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Thailand school shooting toll rises to nine after 12-year-old dies, police say

The death toll from a school shooting in Thailand rose to nine on Saturday, after police said a 12-year-old girl caught up in Friday’s incident had died. Police at the Plai Bang Police Station in Nonthaburi Province said the girl, who had been treated at hospital with critical wounds, had died, a day after a 14-year-old boy allegedly shot his grandparents and then killed more people at his school before turning the gun on ⁠himself. The 14-year-old wounded more than 30 people in the ⁠shooting at the Debsirin Nonthaburi school northwest of Bangkok. Fourteen people remained in hospital on Saturday evening, seven of them in critical condition. Police are questioning more witnesses as part of their investigation, including the suspect’s parents. The suspected attacker fired at least 26 bullets with a gun belonging to his grandfather, and was found with 34 additional ammunition rounds. The suspected shooter remained inside the school after reports of the attack emerged, Arsit Sampantharat, the permanent secretary of the interior ministry, told PPTV. A lockdown at the school was declared over in about half an hour. Images from the scene showed students running with only socks on their feet as they were evacuated from the school. Thailand’s prime minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, has vowed to implement new gun laws, telling reporters only government officials on duty would be allowed to carry guns. However, he did not provide any ⁠specifics, including whether the legislation would tighten gun ownership requirements. Thailand has the highest rate of civilian gun ownership in south-east Asia, and in 2017 the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey placed the country 13th worldwide for small-gun possession. A number of mass shootings have occurred in recent years in Thailand, including incidents at schools and a large Bangkok mall, and a 2022 attack in the country’s north-east that ‌killed 37 people including 22 children.

Ukraine war briefing: Turkey calls for ‘moratorium’ on Black Sea attacks by Russia and Ukraine

Turkey’s foreign minister on Saturday called for a “moratorium” on attacks by Russia and Ukraine in the Black Sea after a series of strikes on civilian ships there. “The conflict has spread across the whole Black Sea,” Hakan Fidan said in an interview with Turkey’s state news agency Anadolu. “To begin with, they targeted the ports and the military ships. Now, they are attacking all commercial shipping without distinction,” he added. Ships belonging to Turkey or flying the Turkish flag were among those targeted, he said. Russia has continued ⁠striking Ukrainian port infrastructure and vessels supporting the Ukrainian ⁠military, Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Saturday. The ministry ⁠said Russian forces hit military warehouses ‌containing communications and electronic warfare equipment in the Black Sea port of Odesa. In the port of Mykolaiv, Russian forces ‌struck a cargo vessel carrying military equipment and a warehouse storing weapons and military supplies, the ministry said. It added that another dry ⁠cargo vessel transporting military supplies for Ukraine’s armed forces was hit in the Black ‌Sea. Ukraine on Saturday denied targeting Bulgaria after a drone exploded close to the strategic Trans-Balkan gas pipeline linking Turkey to Ukraine near the Romanian border. There were no casualties or damage. Bulgaria’s defence ministry said the drone was of a type “widely used by the Ukrainian military”, and the foreign minister summoned the Ukrainian ambassador for a meeting on Monday in response, her office told AFP. Kyiv said it was “in close contact with the Bulgarian side to clarify the circumstances” of the incident, the latest case of a drone straying into Nato airspace as Ukraine fights off Russia’s invasion. “We can say with certainty that the Ukrainian Armed Forces did not intentionally direct any assets toward Bulgaria,” Ukraine’s foreign ministry spokesperson Georgiy Tykhyi said, blaming Russia’s invasion for the incident. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned Ukraine is facing a winter with no working thermal power plants as overnight Russian strikes left four dead, including a child, in the Kyiv region. Speaking Saturday in Belgrade, alongside his Serbian counterpart, Aleksandar Vucic, the Ukrainian leader said Moscow’s latest overnight attacks and shelling of frontline communities combined had killed 13 people in the last 24 hours. “Russian missiles are aimed precisely at making the lives of Ukrainians unbearable,” Zelensky told reporters during his first official visit to Belgrade. Zelenskyy is in Serbia for talks on economic ties and security issues. The visit, which included talks with President Vucic on Saturday, is the first by a Ukrainian president in eight years. Vucic described Ukraine as a “friendly nation” and said he was honoured to welcome the Ukrainian leader. The two men discussed their countries’ efforts to join the European Union, bilateral ties and ways to expand cooperation. Drones have been detected above an army installation in western Germany known to house components for US-made Patriot air-defence systems, which Ukraine has frequently requested to help fight off Russia’s aerial bombardments. An investigation has been opened into the sighting at the installation, which has a large underground depot, a military operational command spokesperson said on Saturday. Mechernich is a special army site for storing equipment at a depth of 130 metres (425 feet) across about 30,000 square metres, or the equivalent of four football pitches. The latest incident comes days after an explosives-laden drone was found near a Ukrainian cargo plane at Leipzig-Halle airport, which plays a key role in the transport of military goods by the German military and Nato allies.

