Quadrant Chess
NEED TO KNOW
Quadrant Chess
GREENLAND
Last week, Denmark’s King Frederik X unveiled a new royal coat of arms that gave its self-governing territories of Greenland and the Faroe Islands a more prominent place – each now have their own quadrant on the shield.
It was the first change to the royal coat of arms in more than 50 years. It also follows a renewed push by US President-elect Donald Trump to acquire Greenland.
The timing, say Danish officials, is coincidental. Even so, the change, which removed the crowns that represented a now-defunct union between Denmark, Sweden, and Norway on one quadrant, caused a sensation in the country.
The king said the move was to show how Denmark valued all parts of its commonwealth. But Danish royal expert, Lars Hovbakke Sørensen, told Danish broadcaster TV2 that the change was made to send a message to the world.
“It is important to signal from the Danish side that Greenland and the Faroe Islands are part of the Danish realm – and that this is not up for discussion,” he said.
But Trump says he wants that discussion.
“Greenland is an incredible place, and the people will benefit tremendously if, and when, it becomes part of our Nation,” Trump said recently. “We will protect it, and cherish it, from a very vicious outside World. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!”
His son, Donald Trump, Jr. also visited Greenland recently in what some called a pressure campaign.
As he gets set to take office later this month, Trump has been revisiting an idea he had initially floated during his first term. That initial push to buy Greenland set off Danish ire with Danish leaders dismissing the idea as “absurd.”
Now, however, the Danes are more worried – especially by the threats of economic and military coercion from a fellow NATO ally, wrote the Washington Post. This situation is becoming “a huge headache,” Mikkel Runge Olesen, senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, told the newspaper. The Europeans and also the Russians are also concerned.
Greenland, with a population of about 57,000 who are mainly Indigenous, is an Arctic island roughly three times the size of Texas. It has its own government but Denmark controls its foreign and security policy.
Greenland also hosts the US military, which is permanently stationed at Pituffik Space Base and is critical for its ballistic missile early-warning system. For years, the US has seen the island as strategically important and more recently has grown concerned as China’s military cooperation with Russia in the Arctic has grown: Over the past five years, the pair have been conducting regular joint air and marine patrols.
“I think that the Americans are quite concerned that Russia could actually launch or initiate a major attack against the United States, and that could be done from the Russian side,” Nordic Defense Analysis’ Jens Wenzel told Reuters.
At the same time, as ice melts in the Arctic, it is opening up the possibilities of new waterways that promise to heat up competition in shipping and mineral resources.
Meanwhile, Greenland isn’t too happy about being part of Denmark. In Greenlandic Prime Minister Múte Egede’s New Year address, he accused Denmark of genocide, referring to a practice of forced contraception of female Greenlanders from 1960-1991 that recently caused a scandal following an investigation by a Danish news outlet and a lawsuit by the victims against the Danish government. He also pushed for Greenland’s independence, calling for the “shackles of the colonial era” to be removed.
“Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland,” he said. “Our future and fight for independence is our business.”
Still, that’s the crux of the issue, one US defense official told CNN. US officials are worried that if Greenland were to become independent, the island could become more politically unstable – and more open to Russian and Chinese influence. It would also likely lose its NATO status.
“Denmark is a stalwart NATO ally, and so long as Greenland remains part of the Kingdom of Denmark, as it is now, and part of NATO, then we’re not less secure in that situation,” the official told the broadcaster, adding that the US-Greenland relationship becomes more “ambiguous” if Greenland becomes independent.
The Danes, meanwhile, have decided to sweeten the pot for Greenland. They recently gave Greenland $1.5 billion for defense in addition to a $511 million annual block grant.
“We are all united …,” the king said. “From the Danish minority in South Schleswig (in Germany) … and all the way to Greenland. We belong together.”
Still, Pipaluk Lynge, a lawmaker from Greenland’s largest party and chair of the parliamentary foreign and security policy committee, told Politico that Greenland wants “our own independence and democracy,” not to be beholden to the US.
“We know how they treat the Inuit in Alaska,” Lynge said. “Make that great before trying to invade us.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
Moscow Mates
RUSSIA
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian will sign a long-awaited strategic partnership pact following talks on Friday, in an effort to shore up resistance to the West in the wake of sanctions over the Ukraine invasion that began almost three years ago, Politico reported.
Pezeshkian is set to make an official visit to Moscow on Jan. 17, where the two world leaders will discuss expanding cooperation between the nations in talks focused on trade, investment, “and current issues on the regional and international agenda,” according to a statement released by the Kremlin.
More critically, the talks are to cement the expanding military and political partnerships between the two countries.
Moscow’s ties with the Iranian regime have intensified since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Moscow has also strengthened ties with other countries hostile to the United States and Europe, such as North Korea, according to Reuters.
Putin signed a similar agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in June, in which both countries agreed to militarily support each other in the event of an aggression, reported Politico.
So far, about 300 North Korean soldiers have died fighting in Russia’s war against Ukraine, and around 2,700 troops have been wounded, according to Al-Jazeera.
The United States accused Iran in September of delivering close-range ballistic missiles to Russia for use in the war, and imposed sanctions on companies and ships it suspected were involved in delivering weapons Iranian weapons.
