• I visited Lapland, Finland's northernmost region, and stayed in an igloo for $150 a night.
• It was much cheaper than other similar accommodations I found in the area.
• The outside temperature was below freezing, but I slept extremely well and had a blast.

I've always dreamed of staying in an igloo. The novelty experience just seems perfectly nostalgic to me — the sort of thing you conjure up in childhood but forget to tick off your list as an adult.

When I booked a trip to Lapland in December, I knew I wanted to make it happen.

Unfortunately, most igloo stays are out of my budget, especially in December, when prices tend to go up due to higher demand. Everything I saw was either close to $800 a night or booked out months in advance.

I almost resigned myself to failure until I stumbled across Lucky Ranch, a family-owned lodge just outside Pyhä-Luosto National Park on the shores of the serene Lake Pyhäjärvi.

Stays in its elaborately carved igloos were available for just $150 a night — and they included breakfast. I couldn't believe my luck.

• Dana Bull plans to optimize her real estate portfolio in 2025 rather than acquiring more properties.
• She aims to increase revenue by focusing on insurance, taxes, and renovation costs.
• With insurance costs on the rise, any investor can benefit from shopping around.

Dana Bull isn't looking to acquire any more properties in 2025.

The experienced investor built wealth by buying primarily multi-family properties in Massachusetts. She's also a real-estate agent and consultant, and a mother of four. Between her various work projects and renovating her primary residence, she says she has plenty to keep her busy in 2025.

While she's not expanding her doors, she still expects to grow her revenue in the new year.

Any investor can benefit from optimizing what they already own, said Bull: "If you're not going to buy right now — for personal reasons or you just don't like the interest rates or whatever is going on — this could be a good year to just focus on your business, your expenses, and tighten up what you already have."

Specifically, she's looking to optimize in three categories, which could improve her returns significantly.

1. Insurance

Like many investors and homeowners, Bull has seen her insurance rates rise over the past couple of years.

The general trend is that "insurance is harder to get and it's more expensive," she said. "That cost for me has just jumped. It's a big line item. I have had the same provider for the past 10 years, and I need to just go out there and procure quotes and make sure that I'm not getting overcharged for what's being covered."

It can be time-consuming to keep track of each policy and its changes, especially if you own a lot of properties.

"I feel like it's the wild, wild west," said Bull of navigating the insurance world. "Many times, a program that we have a property covered by will just be dropped, or they'll no longer cover that property for reason X, Y, or Z, so it's like this revolving door of making sure that the properties all have coverage — and the right coverage."

She says she's been more "passive" about optimizing insurance in the past, but now that prices are soaring, she plans to shop around and do her due diligence in 2025.

2. Taxes

In addition to insurance, her property taxes have gone up.

"The tax rate has not gone up, but the value of the properties has gone up so significantly that you're just paying thousands more a year for taxes," explained Bull. One of her properties, for example, will cost an extra $2,000 a year. "If I multiply that across my whole portfolio, that's a lot of money."

If you think your property is overvalued, you can appeal your property assessment.

"I think I have a few properties that are overvalued," said Bull. "Some aren't, so obviously there's nothing to do there. But if I can make a case and bring in comps and show them this is an overvaluation and now I'm being taxed higher than I probably should, I have found in the past that if you're just a squeaky wheel, they'll work with you."

3. Renovation costs

Bull has seen the availability and cost of hiring contractors vary dramatically over her investing career.

"When I first started in real estate, which was at the tail end of the recession, contractors were out of work, and they needed work, so the pricing was way different 10 years ago than it is today," she said. "And then during the pandemic, everybody was renovating their home and contractors had such a surplus of work that they could basically charge whatever they wanted, and you were going to pay it because you were desperate."

Heading into 2025, "the tides are kind of turning," she said, in that contractors won't be able to pick their price.

It's worth it to shop around, said Bull, adding that you may be surprised by the varying prices you receive. For example, she had to replace three roofs for one of her multi-family properties: "One quote came in at $30,000, another came in at $21,000, and then another came in at $12,000. And I'm reviewing the quotes and pretty much everything is the same. The product is the same."

While meeting with multiple contractors can be "a pain in the butt," she acknowledged, it could mean tens of thousands of dollars in savings.

This week's Pet of the Week is Archie, a springer spaniel with a competitive spirit and plenty of energy.

Tax reliefs will help thousands of Los Angeles residents who have lost their homes and businesses after the wildfires to rebuild.

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to review a challenge to the Affordable Care Act's requirement that insurers cover certain recommended preventive services at no cost.

Why it matters: Eliminating the requirement could limit access to services like cancer screenings, preventive medications for heart disease, behavioral health counseling and HIV drugs known as PrEP.

---

• The timing of the high court review puts the legal defense of the ACA mandate in the hands of the incoming Trump administration.

Zoom in: The case takes up whether the coverage requirement, based on the recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, is invalid because the panel lacked authority since its members weren't Senate-confirmed.

• Two Christian-owned companies and several individuals sued the federal government on religious freedom grounds in 2020 over the requirement that their employer-sponsored insurance cover no-cost preventive medicines for HIV.
• A federal judge in Texas in 2022 ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and blocked the government from requiring insurers to provide free coverage of recommended services.
• The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year agreed with some of the arguments but overturned the nationwide injunction, only blocking the requirement for the companies and individuals who brought the case.

