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The center-right Demokraatit Party won the most votes in a surprising result in Greenland’s parliamentary elections, held in the shadow of U.S. President Donald Trump’s stated goal of taking control of the island one way or another.Both Demokraatit, or the Democrats, and the second-place finisher Naleraq, or Point of Orientation, favor Greenland’s independence from Denmark but differ on the pace of change.Demokraatit won nearly 30% of the vote, compared to just 9% in the election four years ago, Greenlandic Broadcasting Corporation KNR TV reported.Naleraq came in second with almost 25% of the vote. In the 2021 election, they received just under 12%, according to KNR TV.Demokraatit’s upset victory over parties that have governed the territory for years indicated many in Greenland care just as much about health care, education, cultural heritage and other social policies.“I think this is a historic result in Greenland’s political history,” Demokraatit party leader Jens-Frederik Nielsen said.Nielsen, 33, appeared to be surprised by his party’s gains, with photos showing him sporting a huge grin and applauding at the election party.The Danish Broadcasting Corporation DR reported that Nielsen said his party would reach out to all other parties to negotiate the future political course for Greenland.“We had not expected that the election would have this outcome,” Nielsen said, according to KNR TV. “We are very happy.”Nielsen also said that Greenland needs to stand together “in a time of great interest from outside,” KNR TV reported.Prime Minister Mute Bourup Egede had called the early vote in February, saying the country needed to be united during a “serious time” unlike anything Greenland has ever experienced.On Wednesday, after the results were known, Egede thanked voters in a Facebook post for turning out and said the parties were ready to turn to negotiations to form a government.His party, Inuit Ataqatigiit, or United Inuit, received 21% of the vote. This is a significant decline from the last election, when the party came in strongest with 36% of the vote, according to KNR TV.Inuit Ataqatigiit had been widely expected to win, followed by Siumuttwo parties which had dominated Greenland’s politics in recent years.Siumut came in fourth with 14% of the vote.Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen congratulated the Demokraatit party and said the future Greenlandic government would likely have to “deal with massive pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump,” according to DR.He added that “it’s not the case that you can just take part of the Danish Realmthe future of Greenland is based on what the Greenlandic people and government want,” DR reported.Trump has been outspoken about his desire to control Greenland, telling a joint session of Congress last week that he thought the U.S. was going to get it “one way or the other.”Greenland, a self-governing region of Denmark, straddles strategic air and sea routes in the North Atlantic and has rich deposits of the rare earth minerals needed to make everything from mobile phones to renewable energy technology.A break from Denmark wasn’t on the ballot, but it was on everyone’s mind. The island of 56,000 people has been on a path toward independence since at least 2009, and the 31 lawmakers elected will shape the island’s future as it debates whether the time has come to declare independence.Four of the five main parties in the race sought independence, but disagreed on when and how.Naleraq is the most aggressively pro-independence, while Demokraatit favors a more moderate pace of change.“What approach to independence will win the day will ultimately depend on if Demokraatit decides to form a coalition government, and if so, with which party,” said Dwayne Menezes, managing director of the Polar Research and Policy Initiative.Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called the election “a joyful day and a celebration of democracy” in a statement released Wednesday.Frederiksen congratulated Demokraatit on the win and said the Danish government would await the results of coalition negotiations. Danica Kirka, Associated Press
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A well-funded AI lab with a deep bench of research talent is releasing a powerful new model that generates high-definition video for the film and advertising industries. The company, Moonvalley, on Wednesday launched its first model, named Mareya nod to early cinema pioneer Étienne-Jules Mareywhich could soon help Hollywood studios dramatically speed up production and cut costs. What sets Marey apartand has caught the attention of risk-averse studiosis its training data. The model was trained exclusively on video content either owned or fairly licensed by Moonvalley, avoiding the copyright gray zones that make much generative content legally fraught. Moonvalley is rolling out Marey to a group of 20 trusted filmmakers, some of whom work for major, household-name studios (whose names havent been disclosed), according to cofounder and CEO Naeem Talukdar. The version being released is still early-stage, with regular updates and new features planned. The key differentiator, Talukdar says, is Mareys native high-definition outputsomething thats been notoriously difficult to achieve. The challenge is that if you want to output in high definition, your inputs have to be in high definition, so you need to be able to train the model on HD footage, he says. In other words: It demands lots of powerful servers. By contrast, Talukdar says, most other video generation models are trained on lower-quality 480p or 720p videoand even then, they often compress the data before encoding. That compromises the models understanding of fine-grained detail, leading to uncanny or distorted outputs (like misrendered fingers). Marey is designed to overcome that. Its also operated differently. Unlike most consumer-facing video generators that start with text prompts, Marey is tailored for professional workflows. Filmmakers can input storyboards or keyframes; actors can film demo reels on their phones, which producers can then use to generate scenes showing the actor from different angles or performing new movements. The model can make subtle edits, like changing the direction of wind in a characters hair, or adjusting production-quality scenesfilling in background details or background characters (commonly played by extras). Moonvalley is also running pilot programs with brands looking to train the model on their own imagery and style guidelines. That could allow companies to generate broadcast-quality commercials on demand. We have a number of smaller boutique brands who suddenly are like, Hey, I can go and make a Super Bowl commercial, Talukdar says. The startup raised a $70 million seed round last year, backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, and General Catalyst. Vinod Khosla is described as an unofficial member of the board. Beyond the top-tier investors, Moonvalley has serious R&D chops. Cofounders Mateusz Malinowski and Mikołaj Bińkowski previously led video research at DeepMind and helped develop the model that later became Googles Veo 2 video generator. The team includes six other DeepMind alumni, alongside talent from Meta, Microsoft, Google, TikTok, and Snap. While Talukdar acknowledges that AI tools like Marey could lower production costs, he insists its certainly not the beginning of the end for actorsor filmmakers. Budgets, he argues, arent likely to shrink; instead, creators will use the savings to pursue bigger, more ambitious ideas. I think youre going to see new jobs, he says. And more importantly, I think what this is really going to do is empower the creators more than anybody else.