Iran had admitted it provided Shahed drones to Russia months before the Ukraine war but denied the larger involvement or that drones had been sent following the invasion.
A Long, Terrifying Silence
INDIA
Police in the southern Indian state of Kerala began a broad investigation this week after an 18-year-old woman accused 64 men of sexually abusing her since she was 13, a case that has sent shockwaves across India, the BBC reported.
The woman first reported the alleged abuse after counselors from the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) visited her house following concerns by her teachers.
She told the CWC that the abuse started five years ago when her neighbor allegedly molested her and took sexually explicit pictures of her.
The accused include neighbors, sports coaches, and her father’s friends, aged between 17 and 47 years old. CWC representatives and police added that the victim was an athlete and attended various sports camps.
Her family was reportedly unaware of the abuse, the BBC noted.
So far, authorities have arrested 28 people in connection with the case, including four minors, according to India Today. They have also set up a special investigative team to look into the other alleged perpetrators.
Authorities have identified 40 individuals they say may be involved, Hindustan Times wrote.
Officials said some of the perpetrators will be prosecuted under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act because the woman belongs to the Dalit caste.
In the Hindu caste hierarchy, Dalits are considered the lowest members of society and face widespread discrimination despite laws to protect them.
India continues to grapple with sexual violence, especially after high-profile cases in the past 15 years that have brought thousands of demonstrators onto the streets.
In 2019, over 32,000 rape cases were reported, with nearly 3,500 of these involving Dalit women and girls, according to Equality Now. Survivors from these communities encounter barriers such as police bias, inadequate legal aid, and societal pressure to remain silent.
The Standoff
SERBIA
Tens of thousands of Serbian university students protested over the weekend against heavy-handed tactics used by the government and secret services to suppress the protests, part of ongoing demonstrations that have been rattling the country for months, the Associated Press reported.
The latest demonstrations, in the capital of Belgrade and the southern city of Nis, included a commemoration of the victims of the collapse of a railway station’s concrete canopy in the northern town of Novi Sad in November, which killed 15 people.
The accident set off months of protests.
The accident is widely blamed on sloppy construction work that critics say was allowed to proceed because of nepotism and corruption. The building has been renovated twice in recent years in a deal with Chinese state companies, the AP said. More than a dozen people are being prosecuted in the case but critics say they don’t believe the investigation is independent.
Meanwhile, protests have transformed into wider demonstrations of discontent about Serbia’s rightwing populist President Aleksandar Vucic and what critics say is his increasingly autocratic style of governing. They want him to step down.
Presidents in Serbia customary hold a ceremonial role but critics say he has amassed vast amounts of power over the past 13 years in office.
Students say they have come under pressure from the country’s security services for taking part in the demonstrations, with officers visiting them at home. Others have seen their personal details such as ages and addresses published by state media, which they say were provided by the government.
Luka Stojakovic told N1 television that “we have learned that BIA (Serbia’s state security agency) can knock on our doors, conduct repression against our parents and invite us for a ‘friendly’ chat,” he told the newswire. “They published our (personal) data and no one was held responsible.”
Meanwhile, classes at some Serbian universities have been suspended for weeks after blockades by students, Reuters reported.
Vucic has accused the West of funding the protests to sow instability in the country. Calling the protests “stupid,” he said he would leave office on his own timetable.
DISCOVERIES
The Pooch Test
MRIs, blood tests, and X-rays are all instruments on a long list of cancer screening tools. But what if there was another less invasive, but equally effective way to sniff out the disease – and their names were Mars, Moon, and Pluto?
Welcome to a new, experimental cancer screening method that is pairing three dogs with artificial intelligence and is able to detect the odor of cancer on patients’ breaths, according to a recent study.
The screening method taps into dogs’ “amazing olfactory capabilities,” Assaf Rabinowicz, the chief technology officer at SpotitEarly, the company that invented the method, told Science News.
Rabinowicz and his team trained Labrador retrievers into disease detectives that could sniff out even faint scents of the cancer odor. The dogs smelled the breath samples and sat if they sniffed breast, lung, colorectal, or prostate cancer.
Meanwhile, discerning whether the dogs are indicating yes or no by reading their body language is tricky for humans. This is where the researchers employed the help of AI, training an AI model that relies on machine learning and computer vision to interpret the dog’s cues.
The researchers then partnered with medical centers in Israel to test their model on the breath samples of nearly 1,400 participants: 261 of the participants tested positive for one of the four types of cancer the dogs trained for. The dogs sniffed out 245 of these cases and rarely indicated a false-positive.
The study showed that the canine-AI duo was highly accurate in detecting cancer, and successfully identified four types of cancer in 94 percent of cases.
Mars, Moon, and Pluto also detected early-stage cancers just as well as they did later-stage cancers, reported Science News.
Early detection is crucial because it can substantially contribute to increasing cancer survival rates, said Rabinowicz.
Mars, Moon, Pluto, and the other labradors who participated in the study are still continuing to contribute to research and development, Rabinowicz said. However, SpotitEarly is now working with beagles, as they are smaller and easier to train.
The company is planning a larger clinical trial in the United States, with early results expected in 2026.
