COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Denmark says it will summon the top U.S. diplomat in the country for an explanation following a Wall Street Journal report about the United States stepping up intelligence gathering on Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory coveted by President Donald Trump.

Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told broadcaster DR outside a meeting Wednesday with colleagues in Poland that Denmark would summon the U.S. chargé d’affaires to seek a “rebuttal” or other explanation following the report.

The Journal, citing two people familiar with the U.S. effort that it did not identify, reported that several high-ranking officials under the U.S. director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had directed intelligence agency heads to learn more about Greenland’s independence movement and sentiment about U.S. resource extraction there.

The U.S. Embassy did not immediately respond to emails from The Associated Press on Thursday seeking comment on whether the U.S. diplomat in Copenhagen, Jennifer Hall Godfrey, had received a summons. The Danish Foreign Ministry, in an email, did not comment beyond referring to Rasmussen’s remarks.

Rasmussen, who has previously scolded the Trump administration over its criticism of NATO ally Denmark and Greenland, said the information in the report was “very worrying” and “we don’t spy between friends.”

“We are looking at this with quite a lot of seriousness,” he added.

Greenland’s prime minister said last month that U.S. statements about the mineral-rich Arctic island have been disrespectful and it “will never, ever be a piece of property that can be bought by just anyone.”

In a visit to the island last month, Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said, addressing the United States during a visit to Greenland that “you cannot annex another country,” even with the argument made by U.S. officials that international security is at stake.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said Washington will respect Greenland’s self-determination and alleged that Greenlanders “don’t want to be a part of Denmark.”

By RAF CASERT and DANICA KIRKA, Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — Even if the end of World War II in Europe spawned one of the most joyous days the continent ever lived, Thursday’s 80th anniversary of V-E Day is haunted as much by the specter of current-day conflict as it celebrates the defeat of ultimate evil.

Hitler’s Nazi Germany had finally surrendered after a half-decade of invading other European powers and propagating racial hatred that led to genocide, the Holocaust and the murdering of millions.

That surrender and the explosion of hope for a better life is being celebrated with parades in London and Paris and towns across Europe while even the leaders of erstwhile mortal enemies France and Germany are bonding again.

Germany’s new foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, paid tribute to “the enormous sacrifices of the Allies” in helping his country win its freedom from the Nazis and said that millions of people were “disenfranchised and tormented by the Nazi regime.”

“Hardly any day has shaped our history as much as May 8, 1945,” he said in a statement. “Our historical responsibility for this breach of civilization and the commemoration of the millions of victims of the Second World War unleashed by Nazi Germany gives us a mandate to resolutely defend peace and freedom in Europe today.”

Gloomy outlook

His comments underscore that former European enemies may thrive — to the extent that the 27-nation European Union even won the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize — but that the outlook has turned gloomy over the past year.

Bodies continue to pile up in Ukraine, where Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion started the worst war on the continent since 1945. The rise of the hard right in several EU member states is putting the founding democratic principles of the bloc under increasing pressure.

“The time of Europe’s carefree comfort, joyous unconcern is over. Today is the time of European mobilization around our fundamental values and our security,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said at a Dutch memorial event in the lead-up to the celebrations.

It makes this unlikely stretch of peace in Europe anything but a given.

And even NATO, that trans-Atlantic military alliance that assured peace in Europe under the U.S. nuclear umbrella and its military clout, is under internal strain rarely seen since its inception.

U.S. contributions to the war effort

The United States was instrumental in turning the tide of the war in Europe, invading along with Allies the D-Day beaches in France’s Normandy on June 6, 1944 in what proved to be the tipping point of the war in Europe that inexorably led to the invasion of Germany and the defeat of Hitler.

On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump proclaimed Thursday as a day for the United States to celebrate victory in World War II, insisting the country should better recognize its essential role in the war.

“We are going to start celebrating our victories again!” he said.

The war did drag on beyond Europe especially in the Pacific against Japan, but even Taiwan joined in marking the day for the first time — and highlighting current-day threats. Instead of Russia, it was centering on China, its immediate rival. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory to be annexed by force if necessary.

“Military aggression against another country is an unjust crime that is bound to fail,” Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te said.

He added that both Taiwan and Europe were “now facing the threat of a new authoritarian bloc.”