The Biden administration and the challengers each asked the Supreme Court to review that mixed ruling. The administration argued it called into question insurers' legal duty to cover task force recommendations without cost-sharing.

• Allowing employers to exclude PrEP over religious objections could open the door to objections over other covered services, including vaccines, KFF has noted.

• The war in Ukraine has given rise to explosive-packed drones modified with fiber-optic cables.
• These drones are dangerous, as they can't be jammed with electronic warfare and are harder to detect.
• But one Ukrainian company is developing a solution so front-line soldiers can find the drones.

Russian forces are using explosive-packed drones connected to their operators by fiber-optic cables to deliver unjammable precision strikes on Ukrainian troops and military equipment, and Kyiv is looking for a fix to fight back.

Fiber-optic drones have been increasingly appearing in combat over about the last year, and they're a challenge. These drones are dangerous because they can't be jammed with traditional electronic warfare and are difficult to defend against, highlighting the need for a solution.

The drones are "a real problem" because "we cannot detect and intercept them" electronically, Yuriy, a major in an electronic-warfare unit of the Ukrainian National Guard, told Business Insider. "If we can see, we can fight."

The problem is one that the defense industry is looking into closely. Kara Dag, for instance, is an American-Ukrainian technology company that's developing software and hardware to defend against Russian drones for the military and working on a solution, but it's still early days.

The company's chief technology officer, who goes by the pseudonym John for security purposes, said the ongoing conflict is a "war of drones." He told BI Ukraine had managed this fight well with jamming techniques, but Russia has found ways to slip past some of its defenses.

Fiber-optic drones, which Russia appears to have started flying into battle last spring, are first-person view, or FPV, drones, but rather than rely on a signal connection, they are wired with cables that preserve a stable connection. As a result, these drones are resistant to electronic warfare, like radio frequency jammers, and produce high-quality video transmissions.

In August, combat footage from Russian fiber-optic drones began to circulate, indicating a more lasting presence on the battlefield. Now, both militaries are using these drones.

Fiber-optic drones are highly dangerous, John said, as they can fly in tunnels, close to the ground, through valleys, and in other areas where other drones might lose connection with their operators. They are also tough to detect because they don't emit any radio signals.

Russia can use these drones to destroy Ukrainian armored vehicles and study its defensive positions, he said. Since they don't have bandwidth problems, these drones "can transmit very high-quality picture and they literally see everything."

The drones aren't without their disadvantages, though. Yuriy shared that the fiber-optic drones are slower than the untethered FPV drones and unable to make sharp changes in direction. He said that Russia does not have too many of these drones, either, nor does it use them in every direction of the front lines. But where they are used, they're a problem.

Because jamming doesn't work on fiber-optic drones, there are efforts underway to explore other options for stopping these systems, such as audio and visual detection. But this kind of technology can be expensive and hard to manufacture.

John said that the company has developed a low-cost solution to find fiber-optic drones. One element of this system is an array of dozens of microphones that can be focused on one point in the sky to listen for any nearby drones. The second element is an unfocused infrared laser that highlights any object in a certain area of the sky while a camera records any reflected light coming back.

It's a single device that can be placed around a kilometer from troop positions. John said the device is in lab testing, and the next step is to deploy it in real combat conditions on the front lines next month. The plan is to eventually produce several thousand of these devices every month.

The introduction of fiber-optic drones into battle — and Ukraine's subsequent efforts to counter them — underscores how both Moscow and Kyiv are constantly trying to innovate with uncrewed systems before the enemy can adapt, a trend that has been evident throughout the war.

In a previous interview with BI, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's minister of digital transformation, described the technology and drone race playing out in this fight as a "cat-and-mouse game." He said that Kyiv is trying to stay several steps ahead of Moscow at all times.

The Ukrainian military said last month that it was testing fiber-optic drones, adding that "FPV drones with this technology are becoming a big problem for the enemy on the front line."

On Tuesday, a Ukrainian government platform that facilitates innovation within the country's defense industry shared new footage of fiber-optic drone demonstrations on social media. Russia, if it's not already, may soon find itself working to counter these new drones as well.

Princess Kate went into mom mode when a young Princess Charlotte began to struggle during a royal engagement.

Managers said they wouldn't hire recent graduates as they were unmotivated, had poor communication skills and lacked work ethic.

Visa programs are seeing changes, with more potentially on the way. But U.S. employers are seeking other ways to access international talent.

They say it's hard to turn a battleship around, but Mark Zuckerberg just about-faced his globe-spanning, $1.5 trillion-value, 3 billion-user company — transforming Meta from a bastion of Silicon Valley's socially progressive neoliberalism into a full-on MAGA hive.

Why it matters: After Zuckerberg's embrace of Trump and Trumpism, Silicon Valley is holding its breath to see whether a whole row of tech dominoes is about to fall in the same direction.

---

Some early signs of wobble:

• Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon have all lined up to give $1 million each to the Trump inauguration. (Apple's donation came personally from CEO Tim Cook.)
• Amazon put $40 million behind a Melania Trump documentary.

State of play: So far, while Meta's competitors have ritualistically expressed their willingness to work with the new administration, none of them has gone as far as Zuckerberg in donning the corporate equivalent of a MAGA hat.

• This week he announced Meta was ending its fact-checking program; loosening restrictions on hate speech; and shutting down the company's diversity efforts.

Publicly traded companies with billions of customers generally try not to alienate any large bloc of the public. Becoming closely aligned with either side of the U.S.'s red/blue divide risks limiting a business's market reach.

