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Denmark has said it will spend 14.6 billion kroner (£1.6bn; $2.05bn) to boost security in the Arctic region, in partnership with its autonomous territories Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The deal includes three new Arctic ships, more long-range drones with advanced image acquisition capacity and stronger satellite capacity. "We must face the fact that there are serious challenges regarding security and defence in the Arctic and North Atlantic," Denmark's Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said. The move comes after US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants to acquire Greenland, an island which has wide-ranging autonomy but remains part...

The King of Denmark has changed the royal coat of arms in a bid to more prominently feature Greenland and the Faroe Islands – a move that many view as warning shot to Donald Trump. *snip* The updated design shows the crowns removed and replaced with a polar bear and ram - animals that symbolise Greenland and the Faroe Islands respectively.

A historic journey ended in tragedy this week when a Viking replica ship capsized off the coast of Norway, killing an American archaeologist who was part of its international crew. The six-person team had been piloting the open wooden ship, named Naddodd, on a roughly 1,000-mile trip from the Faroe Islands to Trondheim, Norway. "This expedition, honoring the Viking navigator Naddodd, aims to preserve Viking culture and navigational skills for future generations," Sail2North expeditions, which organized the voyage, said in an Instagram post in May. The team — made up of four Swiss, one Faroese and one American — departed...

A British cruise line has apologized to passengers who witnessed the slaughter of nearly 80 pilot whales in the Faroe Islands on Sunday. Ambassador Cruise Line guests arrived at the port in the capital of Torshavn, where a traditional hunt had turned the sea red. Hunters used motorboats and a helicopter to corral the whales in a beach nearby before dragging them with hooks and butchering them with knives. The British cruise line quickly issued an apology to guests who were blindsided by the graphic nature of the hunt, or Grindadráp in Faroese. "We were incredibly disappointed that this hunt...

The Faroe Islands, a North Atlantic archipelago between Norway and Iceland, were settled by Viking explorers in the mid-9th century CE. However, several indirect lines of evidence suggest earlier occupation of the Faroes by people from the British Isles. Here, we present sedimentary ancient DNA and molecular fecal biomarker evidence from a lake sediment core proximal to a prominent archaeological site in the Faroe Islands to establish the earliest date for the arrival of people in the watershed. Our results reveal an increase in fecal biomarker concentrations and the first appearance of sheep DNA at 500 CE (95% confidence interval...

A French academic, Valerie Niquet, a senior research fellow at the Foundation for Strategic Research, is being sued by Huawei France. The Chinese telecom giant has accused Niquet of libel, and, as @HuaweiFactsFR explained in a tweet on November 23 (in French): “In March 2019, #Huawei has filed three lawsuits for libel against a private individual. The complaints are against the authors of the arguments broadcast, and not the media that broadcast them. Huawei respects their independence and press freedom.” In a photographed statement in the same tweet, Huawei further explains that “The suits are only against the affirmations that...

And what a bizarre eclipse it is. Not only does this eclipse begin just 15 hours prior to the March equinox marking the beginning of astronomical spring in the northern hemisphere, but the shadow of totality also beats path through the high Arctic and ends over the North Pole. ... Already, umbraphiles — those who chase eclipses — are converging on the two small tracts of terra firma where the umbra of the Moon makes landfall: the Faroe and Svalbard islands. All of Europe, the northern swath of the African continent, north-central Asia and the Middle East will see a...

The European Union’s member states supported sanctions against the Faroe Islands, which could be an import ban or closing its ports to its boats, to protest the islands’ decision to treble the limit on herring fishing. … The move follows months of haggling after the Faroe Islands earlier this year unilaterally increased its existing quota by more than three times the allocations it would have got under EU policy, the Commission said. The Faroe Islands, a self-governed territory within the Danish Realm and not part of the European Union, says the EU rules do not give it a sufficient share...