since March 2025, when she received a five-year electoral ban for using money from the European Parliament to pay wages for staff at her anti-immigrant National Rally (RN) party in France.

That party leads opinion polls for April’s election. But Le Pen, who has three times failed to win the presidency for the far-right in 15 years at the helm, must now decide whether to gamble that voters can overlook a custody regime that will require her to return home each night for most of the campaign.

The court upheld Le Pen’s conviction for embezzling European Parliament funds but chose to substantially shorten what had been a five-year ban on running for public office.

It also shortened the 57-year-old’s jail term to two years suspended and one, rather than two, with an electronic tag that confines her to her home at night.

WILL MARINE LE PEN CAMPAIGN WITH AN ELECTRONIC ANKLE TAG?

It is now up to Le Pen to say whether she will pursue her long-held goal of becoming modern France’s first far-right president or hand the baton to her 30-year-old protégé, Jordan Bardella.

She is due to give a prime-time TV interview on TF1 at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT), in which she may make an announcement on her political future.

She previously said she would not run for the presidency while under electronic monitoring because it would interfere with campaigning and undermine her credibility.

As she left the courtroom, Le Pen was smiling but did not say a word. She left immediately for RN headquarters. 

Tuesday’s judgment makes Le Pen ineligible to hold public office for 45 months rather than 60, with 30 suspended. As the ban has been running since last year’s ruling, the required 15-month ban has already been served.

The court said that, although it had confirmed Le Pen’s guilt, it had also taken into account “the voter’s freedom of choice, a prerequisite for the expression of democratic suffrage”.

Whether Le Pen should run despite the tag is likely to trigger intense debate within the RN, which has spent months preparing for two possible futures: one led by Le Pen and another by Bardella.

A sentencing judge will set out the hours when Le Pen can be away from her home and what time she must return at night. Restrictions on weekends are usually tighter. But Le Pen could ask for the tag to be removed after a few months for good behaviour.

FAR RIGHT LOOKING STRONG IN SURVEYS

Legal experts said the tag’s restrictions would complicate a nationwide campaign, but probably not make it impossible.

Polls have consistently shown both RN figures as strong contenders to reach a presidential runoff.

Some recent surveys have even suggested Bardella would outperform Le Pen in the first round, although there are doubts within the party whether the rising star has enough experience to see him through what is likely to be a bruising campaign.

Greens leader Marine Tondelier said that “in a normal world where the RN had even the slightest shred of morality, [Le Pen] would give up … because you can’t decently stand for election after being convicted of misappropriating public funds.”

Le Pen’s conviction stems from charges that RN figures misused funds intended for assistants in the European Parliament. In 2025, the judges found she had played a central role in the scheme, a finding she disputed.

That verdict sparked condemnation from Le Pen’s allies in France and abroad, who accused the judiciary of influencing democratic competition. Her opponents argued that elected officials must be held to the same standards as anyone else.

Reporting by Juliette Jabkhiro and Elizabeth Pineau, additional reporting by Makini Brice, Nicolas Delame, Gabriel Stargardter; Writing by Ingrid Melander; editing by Kevin Liffey

Two bombs exploded on Tuesday near a hotel in Damascus where French President Emmanuel Macron spent the night, wounding 18 people

International News via Reuters:

Two bombs exploded on Tuesday near a hotel in Damascus where French President Emmanuel Macron spent the night, wounding 18 people and overshadowing the first visit to Syria by a European Union head of state since Bashar al-Assad was toppled.    Macron, whose motorcade left the hotel shortly before the blasts, pressed ahead with his visit, meeting President Ahmed al-Sharaa at the presidential palace. His office said he had not heard the blasts.    The attack underlined lingering security challenges facing Sharaa, a former al Qaeda commander who has built close ties with Western states as he has sought to stabilise and rebuild a country shattered by 13 years of civil war.