• Until now, Elon Musk has been the striking exception to this rule. Zuckerberg makes two — and his moves open the door wider for anyone else who wants to emulate them.

Yes, but: Zuckerberg, unlike his rival CEOs, has absolute voting control of his company.

• As he said in a three-hour conversation with Joe Rogan Friday, "Because I control our company, I have the benefit of not having to convince the board not to fire me."
• None of the other members of tech's trillion-dollar club can move with the same speed or independence, even if they wanted to.

Case in point: Apple has always aimed, and often managed, to transcend mere politics and inhabit a separate dimension making "great products that people love."

• Cook worked with Trump last time around, winning "Tim Apple" as a sobriquet but also occasionally speaking out about the importance of protecting immigrant workers and LGBTQ rights.
• Google and Microsoft — both with immigrant, non-white CEOs — also offered some pushback on those issues during Trump's first administration as well.
• Tech leaders united to oppose Trump's ban on transgender troops and, in a variety of combinations, took on some of his immigration policies.

This time around, these firms are quietly signaling they want to cooperate with the new Trump team on issues — like competition with China — where they see common ground.

• All these companies were the target of a federal antitrust full-court press in the Biden era, and each is wondering whether they can get a reprieve from the new team in D.C.
• Every tech giant also wants to expand the use of skilled-worker visas, and that has already led to friction with the immigrant-hostile MAGA movement.

During the first Trump term, an activist young tech work force occasionally took to the barricades to protest government policies and pressure reforms from their employers.

• But multiple rounds of layoffs and a messy pandemic recovery have left workers feeling more insecure.
• While Zuckerberg's new policies have sparked internal debate and dissent at Meta, the CEO may welcome an exodus of dissenters as a sort of voluntary lay-off.
• In a Threads post, he described users who might quit Meta's platforms in protest as "virtue-signaling."

What we're watching: With each fresh controversy the new administration touches off, tech CEOs will have to navigate a maze involving Trump's demands for loyalty, employees' emotions and wishes, and their own strategies.

• If Zuckerberg's experiment of committing a whole megacompany to taking overt sides in America's vast culture war pays off, others could follow.

The bottom line: Trump used to say that Zuckerberg would "spend the rest of his life in prison." But the incoming president's relationships with business leaders are strictly transactional, and Meta's CEO is probably resting a lot easier now.

• While struggling with parenting duties, Babette Lockefeer considered quitting her business.
• Her husband didn't agree with her decision to stop work and be a stay-at-home mom.
• Lockefeer was angry at first but later realized she wouldn't be happy if she wasn't working.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Babette Lockefeer, 35, from the Netherlands, about navigating motherhood alongside her career. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Four months after my second child was born, I wasn't living life as I'd envisioned it.

I was in the midst of a big project for my business as a leadership and team facilitator and struggling to balance my career and motherhood. I felt overwhelmed, stressed, and sleep-deprived.

In the summer of 2021, I told my husband I wanted to quit the business. He immediately said no.

At first, I was angry. I'd always valued doing important work and my career, and I was willing to stop doing that for our family, but felt he wasn't letting me.

Over time, I realized he was right: I wouldn't have been happy as a stay-at-home mom. Talking with my husband and processing my feelings helped me realize that being a mother wasn't a detriment to my career. I had to deal with some insecurities and make some changes at home to understand I could do both.

I was always a high achiever at work

I started my career in 2014 as a consultant at McKinsey. I spent two and a half years there, but in 2016, I joined Alibaba as a global leadership associate. I spent around half a year in their Dutch office, helping Dutch e-commerce players connect to the Chinese market.

In the summer of 2017, my husband, who I'd met as a student, and I moved to China, and I worked for Alibaba in Hangzhou.

I really enjoyed it. We had monthly trainings where we learned more about China, e-commerce, and leadership. The training made me realize that my real interests lay in leadership development. In 2018, I left Alibaba and started my own business in the leadership space, TheoryY.

I was also pregnant with my first child at that time. Five months after his birth, in December 2019, we decided to leave China and move back to the Netherlands.

Soon after we returned, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. I got pregnant again and had a second child in February 2021. Because of the pandemic, it was difficult to have family assistance with childcare or access to day care.

Around 10 weeks after giving birth, I started a new project with my business after being referred to a new client. Our newborn wasn't fond of sleeping, so we had a lot of broken nights.

For me, motherhood was about having a healthy attachment with my children, being present, and attending to all of their needs.

This was impossible to achieve all the time. I was too tired, overwhelmed, and full of doubt. With hindsight, I still did a good job as a mother, but I'd internalized the perfect mother myth.

Society's picture of an ideal mother is in direct conflict with that of an ideal employee. The employee is always available and wants to go the extra mile, but the mom also needs to be fully committed and always have the space to attend to her children's needs.

I was always a high achiever at work, but now, I had less time and energy to go the extra mile. I was working fewer hours than before having children, but when I was with my kids I wasn't always present because I was thinking about work. I felt like I wasn't doing a good job on the work front or the motherhood front.

My husband didn't think quitting would make me happy

My husband worked full-time. He was very involved as a dad. When our second child was born, he took some parental leave, spread across the year, plus six weeks of birth leave. But because I was self-employed and had more flexibility, I was always picking up things that fell off the wagon — which was a lot of the time during COVID.