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For several years now, pharmacies have faced economic challenges, from falling foot traffic to increased online competition. This has led many major pharmacy chains, including Walgreens, CVS, and Rite Aid, to shutter locations and reduce their footprint. As a matter of fact, over the past decade, the United States has lost nearly 30% of its drugstores. But falling foot traffic and increased online competition aren’t the only things leading to a swath of drug store closures across America. New research from the nonprofit American Economic Liberties Project (AELP) shows that in the past three months alone, the United States has seen another 326 pharmacies close. And the report argues that the reason for those closures comes down to Congresss abandonment of pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) reform. What is a pharmacy benefit manager? The term pharmacy benefit manager, better known by its acronym PBM, was little known outside of industry circles until last year, despite PBMs being a major part of Americas privatized healthcare system. A PBM is an entity that acts as a middleman between insurance companies and drugmakers. There are three major PBMs in America, run by UnitedHealth Group, Cigna Group, and CVS Health Corporation. PBMs help negotiate drug rebates from manufacturers, which PBM companies argue helps lower the cost of drugs for consumers. But this is often disputed. As Fast Company previously reported, the Center for American Progress (CAP) has noted that because PBMs may retain a portion of the rebate they negotiate and also may receive more money from an insurer than the drug is worth, the involvement of PBMs in the American healthcare system may be actually leading to higher drug costs overall. Fast Company reached out to all three major PBMs for comment on AELP’s report. We’ll update this post if we hear back. Report says PBMs are harming pharmacies PBMs also have a negative impact on pharmacies themselves, according to AELP. The report says that since the three major PBMs control 80% of U.S. prescription drug claims, they are able to demand untenably lower reimbursement rates from independent pharmacies in exchange for inclusion in their networks. AELP says many pharmacies choose to accept the lower reimbursement rates for fear of losing access to a large share of their customer base. The untenable rates, the nonprofit continues, are accelerating the pharmacy closure epidemic. It supports its arguments by providing a list of 326 pharmacies across America that have closed since December 19, when lawmakers effectively abandoned plans for PBM reform. Between December 19, 2024, and February 28, 2025, at least 237 independent pharmacies and 89 chain pharmacies have shut their doors. And since January 1, 2024, when AELP began tracking closures, at least 3,179 pharmacies have closed for good. AELP says that the closures, which it attributes to PBM practices, dont just impact the pharmacy store owners and workers but the local community as a whole. As predicted, without Congressional intervention, the Big Three PBMs have continued to abuse their market power, squeezing at least 326 pharmacies237 of them independentout of business in fewer than 10 weeks and stranding their most vulnerable patients in pharmacy deserts without access to lifesaving care, said Emma Freer, AELP’s senior policy analyst for healthcare. PBM reform abandoned The December 19, 2024, date that AELP is using as a starting point for tracking the latest pharmacy closures is a significant one. In 2024, PBMs started coming under increased scrutiny as drug costs in America continued to rise. This scrutiny had bipartisan support, with both Democratic and Republican lawmakers introducing legislation to rein in the unchecked operations of PBMs. But then, any bipartisan legislation that was being worked on fell through when, on December 19, Congress abandoned bipartisan, bicameral PBM reforms as part of a stopgap spending bill, AELP notes. In the lead-up to December 19, Elon Musk suddenly began tweeting his opposition to PBM reform. As AELPs Freer notes, Despite later admitting that he does not know what a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) is, Elon Musk successfully tanked PBM reforms with nearly unanimous House support late last year. The American Economic Liberties Project is releasing its report about the pharmacy closures in the wake of the abandonment of PBM reform to highlight just how needed such reform is for the survival of independent pharmacies and the ability for Americans to access the drugs they need at a price that is both fair and affordable. As Freer states, it is critical that Congress stand up to these healthcare monopolist middlemen and pass structural PBM reforms that will save their constituents time, money, and lives.
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