Iran issues tough demands to reopen strait of Hormuz as deal still out of reach

Iran has issued tough new demands for reopening the strait of Hormuz, while the United Arab Emirates said one of its ships was targeted by an Iranian missile, as a deal to open the strategic waterway remained out of reach on Saturday. Iran’s politburo-like body known as the supreme national security council said the strait of Hormuz will not open until the United States “corrects its behaviour”, and its state broadcaster published a statement from the council’s secretary, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who is also a commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The US must never threaten Iran again, the statement said, and must permanently end the war with Iran and its armed allies in the region. The US must lift the naval blockade of Iranian ports and withdraw its military from the area. It also must “completely compensate” Iran for war damage, lift sanctions and “unconditionally” release frozen assets. There was no immediate comment from the US, which has wanted an acceptable deal on the strait before ending the blockade. According to the interim deal signed in June, a schedule to end sanctions and a plan for compensation would be part of the final deal, and negotiations would address frozen assets. The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said on Saturday that they were close to reaching an agreement on navigation, “specifically the determination of a transit route”. But the waterway’s reopening is contingent on other conditions, he said, in remarks shared on social media, and blamed the situation on what he called the US violation of the interim deal. Oman, which is mediating and has made relatively few comments on the talks, said in a statement on Saturday that the discussions were continuing “in a positive and constructive atmosphere”, and condemned attacks on ships on the strait. Iran has imposed an effective blockade of the strait and wants to charge users for passage, repeatedly attacking ships it accuses of attempting to circumvent its preferred route. The US opposes any Iranian tolls in the strait, though the June deal allows Tehran to hammer out arrangements for the “future administration” of Hormuz in conjunction with fellow coastal state Oman. The 60-day period to negotiate a final deal will end in just over a week but could be extended. Iran has said it was close to reaching a separate deal with Oman to manage the strait, which runs between the two countries. Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian, a relative moderate, said he believed now was the best time for an agreement. “There is cohesion, strength, and unity in the country, and as far as I know, Iran is considered victorious and powerful in this war,” Iranian news agencies quoted him as saying. Continued attacks in the strait, which was free to sail through before the war, led to the collapse of an April ceasefire, and mediators have since urged both sides to return to the terms of the June memorandum. The strait, which is crucial to global supplies of oil and natural gas, had been considered an international waterway before the war. Ship transits remain low. Meanwhile, a vessel owned by Abu Dhabi’s state-owned Adnoc oil and gas company was attacked while sailing through the strait of Hormuz, Emirati authorities said earlier on Saturday. The foreign ministry said Iran fired the missile as part of attacks on commercial shipping. Adnoc said in a statement that there were no casualties following the attack early on Saturday. The company said more than a dozen of its vessels have been attacked by missiles and drones while using the strait since the US and Israel launched the war on Iran in February. One crew member has been killed and 20 others wounded, it said. Adnoc did not elaborate on the location of the attack or any damage. Later, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre said a vessel east of the town of Khasab, Oman had been struck by a projectile that caused a fire that was put out, and the vessel and crew were safe. It was not clear whether this was the Adnoc incident.

When bird flu hit the UK, suffering seabirds died in their thousands. Australia’s wild flocks will soon do the same