I would spread my hours around, sometimes working in the evenings so I could still do the tasks I was hired to do. We never had a consistent schedule, and I felt like I was firefighting. Whenever a child was ill or had a doctor's appointment, the mental load was predominantly on my shoulders.

When I spoke to my husband about quitting, he said he didn't think it was the right decision. He also wanted to spend time with our kids and thought it wasn't fair if he was the sole breadwinning parent.

He also said he didn't think I'd be happy as a stay-at-home mom. I disagreed, saying I wasn't happy as it stood.

I spoke with my husband, processed my feelings and decided to continue working

From our first conversation, it was clear we weren't aligned, so we continued to discuss it.

I shared that I felt I was undervalued and wasn't appreciated by him unless I was achieving something professionally. He told me he still appreciated me now that I was a mom and wasn't on a steep career trajectory at the time.

I decided to continue working, but we also changed some practical things about our household. When our third child was born in July 2023, my husband was granted 26 weeks of parental leave by his new company, and he took all of it, taking full end-to-end responsibility for the household for the first time.

It allowed me to trust him fully with the kids and family chores going forward, so our dynamic has become more equal. We don't split things 50-50 all the time, but regularly discuss how best to divide responsibilities between us.

Looking back, I'm grateful that my husband could see that, in the long term, it wasn't a good idea for me to quit working. I need the intellectual stimulation that comes from a job, and my work fills me with the energy to show up as the mom and partner I want to be.

Do you have a story about balancing parenting with your career? Email Charissa Cheong at [email protected]

• Ultra-processed foods are associated with all kinds of poor health outcomes.
• But they're probably not all equally bad.
• An ongoing study suggests adding more high-volume foods into your ultra-processed diet could help.

It's no secret that ultra-processed foods aren't the greatest for our health.

"What we're trying to figure out is, very specifically, what is it about ultra-processed foods that seems to drive over-consumption and weight gain?" metabolism researcher Kevin Hall recently told Business Insider.

Hall works at the National Institutes of Health, where he is conducting an unusual experiment. He brings people into a tightly controlled food lab for one month, and tests out how four different diets — one unprocessed, and three ultra-processed, but all with the same levels of key nutrients — impact people's hunger, fullness, calorie consumption, weight gain, and fat loss.

While his study is still ongoing, he's been sharing some initial results with colleagues in the US and in Europe.

The early findings offer some hints about why UPFs can not only lead to weight gain but also make it hard to dump fat. The study is also showing that simple tweaks could make a huge difference. Perhaps, Hall says, you don't need to cut out ultra-processed products to have a satisfying, relatively healthy plate of food.

On an ultra-processed diet, patients gained 2 lbs a week

When Hall's patients switched diets, their calorie intake shifted dramatically.

During their week of unprocessed meals, full of fresh vegetables, beans, legumes, and whole grains, participants ate an average of 2,700 calories per day. They also tended to lose a little weight, about a pound of fat.

That changed when they switched to an 80% ultra-processed diet. Same amount of food offered, same levels of sugar, salt, fat, carbs, protein, and fiber on the plate.

The patients ended up consuming more food to achieve the same level of fullness — ingesting about 3,700 calories per day on average. On ultra-processed foods, the patients' weight shot up by over two pounds in a single week.

The results, while still preliminary, are even more striking than the last experiment Hall did like this, when patients ate 500 extra calories per day on ultra-processed diets.

People might not even feel like they're eating more when they consume those ultra-processed meals. Generally speaking, each bite of ultra-processed food is far more calorie-dense than a homemade meal.

Adding moisture made ultra-processed meals 'healthier'

Cutting out ultra-processed foods isn't realistic in the US, Hall said. But what if you could make a Western diet less bad?

Hoping to reduce people's weight gain and improve satiety with fewer calories, Hall (and his team of clinical chefs) devised two new diets to test this time.

Both diets were 80% ultra-processed but with some crucial adjustments.

In the first new diet, researchers lowered the amount of what are called "hyper-palatable foods" — foods that combine sugar, salt, and fat in ways that aren't typically seen in nature (think: rich, salty ice cream, a donut, or veggies in cream sauce).

Addiction researcher Tera Fazzino coined the term "hyper-palatable" as a way to collect data on the irresistibility of junk food. She hypothesizes that hyper-palatable ultra-processed foods might mess with our minds, and drive people to eat more than they would otherwise.

But that didn't ring true in Hall's new study. The patients who cut out hyper-palatable foods only saved themselves 200 calories a day, and gained over 1 lb in a week.

In the second diet, the chefs lowered the amount of hyper-palatable foods again, but also upped the moisture of people's ultra-processed meals, making them less energy-dense. Often, this meant adding more high-volume, non-starchy vegetables like a side salad to the ultra-processed plate.

"Basically, add very low-calorie mass," Hall told BI. "That typically is non-starchy vegetables."

On an ultra-processed diet with fewer energy-dense foods and less hyper-palatable items, people lost about a pound in one week — just like on the unprocessed diet. They also consumed about 830 fewer calories per day, very close to the 1,000 fewer calories consumed on the unprocessed diet.

"I thought, OK, gosh, we've solved this problem, this is great," Hall said during a presentation at Imperial College London in November, when he first revealed the new results.

There was a catch, though.

"A little bit of a monkey wrench was thrown in because we decided to look at the body composition changes," Hall said.

The nut we haven't cracked: Achieving the right kind of weight-loss

Only people on the 100% unprocessed diet lost body fat.