MACRON SAYS VISIT GOES ON

The explosions struck a busy area of Damascus between the Syrian Tourism Ministry and the national museum across the street from the Four Seasons hotel, where a source in Macron’s delegation and Syrian security sources said he had spent the night and had met civil society groups on Tuesday morning.

In a post on X after the blasts, Macron said his visit continued.

“Nothing can undermine the desire of Syrians to live in a fully sovereign and secure Syria,” he posted. “This morning I met Syria in all its diversity, and I saw dignity, courage and determination.”

Macron, who led calls for the lifting of Western sanctions on Syria last year, was accompanied by business leaders, including the CEOs of TotalEnergies and shipping group CMA CGM.

The Elysee said CMA CGM signed a partnership deal with Syria, including air cargo freight handling, at Damascus airport, and that France and Syria would start a process to restore €51 million ($58.3 million) of assets to Syria that were confiscated from the late Rifaat al-Assad, Bashar’s uncle. 

Macron said France was ready to help rebuild Syria’s economy and banking sector.

FLAMES AND BILLOWING SMOKE

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bomb attacks.

The first blast hit soon after Macron’s motorcade left for the presidential palace. Reuters footage showed flames and smoke billowing from the site, when a second explosion was caught on camera a few metres (yards) away.

The second blast went off next to an ambulance parked at the scene, where some two dozen people had gathered. Emergency personnel worked to extinguish the blaze, with smoke and flames close to the shops behind.

Reuters video showed Macron’s motorcade heading along a highway towards the presidential palace before the blasts. A video published by Syrian state media then showed him standing alongside Sharaa and meeting other Syrian officials and military officers.

Aron Lund of the Century International think-tank said such attacks could dent confidence in Syria’s recovery, but they posed no threat to government control over the country. 

“It’s a worrying phenomenon, but I don’t think we should overstate it. It’s been 1-1/2 years and Islamic State hasn’t re-emerged in the way many feared,” he said.

Islamic State, an adversary of Sharaa during the civil war, has claimed a series of attacks on government forces in Syria since February, when the jihadist group announced what it described as a new phase of operations against his government.

DAMASCUS CAFE BOMBED LAST WEEK

The Syrian Interior Ministry said security forces had identified two bombs planted near the Tourism Ministry and had been preparing to defuse them when they went off, describing the devices as crudely made.

The bombs — one of them placed in a car parked on the roadside and the other in a trash can — were planted outside a security cordon around Macron’s place of residence, and posed no threat to his visit, the ministry said.

Internal security forces have launched search operations to identify those responsible, it said.

The French Presidency said the blasts were not audible from the presidential motorcade and a Reuters journalist with the press group accompanying Macron did not hear the blast or see any commotion during the French president’s morning events. 

Last week, a bomb at a Damascus cafe killed nine people and wounded 20 others. There was no claim of responsibility.

Sharaa, a member of Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority, has pledged to build an inclusive new order in Syria since ending more than five decades of iron-fisted rule by the Assad family. But his promise has been tested by bouts of violence pitting pro-government forces against members of religious and ethnic minority groups, with many hundreds killed last year.

Reporting by Kinda Makieh, Clotaire Achi, Inti Landauro and John Irish; Tala Ramadan, Ahmed Elimam and Nayera Abdallah and Feras Dalatey in Dubai; Sudip Kar-Gupta, Tom Perry in Beirut; in Paris Writing by Angus McDowall and Tom Perry; Editing by Michael Georgy, Andrew Heavens and Sharon Singleton

To upbeat tunes and slick videos at a defence industry forum in the capital Ankara, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte announced a series of initiatives as the sum of various deal values was projected onto a screen

International News via Reuters:

NATO leaders began unveiling arms deals worth tens of billions of dollars in Turkey on Tuesday, driving home the message that they are heeding U.S. calls to spend more to defend Europe before a summit with President Donald Trump. 