European celebrations

Commemorations have been going all week through Europe, and Britain has taken a lead. Here too, the current-day plight of Ukraine in its fight against Russia took center stage.

“The idea that this was all just history and it doesn’t matter now somehow, is completely wrong,” U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said. “Those values of freedom and democracy matter today.”

In London later Thursday, a service will be held in Westminster Abbey and a concert, for 10,000 members of the public, at Horse Guards Parade. In Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to oversee a ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe.

Images are projected onto the Queen Elizabeth Tower, in the Houses of Parliament, including the British World War II Prime Minister Winston Churchill, whose statue is in the foreground, during the V-E Day 80th anniversary events in London, Tuesday, May 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

And in Berlin, Chancellor Friedrich Merz will again highlight how Germany has remodeled itself into a beacon of European democracy by laying a wreath at the central memorial for the victims of war and tyranny.

And, symbolically, Russia and President Vladimir Putin will be totally out of lockstep with the rest of Europe, celebrating its Victory Day one day later with a huge military parade on Red Square in central Moscow to mark the massive Soviet contribution to defeat Nazi Germany.

Raf Casert reported from Brussels. Mike Corder in Wageningen, Netherlands, and Jamey Keaten in Geneva, contributed to this report.

By ZEKE MILLER and JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States and Britain are expected to announce a trade deal on Thursday that will lower the burden of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs and deliver a political victory for U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that a deal due to be announced at 10 a.m. EDT will be a “full and comprehensive one that will cement the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom for many years to come.”

FILE – Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, left, and U.S. President Donald Trump shake hands at a joint press conference in the East Room at the White House Thursday, Feb. 27, 2025, in Washington. (Carl Court/Pool Photo via AP, File)

It’s the first bilateral trade deal announced since Trump began slapping tariffs on U.S. trading partners. He said: “Many other deals, which are in serious stages of negotiation, to follow!”

Starmer’s office said the prime minister would give an “update” about U.S. trade talks later Thursday.

“As you know, talks with the U.S. have been ongoing and you’ll hear more from me about that later today.” Starmer said at a defense conference in London.

The agreement is likely to fall short of a full free trade deal, but will provide tariff relief to certain sectors.

The president has imposed a 10% tax on imports from Britain, as well as 25% tariffs on autos, steel and aluminum on the premise that doing so would foster more factory jobs domestically.

A major goal of British negotiators has been to reduce or lift the import tax on U.K. cars and steel. The U.S. is the largest destination for British cars, accounting for more than a quarter of U.K. auto exports in 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Britain has also sought tariff exemptions for pharmaceuticals, while the U.S. wants greater access to the British market for agriculture products. Starmer’s government has said it won’t lower U.K. food standards to allow in chlorine-rinsed American chicken or hormone-treated beef.

The British government will see a deal it as a vindication of Starmer’s emollient approach to Trump, which has avoided direct confrontation or criticism. Unlike the European Union, Britain did not announce retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods in response to Trump’s import taxes.

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A trade deal with the United Kingdom would be symbolically important, and a relief for British exporters. But an agreement would do little to address Trump’s core concern about persistent trade deficits that prompted him to impose import taxes on countries around the world.

The U.S. ran a $11.9 billion trade surplus in goods with the U.K. last year, according to the Census Bureau. The $68 billion in goods that the U.S. imported from the U.K. last year accounted for just 2% of all goods imported into the country.

The U.S. is much more important to the U.K. economy. It was Britain’s biggest trading partner last year, according to government statistics, though the bulk of Britain’s exports to the U.S. are services rather than goods.

Trump has shown a desire to strike a trade agreement with the U.K. since it voted in 2016 to leave the European Union. Yet as recently as Tuesday, Trump showed no awareness of the possible terms of the deal when asked about its possibility.

“They’re offering us concessions?” Trump told reporters. “I hope so… They do want to make a deal very badly.”

Trump has previously said that his leverage in talks would be U.S. consumers, but he appeared to suggest that the U.K. would also start buying more American-made goods.

“I think that the United Kingdom, like every other country, they want to … go shopping in the United States of America,” he said.

A trade deal with the U.S. is one of several that Starmer’s government is seeking to strike. On Tuesday, Britain and India announced a trade after three years of negotiations. The U.K. is also trying to lift some of the barriers to trade with the EU imposed when Britain left the bloc in 2020.