On the "healthier" ultra-processed diet, people lost about a pound of weight in a week, but it was coming from fat-free mass. That means muscle, bone, tissue, or maybe just water weight.

Hall is not yet sure why this is happening, but he says it could have to do with the "digestability" of the ultra-processed foods — in other words, how they are handled inside our bodies, compared to whole foods.

"If we can learn what those mechanisms are, then the really smart people who are ingenious food technologists and scientists can maybe re-engineer some of these foods," he told BI.

"There's so many narratives and hypotheses that sound reasonable, but until you actually do the studies to test that, then you don't know."

5 simple ways to make your meals healthier today

While it's still too early to say for sure exactly why people eat more calories and store more fat on ultra-processed diets, Hall says we can already begin to use his early findings to make some educated guesses.

Here are some tips:

• Bulk up a meal, any meal, by adding some vegetables to your plate. Could be salad. Could be a side of cooked broccoli or some carrots. They don't have to be fresh. Frozen is also just fine.

• Try some beans. You could whip up a hearty longevity-friendly minestrone soup, but if you don't have the time even ultra-processed refried beans are a decent option.

• Pick out whole grains, like oatmeal, brown rice, and quinoa.

• Pay attention to how much added sugar is in items like yogurt, granola, and salad dressing, and try to limit how much of it you consume. (Olive oil makes a great dressing, and it's filled with healthy fats and beneficial plant compounds.)

• Prioritize the satiating, nutrient-rich foods we know are associated with good health, like eggs (even the ultra-processed liquid kind might be fine).

"It's possible that there's some weird additive or some ingredient in that food that is not good for you," Hall said. "We don't have the science on that yet, but applying what we do know, I think you can still make educated choices."

The outgoing Biden administration will not be able to spend all the funds allocated for Kyiv's fight against Russia.

23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports secured legal victories in their antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR.

Risk experts believe the insured losses from the Los Angeles wildfires will easily top $20 billion, but in some ways that's only the start of the crisis California now faces.

Why it matters: Anything above $12.5 billion would pass 2018's Camp Fire to become the biggest insured wildfire loss ever, per data from insurance brokers Aon. Economic losses will be substantially higher, perhaps tens of billions of dollars more.

---

• Stunning stat: At the high end of the range, the L.A. fires would be near the list of the 10 costliest natural disasters in global history by inflation-adjusted insured loss, per data from the Insurance Information Institute.

The big picture: The loss number in and of itself is staggering, but only tells a small portion of the story.

• Thousands upon thousands of homes and businesses have been lost, and tough decisions about if and how to rebuild will take years, even as climate change makes this sort of disaster more likely.
• California's insurance market was already struggling as carriers fled the state's many risks. As a result the state insurer of last resort, FAIR Plan, has ballooned to an unsustainable size.
• Systematic reforms designed to expand coverage and let insurers re-price risk are just now coming online, but may be too little, too late, given the scope of losses at play.

What they're saying: "A $20 billion to $30 billion, insured loss event is now on the table," says Jon Schneyer, research director at analytics firm CoreLogic.

• Risk assessment firm Verisk said late Thursday the insured property at risk in just the Palisades area is at least $15 billion — not a loss estimate, but a clear sense of what's at stake.

Zoom in: "It's going to be a challenge to the affordability and availability of insurance," says Sridhar Manyem, senior director of industry research at insurance ratings agency A.M. Best.

• Ironically, homeowners' insurance premiums in big California cities are much lower than the rest of the country on a cost-per-$1,000-of-coverage basis, per an Oct. 2024 ICE Mortgage Monitor report.
• But if the houses are more expensive, the premium ends up being higher anyway — and in the Pacific Palisades, the median house is worth $3.5 million.
• "That is a demographically well-off area. When their only alternative is to get the FAIR Plan, you have to wonder what happens to people who don't have the same resources," says Michelle Meyers, an insurance litigator with Singleton Schreiber in Sacramento.

What's next: The immediate question will be what happens to FAIR Plan, which is not built to handle billions of dollars of simultaneous losses.

• It's a last resort, but an increasingly important last resort after so many insurers left the state. The state's reforms were designed to keep more from leaving, but the risk may overwhelm those reforms.
• "I don't have a lot of faith that a good amount of what's in the sustainable insurance plan really incentivizes carriers to really want to write in the state," says Lindsey Frase, managing director at reinsurance brokers Howden Re. "I suspect there may need to be an intervening step where there is some support form the state government to weather this storm."

What to watch: Experts say the L.A. fires will also reopen conversations about mitigation — because while insurance may be a first line of recovery, steps like clearing brush and hardening roofs are still the first line of defense.

• "If you can prevent that first home from picking up an ember and catching fire, it's like a natural fire break," CoreLogic's Schneyer says.

The bottom line: The fires are still burning, but the end of their impact isn't days away — it's years or more down the road.

Denmark sent private messages in recent days to President-elect Trump's team expressing willingness to discuss boosting security in Greenland or increasing the U.S. military presence on the island, two sources with knowledge of the issue tell Axios.

Why it matters: Trump's refusal to rule out military force to take control of Greenland was effectively a threat to invade a longstanding NATO ally. Those comments caught Copenhagen and many other European capitals off guard.

---

The big picture: Greenland (pop. 56,000) is largely autonomous, but Denmark maintains responsibility for defense.

