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Denmark, together with Greenland, today will claim around 350,000 square miles of the continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean, in an area around the North Pole that is slightly more than the size of Texas and Oklahoma combined.

"The submission of our claim to the continental shelf north of Greenland is a historic and important milestone for the Kingdom of Denmark," Foreign Minister Martin Lidegaard said in a statement. "The objective of this huge project is to define the outer limits of our continental shelf and thereby — ultimately — of the Kingdom of Denmark." (Here is the statement in Danish.)

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A map of the area Denmark is claiming. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Denmark hide caption

itoggle caption Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Denmark

A map of the area Denmark is claiming.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Denmark

Denmark contends that its data show Greenland's continental shelf is connected to the Lomonosov ridge, a ridge beneath the Arctic Ocean, The Associated Press reports. A Danish geophysicist quoted by the AP called the North Pole "a tiny, tiny abstract spot" that lies in the area.

Denmark said it would file paperwork with the U.N. to support its claim.

Under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, nations are entitled to a continental shelf extending to a distance of 200 nautical miles from their coast. Claims beyond that distance must be supported by scientific and technical data.

The current claim, in an area north of Greenland, is Denmark's fifth: A partial submission — north of the Faroe Islands — was presented in April 2009; another, in the area south of the Faroe Islands, was submitted in December 2010. A third partial submission was made in June 2012 for an area south of Greenland, and one in November 2013 was made for an area northeast of Greenland.

Deutsche Welle provides the background:

"Between 2007 and 2012, Danish scientists, with colleagues from Canada, Sweden and Russia, surveyed a 2,000 kilometer long (1,240 miles) underwater mountain range that runs north of Siberia. They concluded that the ridge is geologically attached to Greenland, a huge, sparsely populated island that is a semi-autonomous Danish territory."

"Submissions by many states already await consideration by CLCS, and it is therefore difficult to predict when the consideration of this Danish/Greenland submission will be initiated," the Danish statement said, referring to the U.N.'s Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, the panel that considers such claims.

The Arctic is heavily contested. Russia and Canada have previously claimed the resource-rich region that is estimated to hold 30 percent of the world's untapped natural gas and 15 percent of its oil.

The Danish statement noted that today's claim overlaps with Norway's continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles. It added that there is potential overlap in its claims with Canada, Russia and the U.S.

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Denmark

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said today that Detroit's bankruptcy, the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, will end at 12:01 a.m. ET on Thursday.

"The financial emergency in the city of Detroit will be defined as wrapping up today," Snyder said at a news conference in Detroit.

He said paperwork to officially end the bankruptcy would be approved later today. The move comes a month after a federal judge approved a strategy for the city to exit bankruptcy.

Kevyn Orr, the city's emergency manager, said he would step down following today's announcement. Snyder tapped Orr for the job in March 2013 soon after the governor said Detroit was in a financial emergency.

"We look forward, truly, to a better time for the city going forward," Orr said at the news conference. "More importantly it's time for me now to step back and return the city to its regular order."

The city filed for bankruptcy on July 18, 2013, making it the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

As NPR's Scott Neuman reported, the plan put forward by Orr in November "calls for shedding $7 billion in debt, investing more than $1 billion in city services and borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars to implement the overall plan." The city had already reached deals with nearly all its creditors that at first were against the plan.

Once the city exits bankruptcy, Mayor Mike Duggan, to whom Orr handed back in September many of his extraordinary powers over the government, and the Detroit City Council will be able to regain control of governance.

Detroit bankruptcy

Kevyn Orr

Rick Snyder

Detroit

The government opens this week after a dramatic weekend. The Senate approved a $1.1 trillion spending bill despite protests from the left and the right. The bill had already passed the House.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts fought against changes to banking regulations — she's among this moment's most prominent Democrats.

Before becoming senator, she was a watchdog overseeing the bailout of the financial industry. More recently Warren has hammered both parties and the White House for being too close to Wall Street.

So people noticed when she fired up many Democrats against one provision in this giant bill.

"Republicans slipped in a provision at the last minute that would let derivatives traders on Wall Street gamble with taxpayer money and then get bailed out by the government when their risky bets threaten to blow up our financial system," she told NPR's Steve Inskeep.

The measure involves complex financial trades called derivatives which can be hugely profitable but also hugely risky.

A provision of the Dodd-Frank law entitled, "Prohibition against Federal Government Bailouts of Swap Entities," required banks to create subsidiary companies to do their trading — with their own money. The idea was to create a firewall between the banks' trading and customers' deposits, which are federally insured.

The spending bill passed over the weekend eliminates the new rules, and keeps financial trading within the banks.

STEVE INSKEEP: You said they slipped it in, which is true, it did get tacked on to this much larger legislation about something else. But isn't this a provision that did go through the regular legislative process in the House of Representatives? There were committee hearings. There were Democrats as well as Republicans who voted for it.

SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): You know, it was literally never introduced in the Senate. It had no hearings. There was no discussion about this. And let's keep in mind about this provision, this is a provision that Citigroup lobbyists literally wrote. And then, just to make sure that everybody got the point, Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan, personally made phone calls to House members to push for this change. I think that tells you what was really going on here. They want to be able to juice their profits. A half dozen of the largest financial institutions in this country want to be able to take riskier bets, and hey, if it doesn't work out, they want the U.S. taxpayer to bail 'em out. I think that's a bad idea.

