₦airaland Forum

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🇲🇽 Mexico denied a U.S. military plane access to land Thursday, at least temporarily frustrating the Trump administration's plans to deport immigrants to the country, according to two 🇺🇸 U.S. defense officials and a third person familiar with the situation.

Two Guatemala-bound Air Force C-17s, carrying about 80 people apiece, flew deportees out of the U.S. Thursday night, the sources said. The third flight, slotted for Mexico, never took off.

It was not immediately clear why Mexico blocked the flight, but tensions between the U.S and Mexico, neighbors and longtime allies, have risen since President Donald Trump won the November election.

Trump has threatened to slap 25% across-the-board tariffs on Mexico in retaliation for migrants crossing the border the countries share. But he has not yet put them in effect.

A White House official said in a text message that “the flights thing was an administrative issue and was quickly rectified.”

After the publication of this article, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt tweeted, "Yesterday, Mexico accepted a record 4 deportation flights in 1 day!"

A White House official, however, did not clarify whether they were military, commercial or private flights.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum's government has said it opposes Trump taking "unilateral" action to implement restrictive immigration standards — including the reinstatement of a "remain in Mexico" policy that forces migrants to stay in that country while they await adjudication of asylum claims.

Flying deportees into a foreign country requires the cooperation of that nation's government.

In a statement, Mexico's Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not go into detail on why the U.S. plane was not allowed to land in the country.

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🇺🇸 A rapidly growing wildfire broke out north of Los Angeles, while two major fires burning in the metropolitan area for more than two weeks were getting under control, fire officials said.

Ferocious flames devoured hillsides near Castaic Lake on Wednesday, spreading rapidly to cover more than 9,400 acres (3,800 hectares) in just a few hours.

Evacuations were ordered for 31,000 people around the lake, which sits 56km (35 miles) north of Los Angeles, and close to the city of Santa Clarita.

The United States Forest Service said the entire 700,000-acre (2,800sq-km) park in the San Gabriel Mountains was closed to visitors.

As the new fire raged, the two deadly fires that have ravaged Los Angeles came under greater control, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) said.

Private forecaster AccuWeather projects damage and economic losses at more than $250bn.

🇬🇱 Greenland’s Prime Minister Múte B. Egede pushed back against speculation the island could be up for grabs, after 🇺🇸 United States President Donald Trump’s renewed fixation on acquiring it this week sparked a political storm.

“We don’t want to be Americans. We don’t want to be Danes. We want to be Greenlanders,” he told reporters on Friday following a lengthy meeting in Copenhagen with Danish commonwealth leaders.

Last week, Trump sent shockwaves across Europe when he refused to rule out using military force to annex the world’s largest island, an autonomous territory of 57,000 people that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark.

When asked if he had spoken with the U.S. President, Egede said “no, but we are ready to talk,” echoing Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s statement on Thursday that she had asked to speak with Trump.

As to what shape the Danish-Greenlandic relationship might entail in the future, Egede suggested that Greenland wants to be in charge:

“There is more that unites us but the desire to be master of one’s own house is understandable to everyone in the world.”

“When I have to talk to another country’s leader, I have to be together with the Danish ambassador. It’s things like these where we wish to have our own voice. That, I think, is legitimate, when one wants to build their county on those values,” Egede said.

Frederiksen, for her part, emphasized the need to stand together to have a seat at the global table, to tackle the three-fold pressures on Arctic from the U.S, China and Russia.

“What matters the most right now is getting more elbow room in foreign policy. It is something that we are looking at,” she said.

Politico

Skooltynz:
No man born of a woman can order the invasion of Iran now okon wan ti Bale..

Destines:
The enemy of my enemy is my friend

🇷🇺 Russian President Vladimir Putin and 🇮🇷 Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed today the long-awaited Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty.

The agreement, inked in a ceremony at the Kremlin, “covers all spheres, including defense, counter-terrorism, energy, finance, transport, industry, agriculture, culture, science and engineering,” according to Russian news agency TASS.

“I am very pleased that this work has been completed. It is important, because it will open up an opportunity to give an additional impetus to practically all areas of our cooperation,” Russian president Vladimir Putin reportedly said during the meeting with Pezeshkian.

“We continue our large projects, including those in nuclear energy,” Putin said, according to a readout on the Kremlin’s website. “There are also other emerging projects in the energy sector and good prospects in logistics.”

Pezeshkian added, “We believe that our bilateral relations with the Russian Federation are strategically important and comprehensive. We will continue our robust conversation and our dialogue with you.”

In 2001, Tehran and Moscow signed a 20-year comprehensive agreement, and now, more than three years after that agreement expired, the two allies signed a new agreement, coming in the wake of already tightening defense cooperation between the two countries.

For example, Iran exported Shahed suicide drones to Russia and even inaugurated a facility in Moscow to manufacture them locally, aiding Russian forces in the operations against Ukraine, the Washington Post reported in 2023. Iran also operates Russian air defense systems, such as the S-300.

“They’re cooperating to develop and produce more lethal loitering munitions for Russia’s use in Ukraine and for Iran to proliferate to partners and proxies throughout the Middle East,” Jonathan Lord, director of the Middle East security program at the Center for a New American Security, told Breaking Defense in July.

While details about future defense cooperation of the treaty have not yet been revealed, Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, also in July predicted that the treaty will go beyond deepening military and security ties.

“What Russia and Iran may cooperate on in the nuclear and space domains, where Iran has great interest and Russia has great aptitude,” he told Breaking Defense then.

Kennedy97:
Why does silo feels over stretched at this point