• Trump has repeatedly declared that controlling Greenland — the world's largest island — is necessary for U.S. national security vis-a-vis Russia and China. His son Don Jr. visited Greenland this week bearing MAGA hats.
• Climate change is opening up the Arctic for competition between superpowers, and could also make it easier to tap Greenland's mineral riches.

Between the lines: The Danish government wants to convince Trump, including through the messages passed to his advisers this week, that his security concerns can be addressed without claiming Greenland for the U.S.

• One European diplomat told Axios that Denmark is widely seen as one of the closest allies of the U.S. within the EU, and no one could have imagined it would be the first country with which Trump would pick a fight.

Driving the news: Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and her Greenlandic counterpart Múte Egede met on Friday in Copenhagen to discuss the situation.

• In a press conference after the meeting Frederiksen said she asked for a meeting with Trump. Egede said he is also ready to talk to the president-elect.
• "Greenland is for the Greenlandic people. We do not want to be Danish, we do not want to be American. We want to be Greenlandic," Egede, an advocate for independence, said at the press conference.

Behind the scenes: The sources said the Danish government wants to avoid a public clash with the new U.S. administration, and asked members of the Trump team for clarification regarding what exactly the president-elect meant in his comments earlier this week.

• In the messages passed to the Trump team, the Danish government made clear Greenland was not for sale but expressed readiness to discuss any other U.S. request regarding the island, the sources said.
• The U.S. already has a military base on Greenland and an agreement with Denmark dating to 1951 on defending the island, under which an increase of U.S. forces could easily be discussed.
• Danish officials have already said they are looking into further measures to increase investment in military infrastructure and capabilities in Greenland, in consultation with the Greenlandic government.

Zoom out: Greenland played a key role in NATO and U.S. defenses during the Cold War as part of an early warning system to detect Soviet submarines, or potentially missiles.

• With new sea lanes opening up as climate change reshapes the Arctic, Greenland's geography is becoming all the more important.
• But if Trump's real concern is security, there's no reason the U.S. couldn't simply increase its military presence and capabilities in Greenland under its alliance with Denmark, contends Malte Humpert, a founder and senior fellow at the Arctic Institute.

What to watch: Secretary of State Blinken downplayed Trump's comments and said there's no point wasting time on them. "It is not a good idea and it is not going to happen," Blinken said.

• But Trump's continued comments about this issue, and his son's visit, mean Danish and Greenlandic officials can't rule out the possibility that Trump is quite serious.

The bottom line: The main question is whether Trump would be content to cut a deal with Denmark and declare victory, or whether his true mission is to become the first president in 80 years to gain new territory for the U.S.

• My son's principal told me he called a girl ugly on several occasions.
• As a mother and leadership coach, I worried I failed my son.
• Instead of judging him and myself, I taught him the power of words.

"Your son has been calling a girl ugly — repeatedly."

I froze. My stomach dropped. The words from the school principal felt surreal. My 13-year-old had called someone ugly. And not just once, but repeatedly?

I was shocked, but more than that, I was terrified. I felt like a failure.

I'm a leadership coach. I work with executives on empathy, accountability, and understanding, yet here I was, faced with the reality that I might have failed my own child.

The questions swirled. How did this happen? Did I not teach him better than this? Where did I go wrong?

At that moment, something clicked: leadership principles aren't just for the boardroom; they're for everyday life. Parenting is leadership, too. I had to approach this challenge with the same mindset I used to guide executives.

I decided not to judge my son, so I asked him questions instead

At first, my emotions boiled over. I wanted to tell my son how disappointed I was and to remind him of all the lessons we've discussed: kindness, respect, empathy. But I knew that simply reacting emotionally wouldn't help him grow.

Effective leaders don't react with anger or judgment. Instead, they choose a path of inquiry and growth. It's about creating a space where accountability happens without shame.

So, instead of scolding him, I asked him questions like: "Why do you think that happened?" and "What do you think the impact was?"

My son's answer surprised me. He wasn't trying to hurt anyone on purpose. "I was just trying to be funny," he said. "I wanted to fit in with my friends."

This moment hit me hard. I realized that he wasn't trying to be cruel; he was trying to make his friends laugh, to impress them.

When I took a step back to collect myself, a memory surfaced: I called a girl ugly in the eighth grade. I hadn't thought about that moment in years, but there it was — sharp, vivid, and undeniable. I didn't say it because I believed it. I said it to fit in, to feel better about myself, and to cave to the pressure around me.

Instead of scolding, I told him about the time I called a girl ugly. I used my vulnerability to help him see that everyone makes mistakes. This wasn't about labeling him a bad person but about helping him understand the harm in his actions.

"I know you're not a mean person," I said gently, "but you did a mean thing."

This conversation was about making him think, making him feel what the other person felt. I wanted him to understand the power of his words and begin to reflect on how to repair the situation.

I then encouraged my son to apologize — not just with words, but with sincerity. We practiced it together. I asked him to think about how the girl might have felt and what she might have been thinking when he said those words.

My son learned his lesson once he apologized

When the time came, his apology was heartfelt. But the girl's response was even more powerful.

"I'm OK with jokes," she said, "but I'm not OK when they're about my body or my looks."

It was a moment of leadership — on her part, on his part, and on mine.

At that moment, I felt something shift in my son. He understood that words have power — not just in the moment they're spoken, but in their lasting impact on someone's self-worth.

I've been a leadership coach long enough to know that people don't always behave as expected. Sometimes, good people do bad things, and even the most well-intentioned individuals make mistakes.

