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U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he plans to meet with Danish officials next week after the Trump administration doubled down on its intention to take over Greenland, the strategic Arctic island that is a self-governing territory of Denmark.Since the capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump has revived his argument that the United States needs to control the world’s largest island to ensure its own security in the face of rising threats from China and Russia in the Arctic.Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lkke Rasmussen and his Greenland counterpart, Vivian Motzfeldt, had requested a meeting with Rubio, according to a statement posted Tuesday to Greenland’s government website. Previous requests for a meeting were not successful, the statement said.Rubio told a select group of U.S. lawmakers that it was the Republican administration’s intention to eventually purchase Greenland, as opposed to using military force.The remarks, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, were made in a classified briefing Monday evening on Capitol Hill, according to a person with knowledge of his comments who was granted anonymity because it was a private discussion.On Wednesday, Rubio told reporters in Washington that Trump has been talking about acquiring Greenland since his first term. “That’s always been the president’s intent from the very beginning,” Rubio said. “He’s not the first U.S. president that has examined or looked at how we could acquire Greenland.” European leaders express concern The leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom joined Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in issuing a statement this week reaffirming that the mineral-rich island, which guards the Arctic and North Atlantic approaches to North America, “belongs to its people.” Frederiksen warned that a U.S. takeover would amount to the end of NATO.“The Nordics do not lightly make statements like this,” Maria Martisiute, a defense analyst at the European Policy Centre think tank, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “But it is Trump whose very bombastic language bordering on direct threats and intimidation is threatening the fact to another ally by saying, ‘I will control or annex the territory.'”Rubio, who was on Capitol Hill for a classified briefing Wednesday with the entire U.S. Senate and House, did not directly answer reporters’ questions about whether the administration was willing to risk the NATO alliance by potentially moving ahead with a military option regarding Greenland.“I’m not here to talk about Denmark or military intervention, I’ll be meeting with them next week, we’ll have those conversations with them then, but I don’t have anything further to add to that,” Rubio said. He added that every president retains the option to address national security threats to the United States through military means.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that using the military to acquire Greenland was an option, though she told reporters Wednesday that “the president’s first option always has been diplomacy.”Some Republican senators said they saw strategic value in Greenland, but they stopped short of supporting military action to acquire it.Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall said he hoped “we can work out a deal,” while North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven said some of the discussion about taking Greenland by force has been “misconstrued.”“One of the things about President Trump, you may have noticed, is he keeps our adversaries off balance by making sure they don’t know what we’re going to do,” Hoeven said.But Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she hated “the rhetoric around either acquiring Greenland by purchase or by force,” adding, “I think that it is very, very unsettling.”Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, co-chairs of the bipartisan Senate NATO Observer Group, said the U.S. needs to honor its treaty obligations to Denmark.“Any suggestion that our nation would subject a fellow NATO ally to coercion or external pressure undermines the very principles of self-determination that our Alliance exists to defend,” the senators said in a joint statement. ‘This is America now’ Thomas Crosbie, an associate professor of military operations at the Royal Danish Defense College, said an American takeover would not help Washington’s national security.“The United States will gain no advantage if its flag is flying in Nuuk versus the Greenlandic flag,” he told the AP. “There’s no benefits to them because they already enjoy all of the advantages they want. If there’s any specific security access that they want to improve American security, they’ll be given it as a matter of course, as a trusted ally. So this has nothing to do with improving national security for the United States.”Denmark’s parliament approved a bill in June to allow U.S. military bases on Danish soil. It widened a previous military agreement, made in 2023 with the Biden administration, in which U.S. troops had broad access to Danish air bases in the Scandinavian country. Denmark’s foreign minister has said that Denmark would be able to terminate the agreement if the U.S. tries to annex all or part of Greenland.In the event of military action, the U.S. Department of Defense operates the remote Pituffik Space Base, in northwestern Greenland, and the troops there could be mobilized.Crosbie said he believes the U.S. would not seek to hurt the local population or engage with Danish troops.“They don’t need to bring any firepower. They don’t need to bring anybody,” Crosbie said Wednesday. “They could just direct the military personnel currently there to drive to the center of Nuuk and just say, ‘This is America now,’ right? And that would lead to the same response as if they flew in 500 or 1,000 people.”The danger in an American annexation, he said, lies in the “erosion of the rule of law globally and to the perception that there are any norms protecting anybody on the planet.”He added: “The impact is changing the map. The impact I don’t think would be storming the parliament.” Kim reported from Washington. Geir Moulson in Berlin, Mark Carlson in Brussels, and Ben Finley, Joey Cappelletti and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report. Stefanie Dazio and Seung Min Kim, Associated Press
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Less than 24 hours after the horrifying shooting of a woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minneapolis, merchandise related to the slain U.S. citizen is already proliferating on e-commerce shopping sites, including on Amazon and Etsy. Heres what you need to know. Whats happened? On Wednesday, a woman was fatally shot by an ICE officer near a raid that federal officials were conducting. The woman was identified by authorities as Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother and U.S. citizen. As CNN reports, multiple videos taken by bystanders on the scene show ICE agents confronting the car that Good was driving, which was parked sideways on the street. After some verbal interaction between the driver and the officers, the car appears to begin turning, at which point an ICE agent fired multiple shots into the vehicle. Good was reportedly struck in the head by one of the shots and later pronounced dead at a local hospital. Kristi Noem, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has accused Good of weaponizing her vehicle in an effort to run over the ICE agent, but any such intent is far