This week, Actuality pretends we’re happy! We talk about people paid to smile when they meet their increasingly irate customers, and the toll that emotional labor takes as more jobs emphasize your people skills.
For aspiring asteroid miners—there are more than you think—the challenges of extracting metals from the inner solar system go beyond the fuss of getting prospecting platforms into space. There are important legal considerations, too.
At last night’s Republican presidential debate, Texas Senator Ted Cruz disagreed with his rivals about immigration, arguing that practical fixes to recognize undocumented immigrants would be a political loser because they hurt ordinary American’s wages.
The Department of Defense has refused to answer questions about hundreds of millions of dollars spent by a controversial task force focused on economic redevelopment in US war zones. Now, an exasperated US senator has given the department 48 hours to turn over its files.
Rumors are flying that T-Mobile, which has surpassed Sprint to become the third-place wireless carrier in the US, plans to announce it will exempt streaming-video services including Netflix and HBO from its consumer-data caps.
With the unveiling last week of all 6,000 pages of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), fans of abstruse trade law can spend some time digging into the meaty goodness of tariff schedules and regulatory harmonization designed to boost trade.
Mikhail Lesin, the man who first helped Vladimir Putin squash independent Russian media, has been found dead in a hotel in the US capital, ABC News reports.
Washington, DC
In 2011, the US built a $43 million natural gas filling station in Afghanistan, which government auditors figure is about $42.5 million more than it should have cost—before you take into account that very few Afghan cars appear to run on compressed natural gas.
Voters in Ohio will have a chance tomorrow (Nov. 3) to make the Buckeye state the first in the US to authorize recreational marijuana use without approving medical licensing first.
This week, Actuality goes orbital and finds it’s quite a mess. Satellites and space stations are dodging orbital trash, and there’s business opportunity in cleaning up—but no “sexy space garbage trucks” yet.
Paul Ryan worked hard to climb the greasy pole of power in Washington, a humble Congressional aide moonlighting as a waiter who today became the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Three debates in, and the Republican establishment is still looking for a real nominee. Anyone?
In John Boehner’s final days as speaker of the House, lawmakers have reportedly struck a budget compromise to avoid both a government shutdown and a potential default on US debt.
Good morning, Quartz readers!
Hillary Clinton’s command performance before a committee investigating the 2012 attack on US diplomats in Benghazi, Libya, was a dress rehearsal of sorts. A rehearsal for facing a Republican opponent in a presidential debate, perhaps; but not only. ”I could see her across the table from Putin,” California senator Dianne Feinstein said.
Sometimes when you spend 11 hours watching your country’s politicians waste valuable time on a misguided vendetta instead of doing something—anything—that might actually help the world, you need a reminder that, hey, somewhere on the planet, there’s actual progress being made on behalf of billions of people:
By late in the evening, as it became clear that Hillary Clinton wouldn’t offer them the admissions they wanted, Republican lawmakers turned their time to spinning elaborate conspiracy theories, while their witness simply shook her head.
Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton will testify Thursday (Oct. 22) before a controversial committee of federal lawmakers ostensibly investigating the 2012 deaths of US ambassador Christopher Stevens, another diplomat, and two CIA contractors in Benghazi, Libya.
The French bank Credit Agricole will pay US regulators $787 million for flagrant violations of international sanctions against Iran, Sudan, and other countries.
He has a commanding lead in the polls, but Donald Trump is the only Republican presidential candidate who hasn’t purchased a database of voter information, which political campaigns use to target supporters and mobilize them on election day.
The Groundwork, a political technology startup funded by Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt, has maintained its position as the top technology provider to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
This week, Actuality examines a New York idealist’s battle to win homeless people the right to shelter in the 1970s—and why modern reformers have more ambitious plans to help those left behind when the rent is too high.
It wasn’t much of a contest.