It's easy to react with judgment, to label someone's behavior as unforgivable. But true leadership is about offering grace and space for growth.

The key to this experience was replacing judgment with curiosity

When I first heard what my son had done, my first instinct was to judge him harshly. But judgment doesn't foster growth; it stifles it.

By embracing curiosity, I was able to ask the right questions — questions that led to reflection rather than defensiveness. By doing so, we had a real conversation about empathy, self-awareness, and becoming a better person.

This experience reminded me that we parents are not raising our children to avoid mistakes. We're raising them to learn from those mistakes and grow our understanding of ourselves and others.

Parenting is no different from leadership. The same principles we use to guide executives, employees, and teams can — and should — be applied to how we raise our children. By embracing curiosity, modeling accountability, and leading with compassion, we teach not just by our words but by our actions.

• When I saw the Los Angeles fires creep toward my house, I knew I had to pack an emergency bag fast.
• I grabbed the essentials, but then I remembered I needed to take photos of my birth mother with me.
• That's when I learned nothing I've ever purchased is as important to me as I thought.

It's amazing what you pack when a fire rages five blocks from the home you've lived in for 24 years and raised your kids in. It's amazing what you decide — in those panicked moments — is most valuable.

My daughter, 26, lives at home, and her friends, who evacuated from the latest fire in Hollywood, came to stay with us. We live in the flats of the San Fernando Valley. Wildfire danger is rare, and the same goes for floods and mudslides. That's why, 24 years ago, we chose this leafy cul-de-sac.

Like all Angelenos, I've spent the last few days scared and anxious, checking in with friends and watching communities and beloved institutions burn to the ground. I've heard from friends who've lost everything. A lifetime turned to ash.

At least everyone is safe, I kept telling myself. I've been coping as best I can, alternating between watching the news and attempting to dissociate with "Downton Abbey."

But one night this week, my daughter ran into my room and told me to turn on the news. There was a fire just blocks away. We grabbed our coats, ran outside, walked a block, and saw the flames on the nearby hillside. Families emerged from houses and buildings, carrying all they could manage, and rushed to their cars.

"What should we do?" my daughter asked.

I stood nearly catatonic. "I don't know. I just don't know."

We watched the Los Angeles fire department make water drops and watched more neighbors, stricken with fear, run to their cars. We decided to get back home and quickly pack the car.

I first struggled to find what was most valuable to me

I grabbed jewelry, passports, jugs of water, and the emergency earthquake kit my husband insists we keep updated. I packed underwear, toothpaste, and random toiletries as if hyaluronic acid was essential to my survival. My daughter carried bags of dog food and her favorite clothes. I then watched her take a giant plastic bin from the garage.

"What is that?" I asked.

"Pictures," she replied.

Suddenly, everything stopped — the noise, the fear, the rushing. Only one thing mattered: finding the photographs of my birth mother.

My birth mother and I never met, but I needed her in this emergency

I was adopted at three months old, and my records were sealed. At 31, after the birth of my daughter, I found my birth mother via a copy of my original birth certificate held in the New York Public Library. She had already died — in 1995, one day before my 27th birthday, before I found her, before I could tell I was OK, and before I could tell her that I understood.

After a decadeslong search, I found her husband (not my father), Andrew. In 2022, I met Andrew in Paris. After lunch and wine, he handed me a canvas bag and said, "This is for you."

Slowly, meticulously, I took out photograph after photograph — aged and loved — and contemplated the face, expression, and fabulous style of my first mother.

When I came home from Paris, I carefully laid out each picture on my hotel bed — some more than 40 years old — and snapped photos of them with my phone. I knew I needed a digital archive, but nothing could replace holding the images in my hand, touching her in the only way allowed. I then put the bag of photos in a box I kept under my bed.

I took the photos of Gloria with me, not fully knowing how much I valued them

My daughter shouted to me, "Everything I want is in my car!"

I let her know I was almost ready. Frantic to find the pictures of Gloria, I rifled through storage bags, and then I remembered the box. It was right there under the bed — below where my head rests each night.

I reached, retrieved it, and opened it. The bag of Gloria's photographs was safely inside. Hurry. I rushed to my car, placed the box beside my go bag, and hugged my daughter. We were ready. We were safe. And my first mother was with me — like she always is.

In the end, thanks to brave firefighters and water drops, we didn't need to evacuate. But the lesson of those frenzied moments will stay with me forever. Nothing I've ever purchased is as important to me as I thought.

• This post originally appeared in the BI Today newsletter.
• You can sign up for Business Insider's daily newsletter here.

Happy Saturday! Trying to pick a diet for 2025? Sometimes, it's best to keep it simple. That's what Jennifer Aniston does with her 80/20 rule, which is about eating healthy most of the time with some room for leniency.

---

On the agenda:

• The year's must-attend events for the world's wealthiest people.
• Netflix could finally win a best picture Oscar — right when it doesn't need one.
• A top nutrition scientist shares how to increase your fiber intake while still meeting your protein goals.
• The pressure to be a perfect parent now extends to childbirth.

But first: Throw it away. Seriously.

---

If this was forwarded to you, sign up here. Download Business Insider's app here.

---

This week's dispatch

The art of decluttering

It's my favorite time of year: After Santa drops off all his presents, my house is no longer recognizable — but I have a plan for that. It's time to harness my inner Marie Kondo and attempt to reorganize my home.