Sandwich terns are a graceful seabird known for their committed, forceful and spectacular plunging dives into the ocean to catch fish. Thousands of the species started to fall sick across Europe in 2022 with tens of thousands dying as a lineage of the H5N1 bird flu – 2.3.4.4b – spread through the continent’s wild flocks. The effects of the virus on the brain cause the terns to flounder on the ground, craning and straining their necks in a suffering behaviour known as star-gazing. It is difficult to watch. “I remember a colony at Scolt Head Island in Norfolk,” says Prof James Pearce-Higgins, the director of science at the British Trust for Ornithology. “You had adult terns trying to mate with dead terns and chicks begging for food from their dying parents. “It was a real sense of a colony collapse as you watched this transfer of the virus between birds.” Sandwich terns are close relatives of greater crested terns, which are seen all around Australia and were the first native bird to suffer a mass mortality event from the disease in Australia on South Australia’s Limestone Coast. Since the virus re-emerged in Europe in 2021 it has swept over every other continent, killing millions of birds and mammals, and infecting more than 400 bird species as well as mammals – in particular, seals and sea lions. The virus was finally detected in Australia two months ago in migratory seabirds that likely brought the disease from breeding grounds in the subantarctic. Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter This week, the federal government revealed analysis of the potential threat to Australia’s wildlife which showed almost 400 species of birds and mammals were at “high risk” or worse if they caught the disease. One expert who worked on the analysis, Prof John Woinarski of Charles Darwin University, tells the Guardian he expects the disease will have spread across the continent within a year. Pearce-Higgins says: “I would expect Australia is going to experience large mortalities, like those we have been through, and it’s going to put some species at risk.” Almost half of Australia’s bird species are unique to the continent, meaning that a lot of uncertainty comes with predicting what H5N1 could do to the animal population. It also means the risk of the virus causing planet-wide extinctions is higher now that every continent is affected. Death toll will be ‘confronting’ “We’ve been looking overseas since 2021 and seeing the advance of this virus,” says Dr Sara Ryding, an evolutionary ecologist at Deakin University. “It has been horrible overseas – tens of thousands of birds dying in single colonies. “The concern was, we knew it was going to arrive eventually – how could it not? But we didn’t know what it would look like when it got here.” Ryding has led research to project the level of risk from H5N1 for all Australia’s bird families by developing a model based on official reports of the disease from around the globe to the World Organisation for Animal Health. The research suggested the most at-risk families of birds were gannets and boobies (Sulidae), followed in descending order of risk by cranes (Gruidae), darters (Anhingidae), ducks, geese and swans (Anatidae), and gulls, terns and noddies (Laridae). But a host of other bird families – including pelicans, crows, ravens, falcons and kestrels – were all predicted to be susceptible. While many species of those birds are not considered threatened, the sight of large numbers of dead and sick birds, particularly larger species like swans and pelicans, “is going to be confronting,” Ryding says. “I don’t want to cause panic, but we have seen the devastation it has caused overseas and there’s no reason to think it will be any less devastating here,” she says. “I think it will be really bad.” Studies have identified several behaviours that can make animals susceptible to catching the disease, such as scavenging dead and dying animals for food (as do gulls and Tasmanian devils), spending time in dense colonies (like seals and waterbirds) and spending time around bodies of water where the virus can live for weeks or months, or where other infected animals might also be around. ‘Devastating’ for seals and sea lions The virus has been particularly damaging for seals and sea lions. Tens of thousands of seals and sea lions have died in outbreaks in Peru, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina and, most recently, on Australia’s subantarctic territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands. The virus can cause debilitating conditions for the seals and sea lions – known collectively as pinnipeds – with severe neurological and respiratory symptoms. Australia has three resident pinniped species – the New Zealand fur seal, the Australian fur seal and the already endangered Australian sea lion – and government analysis has suggested the risk for all three from the virus is “very high”, meaning “very severe reduction in population size or viability is predicted” if the virus reaches them. Dr Saia Bartes is an Argentinian marine biologist who has just completed her PhD on Australian fur seals at Deakin University and has helped study declines in South American sea lions after the virus struck there. “It was devastating for them. In north Patagonia, we lost a third of the sea lions,” she says. Because pinnipeds often share space with infected birds, and tend to be in tightly packed groups, Bartes says they are particularly susceptible. Pinniped numbers are still recovering from commercial hunting, she says, and “they could start declining again really quickly, which is happening in South America” if the virus found them. Back in the UK, Pearce-Higgins says there is some hope. Their experience of collaboration with conservation groups, volunteers and local authorities through weekly and later monthly meetings had been critical in the response. And there were some signs the impacts of the virus may be slowing. “The hope is that because a lot of these birds are long-lived, the population could be more resilient. But we still don’t really know the probabilities of future outbreaks,” he says. “It might look really bad for a few years, but the hope is that [Australia] can focus on the conservation of what is left.”