To upbeat tunes and slick videos at a defence industry forum in the capital Ankara, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte announced a series of initiatives as the sum of various deal values was projected onto a screen. 

He called for a defence industry “revolution” across the alliance, warning over Russia’s massive military spending as well as China, North Korea and Iran.

“We don’t have the luxury of time. We need capabilities now to ensure we remain ready. The security situation demands it,” Rutte said. “The hum of machinery must become a roar.”

It was a rallying cry for Western arms firms to ramp up investment to increase capacity, and for governments to place long-term orders and create the conditions for companies to thrive.

Europe’s defence sector has often been criticised as fragmented and saddled with red tape and rivalries between companies and countries. That has left Europe more reliant on purchases of weapons from the United States.

Weak economic growth and the need to maintain generous state welfare provisions have also made defence spending a tougher sell in Europe.

The deals, which had been mostly kept under wraps to make a splash at the summit, included European countries buying surveillance drones from U.S. company Northrop Grumman, and NATO buying planes from Sweden’s Saab.

Saab shares were the biggest gainers in Europe, up more than 5% as investors bet on the company benefitting from European rearmament. Morgan Stanley upgraded the stock.

U.S. defence company Lockheed Martin and Germany’s Rheinmetall signed a draft deal to jointly produce ATACMS missiles in Germany, a move that would mark the first non-U.S. manufacture of the short-range ballistic missile.

Rutte said NATO allies will invest more than $40 billion in the next five years in their anti-drone capabilities.

The announcements follow Trump’s frequent criticism of Europe for insufficient defence contributions and over-reliance on the U.S. to defend them through NATO, which has protected the continent since the early years of the Cold War. 

Trump reinforced the message in a video previewing his visit on Truth Social, urging Europe to spend more on its own defence.

SHIFT ON F-35 PLANES TO TURKEY

Trump arrived in Ankara to meet Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and join fellow leaders of the military alliance for the summit, which begins with a dinner on Tuesday evening.

Rutte said on Monday Europeans had made “staggering” increases in defence spending in part due to fears of Russia, which have surged since Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and also after Trump’s “extremely forceful” encouragement. 

According to Rutte, NATO’s European members and Canada spent $90 billion more on defence in real terms in 2025 than in 2024, to reach a total of more than $570 billion.

In a major potential shift, Trump is also expected to tell Erdogan that he is prepared to allow the country to rejoin the F-35 stealth fighter programme, sources told Reuters, an issue that has long been a sore point in bilateral ties. 

Washington had imposed sanctions ​and removed Turkey from the F-35 fighter jet programme after Turkey’s 2019 acquisition of the Russian S-400 air defence system.

IRAN WAR PROMPTED TRUMP TO REVIVE CRITICISM OF NATO

Tensions within NATO have deepened since the U.S. attacked Iran in February. Trump has repeatedly criticised NATO members for insufficient support in the conflict, threatening to quit the alliance.

European officials insist they largely honoured commitments to let the U.S. use their airspace and bases, despite not having been consulted about a deeply unpopular war that roiled their economies.

The U.S. has also announced troop withdrawals from Europe and ​launched a six-month review of its military ⁠presence on the continent.

European ​officials say they are braced for a repeat of some of Trump’s recent criticism and cannot be sure of a positive outcome. There is also Trump’s volatile relationship with some leaders, most recently seen in a feud with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

NATO members are expected to reaffirm support for Ukraine and pledge assistance of €70 billion ($80 billion) in 2026.

Underscoring the stakes, Russia hammered the Kyiv region with missiles and drones on Monday, killing at least 28 people and exposing Ukraine’s critical shortage of U.S.-made air-defence interceptors.

($1 = 0.8752 euros)

Reporting by Andrew Gray, Tuvan Gumrukcu, Huseyin Hayatsever, Humeyra Pamuk, Sabine Siebold; Writing by Andrew Gray and Matthias Williams; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani, Sharon Singleton, Andrei Khalip