What to watch for today
Xi Jinping’s royal treatment begins. The Chinese president will receive an official royal welcome, address parliament, meet with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, and attend a state banquet, on invitation of the Queen. The UK is set to take in $150 billion in Chinese investment over the next 10 years.
A tense Pakistani visit to DC. Prime minister Nawaz Sharif will be in the US all week. He’ll talk to US president Barack Obama about Pakistan’s edgy relations with its neighbors, India and Afghanistan, and how militants based in his country have carried out attacks throughout the region.
A busy earnings week continues. Defense contractors Lockheed Martin and United Technologies are expected to report little to no growth in their quarterly earnings, as the Pentagon spent slightly less on weapons in fiscal 2015. Verizon, Harley-Davidson, Yahoo, and Chipotle are also due to post third-quarter results.
While you were sleeping
Canada’s Liberal Party won a landslide election. Canada’s Liberal Party won an outright majority in parliament, ousting the long-serving Conservatives and forcing former prime minister Stephen Harper to resign as leader of his party. Liberal leader Justin Trudeau is expected to increase public spending and repair Canada’s relationship with the US.
The owner of KFC and Pizza Hut is considering a China spin-off. Yum Brands is in the “advanced” stages of planning a separation of its struggling China operations, according to Bloomberg. Activist investor Keith Meister has been pushing for the spin-off, arguing it would add billions in value; the company currently earns most of its revenue from China.
Balkan countries reopened their borders. Slovenia says it has allowed in most of the 5,000 migrants it had shut out at its border with Croatia yesterday, while Croatia announced it has reopened its border to Serbia. Those decisions will ease the movement of migrants toward countries like Germany and Sweden.
The US approved warship sales for Saudi Arabia. The Pentagon has given the go-ahead to sell four Littoral combat ships to the Middle Eastern country for $11.3 billion, sources told Bloomberg. The deal begins to make good on the US’s agreement to bolster its Arab allies, following a deal to lift sanctions on Iran.
China’s capital outflows topped $500 billion. A US Treasury report estimated that cash leaving the country surpassed $250 billion in the first six months of the year—up massively from $26 billion a year earlier. Including July and August, that figure reached half a trillion dollars, as its central bank spent heavily to prop up its currency.
Quartz obsession interlude
Mike Murphy on how Google has been logging your voice records—and how to delete them. “In recent months, I’ve apparently asked Google where I can eat nearby, how to take a screenshot on the OnePlus Two, what a Trap Queen is, what the Perseids are, and to play a Linkin Park song. It’s all there—my dumb voice asking dumb questions that I thought were lost into the ephemerality of Google’s search servers.” Read more here.
Matters of debate
Yahoo is losing executives, but that’s not the big problem. CEO Marissa Mayer’s turnaround effort is not driving much growth.
Breastfeeding is overrated. Advocates are crossing the line given that the benefits are modest (paywall).
Cultural appropriation is not racist. The exchange of ideas and styles is a tenet of a modern society.
Donald Trump is great at quitting. Despite his promise to stay in the White House race, he has a knack for anticipating a decline.
Jeremy Corbyn needs to better understand British people. The Labour leader’s failure to do so, not his political ideas, is his biggest shortcoming.
Surprising discoveries
Our brains think corporations are people. The same neural systems are used to understand corporate and human behavior (paywall).
Dogs are probably from Central Asia. They were first born there around 15,000 years ago, new research suggests.
Chicago police “disappeared” 7,000 people, most of them black. They were subjected to brutal off-the-books interrogations.
The first earthlings in space had six legs. The heroic fruit flies were launched 68 miles into the sky on a captured Nazi rocket.
Deutsche Bank sent $6 billion to a US hedge fund by mistake. The “fat finger” error happened when the boss was on vacation.
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