The Bond effect? How MI6 fascinates spy watchers around the world

MI6 has the swagger of James Bond; its French equivalent, DGSE, the complexities of the television drama Le Bureau. The film and TV shows may be fictional, but a survey run by a French magazine that placed the British spy agency above the French as No 1 across all of Europe this week is not. L’Express, a news weekly, conducted a Eurovision-style poll of 60 current and former spies from across the continent, plus the CIA and Israel’s Mossad. Each was asked to rank their top five foreign intelligence agencies, in secret, naturally enough. MI6 was first with 251 points ahead of DGSE on 169, with other agencies trailing behind. The result did not surprise Alexandra Saviana, a deputy editor at the publication, specialising in defence and intelligence, but the margin of victory did. “It is a huge point gap,” she said, reflecting the opinions of insiders and allies, 17 of whom are or were agency chiefs in a interconnected, covert ecosystem. At MI6’s headquarters in Vauxhall, London, there has been no sign of a public reaction from its chief, Blaise Metreweli. But there is a quiet satisfaction at the unexpected verdict, not least because the agency values how it is perceived by both allies and adversaries. “Reputation matters a lot in the espionage game,” said a former Whitehall insider. “British spies fascinate Europe, and beyond,” L’Express explained in its cover story. Saviana added that MI6’s success in the poll was principally down to its record in recruiting and running high-level human sources over generations: a focus on human intelligence in an era dominated by technology, intercepts and satellite monitoring. “The British have the ability to play the long game, to bet on sources over 10 years, a bit like the Russians,” a former French DGSE spy told the magazine, adding “and they have a penchant for underhand tactics” without revealing what they meant. One ex-spy voiced scepticism about the survey and added that a human intelligence service such as MI6 was only as good as the high-value agents on its books. Under Richard Moore, MI6’s previous chief, there were worries that it no longer had enough. Others, including Saviana, accept that greater credit might have been given to MI6’s sister agency, the signals intelligence experts at GCHQ, but it was not in the poll. MI6’s reputation among its peers, the French publication said, was built on “long standing tradition”, including recruiting cold war assets, most notably the KGB’s Oleg Gordievsky, a double agent through late 1970s and early 80s, who helped convince Margaret Thatcher to take Mikhail Gorbachev seriously before he had to be dramatically smuggled into Finland in 1985, his cover finally blown. Not every mole evaded capture. Alireza Akbari, a former Iranian deputy defence minister who had become a British citizen, was arrested on a return to Iran in 2019 and executed in 2023. Prior to his death, he confessed to being an MI6 agent. Though the confessions appeared coerced, spies from a number of countries indicated he was the person who had passed on the existence of the Fordow nuclear enrichment site in 2008. In the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war, MI6 was accused of simplistically supporting the case for war, promoting what turned out to be false sources, claiming that Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, could attack UK targets within “45 minutes”, and relied on one source who described supposed chemical weapons devices that were remarkably similar to one in the Hollywood movie The Rock. It was a low point. L’Express argued that MI6 had rehabilitated itself in the run-up to the Ukraine war in February 2022, correctly warning in conjunction with the CIA that Russia was about to invade, while French and German counterparts were sceptical up until the last minute, having misjudged the situation. The chief of the German BND agency even flew into Kyiv the day before the invasion, seemingly unprepared. It reflects MI6’s close and longstanding relationship with the CIA, part of the wider Five Eyes arrangements for intelligence sharing, between the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, that are the envy of continental Europe, even allowing for the complexities posed by Donald Trump’s chaotic presidency. “Every other country wants to say they are the sixth eye,” Saviana said. Fiction also has its advantages. Gordon Corera, a co-presenter of The Rest is Classified podcast, recalled that a former MI6 chief once told him a story of a young officer going somewhere far flung, not knowing whether the person he was trying to cultivate spoke English. “As he walked into the room the contact extended his hand and said: ‘Hello, Mr Bond.’ The former chief remarked: ‘I doubt if he would have received such a warm welcome if he’d been from the Belgian secret service.’”

