Greenland Holds Promise of Rare Earths

Greenland, a self-governing territory of Denmark, is being eyed by the United States as a source of rare earths that could reduce reliance on China. It has the world's eighth largest store of rare earths. It also has supplies of key energy transition metals like lithium and cobalt. While Greenland has oil and gas deposits, new drilling for these resources is banned. Three quarters of the land is covered by ice sheet.

Apple's Big DC Plans - $10bn over 5 Years

Apple is investing big in US DCs.

This includes plans to build a 133 acre campus in Austin, Texas and another build-out in Waukee, Dallas County, Iowa. Tax breaks are helping incentivise investment.

Existing capacity in Maiden, North Carolina; Mesa, Arizona and Sparks, Nevada will be expanded.

Outside of the US, back in July 2017, Apple announced it was building a second DC in Denmark, after their initial one in Viborg (166,000 square metres), with go-live in Q2 2019, shortly after Facebook a similar announcement in January. The DC will be located in Aabenraa in Southern Denmark near the border with Germany and will be powered 100% from renewable energy from day one. The Danish Foreign Ministry was said to have worked with Apple for three years in line with its Invest in Denmark program prior to its investment.

Apple's additional DC capacity will be used to power the iTunes store, Maps, iMessage and Siri.

"Simply Not Good Enough" - $234 billion ML scandal at Danske Bank focuses on Estonian branch where red flags were raised in 2014, IT Partly Blamed

The money laundering scandal at Danske Bank (literally "Danish Bank", whose motto is "Making More Possible") led to the resignation of Thomas Borgen, CEO. Denmark's business minister, Rasmus Jarlov, expressed his disappointment, with the remark "simply not good enough". Shares fell by 8% as the bank admitted a "significant part of the payments" were suspicious. A whistleblower raised concerns in the Estonian branch as early as 2014 but this was not properly investigated and information was not shared with the board. Prior to resigning, Borgen had been cutting costs and shifting the bank's focus to wealthier clients to compete with Nordea, the Nordic region's biggest bank. IT has been partly blamed, with a decision not to integrate the Danske Bank Group platform into the Estonian subsidiary, evading AML procedures as well as transaction and risk monitoring.