Before the holidays, I had already started intentionally throwing away items I hadn't used for months. Even the kids' toy basket (OK, fine, baskets) was touched by my decluttering bug. If anything was broken, it went into the trash bag. Don't worry; my 2- and 5-year-old didn't shed a tear.

I'm now moving my way from forgotten closet to forgotten closet, finding things I need and throwing away things that are no longer useful to me and my family.

Even though millennials have a reputation for being minimalists, the truth is we've also bought into the consumerism that makes America what it is, writes journalist Kelli María Korducki. "Millennials haven't been minimalists in years. In fact, we may have never been minimalists at all," she says.

For some, decluttering their physical space may not be enough; their digital lives may also need some tidying up. That's what writer Theresa Sam Houghton did after she realized bookmarking apps and unplayed podcast episodes were clogging up her smartphone. She writes that she's now "developed a weekly routine that helps me reign in digital clutter on a regular basis."

Are you convinced yet? If not, read this to see how decluttering helped one couple eliminate clutter and $32,000 worth of credit-card debt.

---

Billionaires' busy social calendar

The billionaire population is sparse, but birds of a feather tend to flock their private jets together. That is, you can typically find them all in the same place.

At the beginning of the year, they descend en masse to Switzerland for the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos. In February, you can spot them at the Super Bowl. Every July they head to a small town in Idaho for the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference, also known as billionaire summer camp.

Where the wealthy mingle.

---

Netflix on top

If the streamer's success at the Golden Globes is any indication, 2025 could be the year that Netflix finally wins best picture at the Academy Awards. But it doesn't need to.

After spending millions of dollars on best picture campaigns in past years, Netflix has cemented its place in Hollywood as the definitive leader in the streaming wars. With its attention in other areas — like its live sports push — a best picture nod for "Emilia Perez" would be a nice addition, but not a necessary one.

The Oscars extra credit.

Also read:

• The best-dressed celebrities at the 2025 Golden Globes
• Timothée Chalamet and Glen Powell took their lookalikes to the Golden Globes. Fans hope it's the end of doppelganger contests.

---

You probably aren't eating enough fiber

Grocery stores are filling shelves with high-protein versions of food, but top nutrition scientist Tim Spector said people who want to improve their diet should focus on consuming more fiber than protein. It's great for gut health and can ease constipation, among many other things.

The US Department of Agriculture's Dietary Guidelines for Americans for 2020 to 2025 found that more than 90% of women and 97% of men in the US don't meet the recommended intake of dietary fiber. Spector shared tips for eating enough fiber while also hitting your daily protein target.

More fiber, please.

Also read:

• A dietitian said eating high-fiber and fermented foods can improve gut health and boost energy in the winter. Here are her favorite recipes.

---

Everyone is suddenly obsessed with optimizing childbirth

When scrolling through social media as a pregnant person, you're often inundated with a million ways you can make the most of the birth experience. Plus, there's a growing industry of birthing influencers marketing their preferred birthing styles — from natural to ecstatic births — through sponsored posts, consulting services, and online courses.

While much of the talk centered on optimizing birth is well-meaning, how we give birth — or rather, how we think we'll give birth — has become the latest way we define, and judge, ourselves as parents.

The 'good birth' myth.

Also read:

• I wanted my child to be happy. To do so, I need to let go of my perfectionism.

---

What we're watching this weekend

• "The Traitors": Season 3 of the Emmy-winning competition series premieres on Peacock this week, with Britney Spears' ex-husband, Zac Efron's brother, and a former "Bachelorette" star among the new cast.
• "The Curious Case of Natalia Grace": Max is now streaming the final chapter of the ID docuseries about a Ukrainian orphan whose adoptive parents accused her of being an adult secretly posing as a child.
• "American Primeval": "Friday Night Lights" star Taylor Kitsch is a standout in Netflix's answer to "Yellowstone," a bloody and violent new drama set in the early days of the American West.

See the full list

---

What to shop

• Beat the cold: There's nothing like a bone-chilling gust of wind to remind you that your jacket needs replacing. Check out our guides to the best men's parkas for extreme cold and the best winter coats and jackets for men.
• Skill building: Get a leg up at work and learn new skills with a Coursera Plus annual subscription, which is 50% off right now. The deal offers access to thousands of classes from verified providers like Google, Microsoft, and IBM.
• RTO, but make it comfy: Just because you're back in the office doesn't mean you have to be uncomfortable. These are our favorite stretchy work pants for women that feel like sweatpants but look professional.

---

More of this week's top reads:

• 2025 TV shows we're most excited about, from the return of 'Stranger Things' to the new 'Game of Thrones' prequel.
• Norovirus cases are spiking across the US this winter. Here's why — and what you need to know to protect yourself.
• Why are mocktails so expensive?
• Review: I ate at Louis Vuitton's new café and while I enjoyed 'luxury snacking,' it's not a place I'm rushing to revisit.
• Brooke Shields says she's happier than ever with herself at 59. Here are 3 lessons she's learned about aging well.
• A glass of milk's worth of calcium has been linked to lower colorectal cancer risk. Here are 6 foods you might not know contain the mineral.
• 9 luxurious status symbols you might be tempted to buy in 2025.

---

The BI Today team: Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York City. Grace Lett, editor, in New York. Lisa Ryan, executive editor, in New York. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York.

"Landman" is the latest Taylor Sheridan-produced TV drama, starring Billy Bob Thornton, Demi Moore, Ali Larter and Jon Hamm.