Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today
Belgium holds an emergency egg meeting. Parliament will meet to discuss food safety after a poisonous insecticide forced a massive egg recall in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. A similar panic in 1999 caused a major political crisis (paywall).
All eyes on US productivity. The Department of Labor releases its second-quarter estimate on labor productivity. Analysts expect it to have risen 0.8%, from 0% in the first quarter.
🎉 It’s the 10th anniversary of the start of the global financial crisis. A good time for a review of the factors that dragged the global economy into the mire, starting from the day BNP Paribas froze funds laced with subprime mortgages on this day in 2007—and how we’re faring a decade later.
While you were sleeping
North Korea threatened to nuke a US territory. Pyongyang said it’s considering missile strikes on Guam in response to Donald Trump saying that the hermit state would face “fire and fury like the world has never seen” if it continues its nuclear threats. US analysts said Pyongyang now has the technology to sufficiently miniaturize nuclear weapons (paywall).
Nuclear worries made the Swiss franc soar. A safe haven in times of global tensions, the franc gained (paywall) the most against the euro since 2015 on the North Korean news. It was its biggest one-day change since the Swiss central bank scrapped its currency peg with the euro. The threats from Pyongyang also gave gold and the Japanese yen a boost.
Vantiv sealed the deal with Worldpay. The Cincinnati-based card firm formalized its takeover of Britain’s biggest payments processor for £8 billion ($10.4 billion). It will create a transatlantic payments group called Worldpay that will be listed in the US and London and have a market value of more than $20 billion.
Kenya’s opposition candidate disputed the election results. More than 90% of the results have been counted, and it appears incumbent president Uhuru Kenyatta is ahead with about 54%—but Raila Odinga called the results “fake,” as the authorities hadn’t shown documents to verify them.
A car rammed a group of soldiers in Paris. A police hunt is now underway in the French capital, after the driver injured six soldiers and drove off. Local officials say they believe it was a deliberate act. France is still under a state of emergency following a spate of attacks since 2015.
Quartz obsession interlude
Cassie Werber on the deadly rise of loneliness. “Such ‘epidemics,’ while not confined to rich countries, are linked to prominent features of affluent culture: longer life expectancy, decreasing marriage rates, people having fewer children, more people getting divorced, and more people living alone.” Read more here.
Matters of debate
Biological determinism can’t explain tech’s gender gap. It’s an argument that is always used to justify social hierarchies.
Marriage is increasingly the province of college-educated women. Social shifts have made “high-investment parenting” a more attractive prospect.
US CEOs have China Stockholm syndrome. They’re cooperating with Beijing (paywall) in return for market access.
Surprising discoveries
Boeing and NASA are copying geese to save jet fuel. “Wake surfing” planes could fly in a V formation.
A man is suing Heineken for a gecko-infused beer. He claims to have PTSD after drinking a can with two dead lizards inside.
The man who wrote the book on online passwords says he got it all wrong. Bill Burr wrote the US government guidelines that require special characters and other useless rules (paywall).
There’s a scientifically optimal time for dunking Oreos in milk. An analysis of capillary action suggests that three seconds will almost saturate the cookies.
Autonomous car tests are getting seriously weird. Reporters spotted a self-driving car in Arlington, Virginia that turned out to be a regular car, driven by a human who was disguised as a car seat.
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