Bluster and backdown have turned Iran war into Trump’s own Groundhog Day

Being the subject of mockery may be the most intense of all Donald Trump’s known aversions. Yet more than five months after embarking on a war of choice against Iran, the US president risks attracting ridicule as he struggles to secure a military victory – while repeatedly threatening devastating bombardment against the Tehran regime, only to back down on the pretext of renewed negotiations. Critics suggest the ultimatum-climbdown sequence has acquired a Groundhog Day quality. By one count, he has adopted the same tactic seven times since launching the war in tandem with Israel on 28 February. Last weekend saw the latest episode, as Trump told reporters onboard Air Force One that he had suddenly called off “a massive” attack that he said would have been “the biggest since world war two” after an appeal from US allies and because “I think there’s a deal”. Despite negotiations between Iran and Oman over shipping in the strait of Hormuz, no deal has thus far materialized, and the strategically vital waterway – conduit to a fifth of the world’s oil supply before the war – remains closed. The pattern resembled one that unfolded on a string of other occasions – including Trump’s memorably dire threat in April that Iranian “civilization will die tonight” unless Tehran capitulated to his demands only to retreat at the 11th hour and agree to a ceasefire. The US president has also claimed multiple times that the US has “virtually” won the war and that Iran’s regime was clamoring for a deal. Increasingly, such claims are prompting ridicule. A recent CNN montage showed 14 separate pieces of footage dating back to March, with Trump insisting peace was at hand because Iran’s leaders “want to make a deal” after being supposedly rendered militarily impotent – assertions belied by a continuing Iranian ability to inflict damage on US and allied targets in the Middle East. The veteran British journalist and commentator Andrew Neil pilloried Trump’s boasts as worthy of the Nobel peace prize he is known to covet. “He, in the past five months, has brought peace to the Iran war eight times,” Neil said sarcastically on Times Radio. “What more do you have to do to merit a Nobel peace prize?” He added: “We waste our time even analyzing it, because it’s either meaningless, or he’s done a U-turn on it within 24 hours … You might as well read the shipping forecasts.” Trump’s wildly zigzagging messaging on the war betrays an absence of strategy and a profound ignorance of his enemy, analysts say – and threatens to deliver an electoral disaster in November’s US congressional midterms. Mehrzad Boroujerdi, vice-provost and a political scientist at Missouri Science and Technology University, believes the US president’s failure to understand the individuals leading Iran’s authoritarian Islamic system has misled him into a dead end of ineffective and counterproductive threats. “One of the most terrible mistakes that Trump made was invoking this type of a language,” said Boroujerdi, who argued that regimes who come into being through mass revolutions such as the one in 1979 that swept Iranian revolutionaries to power are much harder to topple than other governments. “First, these are not people who are going to bend the knee,” he said. “Second, you have just killed the top of their leadership (including the former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei). Their psychology is only an invitation for Trump to become more aggressive.” Understanding Tehran Boroujerdi made it his life’s mission to understand the motivations of the men inside the Islamic regime after his father, Malek-Mohammad Boroujerdi, a senior executive with the national oil company, was assassinated by an Islamist guerrilla group in December 1978, on the eve of the revolution that overthrew the western-backed monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. He kept his personal stake in scrutinizing the regime under wraps, lest it be seen as impairing the impartiality of his academic studies Nearly half a century later, key members of the group, the Mansouroun, occupy some of the regime’s most sensitive military posts. They include Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr, secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council, and Mohsen Rezaei, the founding commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who is now military adviser to the present supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, whose father was killed in an Israeli military strike at the start of the war. Having compiled over two decades a vast database of about 2,700 members of the country’s elite, Boroujerdi has co-authored a 900-page book, Post Revolutionary Iran: A Political Handbook, that puts its political leadership under the microscope. Understanding it helps to explain how the outwardly ramshackle regime has withstood US hostility, international sanctions, diplomatic isolation and periods of war over 47 years all while staying resilient, he argued. “I have looked at their nepotism ties, who is connected to whom,” said Boroujerdi. “These are folks who came from very modest backgrounds. They are predominantly the sons of farmers, peasants. And then secondly, clerics, who basically enjoyed social mobility thanks to the revolution. “These were mister nobodies who became mister somebodies thanks to the revolution. And therefore, their attachment to this system and wanting to defend this system makes absolute sense because they owe everything they have currently, their whole career, to what this revolution has given them. “If we want to understand Iran’s resilience, its performance, we need to better understand the psychology and upbringing of these individuals. But that requires serious work that the political class in Washington isn’t necessarily interested in.” Having not undertaken such work, Trump has been reduced to railing in frustration at a regime whose defiance is a source of confusion and bewilderment to him. After a ceasefire agreed in June collapsed over differing interpretations of a memorandum of understanding Trump had signed in the Palace of Versailles, he shocked fellow attenders at last month’s Nato summit in Ankara by calling Iran’s leaders “scum”. “All they do is make me angry,” he told reporters, while also calling their behavior “unbelievably duplicitous”. Such incomprehension means Trump’s pattern of ultimately unfulfilled blood-curdling threats is likely to continue, according to Boroujerdi. Other seasoned Iran observers agree. Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s deputy program director for the Middle East and north Africa, called explaining Trump’s approach in strategic terms “an impossible task” and lamented what he called the lack of a clear policy process in the current administration. But he also said Iran’s leaders had strengthened their negotiating position in the strait of Hormuz since the collapse of the June ceasefire, while triggering a painful debate in Washington about military choices after recent strikes on a US base in Jordan that killed three US service personnel. The possibilities for a renewed military onslaught against Iranian targets are believed to be limited because of concerns that US missile and interceptor stockpiles have become depleted. Trump’s approach “boils down to his frustration that he really doesn’t have any good military options in front of him”, suggested Vaez. “A lot of it is emotional reactions, like when he does a deal with Iran that produces a political backlash, even among Republicans. “That criticism gets under his skin, so he tries to extract better terms from Iran by bombing them. But when he ends up in an even worse position, he returns to the negotiating table and tries to pursue a diplomatic solution. “This war started based on a lot of misguided assumptions, which are a clear reminder that half the battle is understanding your enemy – and clearly, President Trump and his administration didn’t understand the enemy.”