You mentioned that current bank executives wanted this change. But they were able to point out that over the years — there have been years of debates about this very rule — over the years that people who have thought this change would be OK have included Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, who's widely respected. He is on record as long ago as 2010 saying that other parts of banking regulation take care of this issue and this seems to be needlessly complicating things.

I think that it's fair to say that this is a very complicated provision and that it was a compromise when it was put in. My view on it, however, is that we should have something stronger here, not that we should just knock it down and get rid of a provision that's designed to prevent government bailouts.

Isn't it true that whether the government directly insures the transaction or not, the government sort of is? Because these are institutions regarded as too big to fail. We're going to bail them out if they fail anyway.

Well you know, that is the risk we run right now, is that we have a handful of giant banks in this country that were too big to fail in 2008, got bailed out by the taxpayer and are now bigger than they were then, and are again loading up on risks. But you know, whichever way you think is the right answer here, I know for sure that this shouldn't be slipped into an omnibus spending bill — a bill that must pass in order to keep the government open. And what it means, if this works, is they can just kinda keep slipping grenades and attach them to, you know, must-pass spending bills and pretty soon we have no financial regulations at all.

Senator Warren, some people will know that you challenged your party's leadership on this shortly after your party added you to the Democratic Senate leadership. How did it work in this very early case in which you disagreed with the leadership?

Look, these are issues I've worked on for most of my career. I am glad to be in leadership, I am grateful to have a, a place at the table, but my priorities haven't changed. I'm gonna stand up and fight for what I believe in.

Well, what does it say about your party that the party leadership in the Senate and apparently elsewhere, including the White House, was not with you on this?

You know, actually, I want to say that differently. You know, the President said he was very much opposed to this provision. There were a lot of Democrats who were opposed to this provision. You know, once the House passed an omnibus bill with this in it and threw it over to the Senate — and then the House left town — at that point, there was very little choice but either to pass the omnibus, even with this thing in it, or shut down the government. And we didn't want to shut down the government.

Senator Warren, as you must know, that even as you were fighting over this in the Senate, there was a group called Ready for Warren that wants you to run for president, that released a letter signed by more than 300 people who describe themselves as former Obama campaign workers and staffers and aides. They want you to run. What do you say to them?

I'm, I'm not running for president. That's not what we're doing. We had a really important fight in the United States Congress just this past week. And I'm putting all my energy into that fight and to what happens after this.

Would you tell these independent groups, "Give it up!" You're just never going to run.

I told them, "I'm not running for president."

You're putting that in the present tense, though. Are you never going to run?

I am not running for president.

You're not putting a "never" on that.

I am not running for president. You want me to put an exclamation point at the end?

(laughs) OK, that's fine. Can you tell me, Senator, how you see your role over the next couple of years presuming that you don't run? You've raised your profile in a way that few Democrats have been able to do recently.

You know, I'm just here to stand up for hardworking families who just want a fighting chance. That's what I'm in this fight for and I'm in this fight all the way.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, thanks very much for the time.

Thank you.

Ganta is the Liberian city that never sleeps. That's what local businessman Prince Haward says of the town of 40,000, one of the country's largest cities and a crossroads for travelers in the southeastern region: "Ganta is a non-sleeping city ... a business-oriented city."

It's also a city that has seen its share of tragedy. The scruffy town is located in Liberia's eastern Nimba County, where the country's brutal civil war started in late 1989. Many buildings were destroyed during the conflict and remain gutted; others are still pocked by artillery and mortar fire from the war. And there's been little investment in the gritty city since the conflict ended more than a decade ago. Potholes nearly swallow up vehicles.

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Just off of Ganta's main street, 18-year-old ready-peeled orange seller Bebe Gono says she's struggling. "We are trying to find the little we can afford," she says. John W. Poole/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption John W. Poole/NPR

Just off of Ganta's main street, 18-year-old ready-peeled orange seller Bebe Gono says she's struggling. "We are trying to find the little we can afford," she says.

John W. Poole/NPR

So even before Ebola, Ganta was struggling. And now the virus is taking a toll.

For many people, there's very little business right now. Ebola is the reason: The border with neighboring Guinea was closed in July to prevent possible spread of the virus.

Just a hundred yards from the St. John's river bridge crossing, young men play whist under the shade of a mango tree. They used to be money changers. A very unhappy Prince Dolo says the outbreak put an abrupt end to their livelihoods: "I have nothing to do. Border is closed. And I'm vulnerable and unemployed. I'm not happy. Without the border, Ganta is just dead."

Just off Ganta's rutted, red-dust main street, 18-year-old ready-peeled orange seller Bebe Gono says she's struggling, just like the city. "We are trying to find the little we can afford."

Comparing Liberia's civil war with Ebola in her town, Gono says both have been difficult: "Ganta has suffered a lot. We've lost a lot of people to the war and we've also lost a lot of people to Ebola. As compared with the war, Ebola is worse."

Gono never went to school and can't read or write. But true to the entrepreneurial spirit of her town, she has dreams of a better life. If she had a little money, she'd like to open a business in the city that never sleeps.

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The border closing has cost many people their jobs. A group of now-unemployed men still gather at the border each day to play whist.

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Prince Haward owns the Alvino hotel in Ganta. Even before Ebola, gritty Ganta was struggling. Yet he says it remains a major crossroads. "People from the southeastern region, they must transit in Ganta. People from Monrovia, they must transit in Ganta ... Ganta is a non-sleeping city. ... This is what Ganta is known for — a business oriented city

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The main street in Ganta, Liberia at dusk.

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