Jill Lawless reported from London. Josh Boak contributed to this report from Washington.

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Cardinals failed again Thursday morning to find a successor to Pope Francis, sending black smoke billowing up through the Sistine Chapel chimney after two more inconclusive rounds of conclave voting.

The black smoke poured out at 11:50 a.m. local time, signaling that the second and third ballots of the conclave had failed to find consensus on a leader for the 1.4 billion-member Catholic Church.

With no one securing the necessary two-thirds majority, or 89 votes, the 133 cardinals returned to the Vatican residences where they are being sequestered. They will have lunch and then return to the Sistine Chapel for the afternoon voting session. Two more ballots are possible Thursday.

Despite the disappointment, hopes were still high that a pope would be chosen quickly, perhaps as early as Thursday.

“I hope by this evening, returning to Rome, I’ll find white smoke,” said Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the 91-year-old dean of the College of Cardinals who presided over the Mass before the conclave. Re is not participating in the balloting because only cardinals under 80 are eligible to cast their vote.

Re, who was quoted by Italian media as speaking Thursday in Pompeii, said he was certain that cardinals would elect “the pope that the church and world need today.”

Eyes on the chimney

For the general public, the rhythm of the voting is dictated in many ways by the Vatican television cameras: You know a smoke signal is near when the cameras resume their fixed shot on the Sistine Chapel’s skinny chimney, with white smoke indicating a winner, and black meaning no consensus.

On Thursday, large school groups joined the mix of humanity awaiting the outcome in St. Peter’s Square. They blended in with people participating in pre-planned Holy Year pilgrimages and journalists from around the world who have descended on Rome to document the election.

“We are hoping for the white smoke tonight,” said Pedro Deget, 22, a finance student from Argentina who is travelling in Italy with his family. He said his family visited Rome during the Argentine pope’s pontificate and were hoping for a new pope in his image.

“Francis did well in opening the church to the outside world, but on other fronts maybe he didn’t do enough. We’ll see if the next one will be able to do more,” Deget said from the piazza.

On Wednesday night, the billowing black smoke poured out of the chapel chimney just after 9 p.m., about 4.5 hours after the cardinals filed into the Sistine Chapel to take their oaths. The late hour prompted speculation about what took so long for the 133 electors to cast and count their ballots. Hypotheses abound: Did they have to redo the vote? Did someone get sick or need translation help? Did the papal preacher take a long time to deliver his meditation before the voting began?

“They probably need more time,” said Costanza Ranaldi, a 63-year-old who travelled from Pescara in Italy’s Abruzzo region to the Vatican.

Some of the 133 voting cardinals had said they expected a short conclave to replace Francis. But it will likely take a few rounds of voting for one man to secure the two-thirds majority, or 89 ballots, necessary to become the 267th pope.

For much of the past century, the conclave has needed between three and 14 ballots to find a pope. John Paul I — the pope who reigned for 33 days in 1978 — was elected on the fourth ballot. His successor, John Paul II, needed eight. Francis was elected on the fifth in 2013.

Conjecture on contenders

The cardinals opened the secretive, centuries-old ritual Wednesday afternoon, participating in a rite more theatrical than even Hollywood could create.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the 70-year-old secretary of state under Francis and a leading contender to succeed him as pope, assumed leadership of the proceedings as the most senior cardinal under age 80 eligible to participate.

Parolin seemed to have received the blessings from none other than Re, the respected elder among the cardinals. During the traditional exchange of peace during the pre-conclave Mass on Wednesday, Re was caught on a hot mic telling Parolin “Auguri doppio” or “double best wishes.” Italians debated whether it was just a customary gesture acknowledging Parolin’s role running conclave, or if it might have been an informal endorsement or even a premature congratulations.

The cardinals were sequestered from the outside world, their cellphones surrendered and airwaves around the Vatican jammed to prevent all communications until they find a new pope.

Francis named 108 of the 133 “princes of the church,” choosing many pastors in his image from far-flung countries like Mongolia, Sweden and Tonga that had never had a cardinal before.

His decision to surpass the usual limit of 120 cardinal electors has both lengthened the amount of time it takes for each vote to be processed and injected more uncertainty into a process that is always full of mystery and suspense.

Giada Zampano and Vanessa Gera contributed to this report.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.