Greenland issues ‘strong warning’ as Trump-linked oil firm prepares to drill

An American oil company connected to Donald Trump is preparing to sink wells in remote Greenland despite not having received permission from the local authorities. As the US president renews his threats to claim the vast Arctic territory, materials to prepare for drilling were brought ashore in recent days on Greenland’s eastern coast. That has prompted Greenland’s government to issue a “strong warning” that no approval had been granted to land the kit. “All future logistical matters must be advised and approved by the mineral resources authority – before they are carried out,” the government said in a statement. Two days later, Trump made his latest menacing post on Truth Social, showing himself looming over a Greenlandic village. Executives of Greenland Energy, a Texas company set up last year, have claimed that $1tn of crude may lie beneath the Jameson Land region. They announced plans to spend $60m drilling two wells to find out. Although Greenland stopped issuing new oil licences in 2021 on environmental grounds, a UK company called 80 Mile had secured exploration rights in Jameson Land. Greenland Energy’s corporate filings say it will take a majority stake in the project in exchange for funding the exploration, though it still needs government permission to proceed. Greenland Energy has retained Phil McGraw, better known as Dr Phil, a prominent rightwing former chatshow host who served on Trump’s religious freedom commission, to make a documentary series that will “capture the mission of these modern-day wildcatters”. It has also appointed as a director a US navy veteran who is working on Golden Dome, the missile defence plan for which Trump says controlling Greenland is “vital”. Larry Swets, Greenland Energy’s chair and a big shareholder, appears to enjoy access to Trump’s circle. He has said the oil project is “not related to American annexation”. After a company representative falsely claimed at a Jameson Land community meeting in June that it had permission to land drilling equipment, Swets said: “Our enthusiasm for the project led us to communicate in a way that created confusion.” But the next month, local people in the sparsely populated region noticed a tug pulling a barge shorewards and unloading a dozen containers. “The goal was to get the equipment onshore at Nunap Qeqqa [Jameson Land] in connection with planned oil exploration drilling,” the Greenland government’s statement said. The Danish investigative outlet Danwatch quoted the head of the shipping company as confirming the delivery was for Greenland Energy. Greenland Energy has declined to respond to questions from the Guardian. A letter it sent to shareholders on Thursday said: “Recent high-level meetings between project leadership and Greenlandic regulatory and oversight authorities have been constructive, and we continue to be encouraged by the progress being made toward the remaining approvals required for drilling.” It said that after those discussions, just one well would be drilled to begin with. As a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, decisions about Greenland’s natural resources rest with its local elected leaders, who now face a delicate decision. They could grant permission for oil drilling, even though the planned wells appear to fall within a conservation area protected by the Ramsar convention on wetlands. Or they could refuse and, some worry, give Trump a pretext to advance his imperialist agenda. The Greenland government’s statement said it “would not be proportionate” to demand the equipment be removed. An application for permission remained under processing, it added. A Greenland Energy representative has said a vessel carrying its 300 shipping containers of drilling equipment is to set sail from Canada on 12 September. Sinking the wells would begin in October. Jeff Landry, the hard-right Louisiana governor serving as Trump’s Greenland envoy, has said Greenland could be pumping oil next year.