from certain at this point. Democratic leaders, on the other hand, have called for an investigation into the incident, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has said that his administration will stop at nothing to seek accountability and justice. The incident has quickly become the latest political flashpoint around President Trump’s controversial decision to send federal agents into U.S. cities. Renee Good merch proliferates on Amazon and Etsy Within hours of Goods death, thousands of mourners took to the streets in Minneapolis and other U.S. cities to honor the victim and peacefully protest the actions of the ICE agent. At the same time, another phenomenon began happening: merchandise related to Good and her shooting began rapidly proliferating on online shopping sites like Amazon and Etsy. As of the time of this writing, visitors to these sites can easily find everything from stickers to hats to T-shirts in support of Good and her memory. Such products often sport the phrase Justice for Renee or Justice for GOODness as well as other phrases, including rest in power. Sellers move quickly to capitalize on viral events The fact that Good-related merchandise already exists isnt entirely shocking. As Fast Company previously reported, in recent months, politically contentious events have often led to a quick proliferation of merchandise related to the incidents. In November, the Epstein Bubba email led to an explosion of merch on both Amazon and Etsy, and earlier in 2025, Alligator Alcatraz merch spread on Etsy, where it met significant blowback on social media. However, the ideological motives behind the sellers making this merchandise aren’t always clear. For instance, some of the seller accounts appear to be new, and they don’t always state whether they are opposed or aligned with any of the events that have spawned the merch. What is interesting to note, however, in the case of the Good-related merch, is that some of the Amazon sellers appear to be based in China, suggesting at the very least that individuals overseas are eager to profit from the latest social and political turmoil engulfing the United States. Fast Company has reached out to Etsy and Amazon for comment. Renee Good GoFundMe exceeds $400,000 While some sellers on Amazon and Etsys platforms appear to be keen to profit from a tragic event, other individuals are actively using online platforms to support Renee Goods wife and child. As of the time of this writing, a number of Renee Good fundraisers have been set up on GoFundMe. One such fundraiser, with the stated aim of raising funds for her wife and child, has already surpassed $400,000 in donations from more than 10,300 individuals. Fast Company has reached out to GoFundMe to ask whether the campaign is verified. We will update this story if we hear back.
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Thomas Edison said that success is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. But what if his famous formula is missing a key ingredient? What if success demands not just creativity and perseverance, but a third, much less discussed skill? Modern neuroscience suggests it does. Research shows mastering this often overlooked ability will not only upgrade your brain, but make it much more likely youll achieve your goals (with less perspiration along the way). The secret ingredient for success What is this magic ingredient? Some scientists call it a strategic mindset. Others term it metacognition. Whatever label you go with, the idea is straightforward enough. Metacognition is thinking about your thinking. It means not just doggedly pursuing your goals but questioning how you pursue them. If youre a student, that might mean evaluating your study techniques. Is rereading the text over and over the most efficient way to study? (Science suggests not.) If youre playing poker, it could look like observing when youre letting emotion get in the way of a smart bet. Business leaders might not just ask, Did I make the right decision? but also, Is there a smarter way to make similar decisions in the future? This kind of strategic thinking can have big impacts, research out of Stanford and the National University of Singapore recently found. Scientists tested more than 850 volunteers chasing a variety of tough goals, from academic excellence to weight loss. The more study subjects employed metacognition, the more likely they were to reach their aims. The most successful people, in other words, werent necessarily the smartest or the grittiest, though those abilities certainly help. They were the ones who thought about their own thinking, probing for ways to improve. Metacognition can be taught Thats interesting to know, but the finding isnt very useful for entrepreneurs unless its a skill that can be taught. Helpfully, it can. Not only did the researchers find that a strategic mindset makes you more likely to be successful, they also showed that when study participants were explicitly taught about metacognition, their odds of achieving their goals went up. What we know now is that adults seem to naturally vary in their strategic mindset, and that a strategic mindset can be taught, study coauthor Patricia Chen summed up to the BBC. 5 tricks to upgrade your brain So how do you teach yourself to reflect on and improve thinking? Above all, stay curious about how your mind works, neuroscientist and author Anne-Laure Le Cunff suggested on Big Think recently. She went on to offer five specific ideas to upgrade your brain through metacognition: Explain things to yourself. When learning something new, dont just read or listen. Ask yourself why it makes sense and how it connects to what you already know, she writes. Both Bill Gates and Elon Musk have recommended this same technique of trying to hook up new knowledge with previously learned information to speed learning. Study your mistakes. If something goes wrong, resist moving on too quickly. Instead, dig into what happened: What was I thinking? Where did my reasoning break down? What was I assuming? What would I do differently? suggests Le Cunff. Get detailed advice on how to learn more from your mistakes here. Think out loud. When solving a problem or making a decision, narrate your thought process. Speak (or write) what youre thinking as you think it. This makes your invisible reasoning visible so you can examine it, she says. Le Cunff is far from the only expert claiming that writing is a powerful way to stress test and clarify your thinking. Check your confidence. Notice how sure you feel when making a decision. Consider whether your confidence comes from solid evidence or gut feeling, and what information you might be missing, she says. Psychologists insist that learning to think in probabilities can aid in this process. Notice your thoughts. Just like in mindfulness meditation, simply observe your mental processes without judgment. You dont need to meditate for hours; even a few minutes of paying attention to your thinking can be helpful, Le Cunff concludes. Achieve more, sweat less All of these practices share a common thread. They nudge you to pay closer, more skeptical attention to your thoughts in progress. Watch yourself think and youll find ways to improve your appoach to problems. Rather than muscle through with a suboptimal strategy or rickety logic, youll avoid pitfalls and proceed more efficiently. With respect to Mr. Edison, hard work definitely plays a big part in achievement. But upgrading your brain through metacognition can help you reach your goals with a whole lot less unnecessary perspiration.
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