Business News
Quartz Daily Brief—Europe edition—BoE decision, US-India tit-for-tat, China inflation, Velveeta shortageWhat to watch for today
Updated July 21, 20223 min read
What to watch for today
What to watch for today
What to watch for today
What to watch for today
What to watch for today
Social messaging apps have been gaining in popularity worldwide, with users flocking to services like WeChat and WhatsApp to communicate with friends and family. Now South Korean manufacturer LG wants consumers to use a prominent messaging app, the Korean-owned, Japan-based Line, to communicate with another key figure in their lives: home appliances.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is under increasing pressure due to an ongoing corruption and money laundering scandal. Yesterday, in the latest twist, three of Erdogan’s top officials—the Ministers of the Economy, Interior, and Environment and Urban Planning—resigned after their sons were implicated. Erdogan responded by reshuffling his Cabinet. The details at the center of the turmoil, which began on December 17 with a corruption investigation and has since snared 24 people, make for colorful reading:
Marianus Sae, a district chief from the Indonesian island of Flores, found himself in a tight spot last weekend. He was visiting another city but couldn’t get a seat on a fully booked flight home for a budget meeting. His solution: call his hometown airport and order security officers to block the runway with their cars, preventing the Merpati Nusantara Airlines plane from landing, and forcing its return.
Dennis Rodman, the flamboyant ex-NBA star who seems to have struck up a surprising friendship with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, has just departed the reclusive nation.
Pyongyang isn’t happy about recent anti-North Korea demonstrations in Seoul, so yesterday it warned its South Korean neighbors they had better stop—via a strongly worded fax.
Small islands created by undersea volcanos often slip back into the sea as they’re eroded by waves, or simply sink under their own weight. Not so, however, for Niijima, a new islet that sprung to life late last month off the coast of Japan—and has continued to grow ever since. New images from Nasa show the islet 600 miles south of Tokyo has grown to nearly 14 acres (56,656 square meters) and is standing tall, jutting some 65 to 80 feet above the water.
Uzbekistan’s authoritarian government employs a brutally innovative system for maximizing its cotton crop profits: It forces the country’s office workers do the back-breaking work for little or no pay, and then purchases the “white gold” at below-market prices.
Sections of North America’s Pacific coast have turned into a horror show of sludge-ridden starfish corpses, and scientists can’t seem to pinpoint the cause. In a gory process tailor-made for a low-budget science fiction thriller, the stricken starfish first develop white lesions that become infected, then their arms fall off. Finally comes necrosis, disintegration, and an ugly death.
Jakarta’s traffic is simply brutal: Commuters spend hours every day stranded in cars and crammed into battered busses in the congested Indonesian capital, which has about 28 million residents but no rapid-transit system.
What to watch for today
If Spanish soccer titans FC Barcelona score in their match against Villarreal on Saturday, spectators may well be treated to the remarkable sight of players lifting up their jerseys in celebration, only to reveal paid advertisements for Intel.
What to watch for today
What to watch for today
Britons really love to shop online. In 2012 the average person in the UK spent an amazing £1,175 pounds ($1,922) shopping on the web, significantly more than in any other country, according to a new report (PDF) from the UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom.
New rules on in-flight calls. US regulators decide whether passengers should be allowed to make in-flight mobile phone calls, and are said to be in favor of lifting the ban despite appeals from members of Congress and petitions from the public.
What to watch for today
It may be 2013, but the African island of Madagascar is facing a public health threat straight out of the Middle Ages: At least 20 people in the country’s northwest died last week from the bubonic plague, and 2012 saw some 256 plague cases and 60 deaths—more than in any other country in the world.
What to watch for today
What to watch for today