Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today
Human rights worries in Myanmar and Thailand. UN representatives are expected to visit Myanmar’s Rakhine state today to investigate the persecution of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority group. Meanwhile, neighboring Thailand’s prime minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who came to power in a 2014 coup, will be the latest autocratic leader to meet US president Donald Trump in Washington.
The winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine. The Nobel Foundation will announce the winner of its 2017 price for medicine or physiology. The likely contenders include researchers who investigate how immune cells kill tumors, the construction of DNA and gene-editing technology.
The first day of the Supreme Court. The US Supreme Court begins a new term that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says could be “monumental.” The politically-divided high court will consider major cases on how voting districts are drawn, the rights of business to deny service to gay people based on religious belief, and the limits of law enforcement’s ability to track citizens with their cell phones.
Over the weekend
North Korea and the US are talking, for now. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed direct communication with North Korea as he presses leader Kim Jong-un to stop making nuclear and missile weapons. President Donald Trump undercut the efforts on twitter, writing that “I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man.”
Violence marred Catalonia’s independence referendum. Spain’s northeastern region attempted to hold an independence referendum after the country’s courts deemed it illegal. Police attempting to prevent the vote injured hundreds in violent confrontations.
Uber got new board members. Ousted founder Travis Kalanick appointed former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns and former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain to Uber’s board. The move is seen as Kalanick’s retaliation against efforts to limit his control of the car service company.
Same-sex marriage in Germany. Two men became the first same-sex couple to wed in Germany after the country’s parliament voted for marriage equality in June. Registry offices across the country opened specifically to accommodate those wishing to marry on the first day it was possible.
Terror attacks in France and Canada. Two attacks over the weekend were linked to terror groups; a man stabbed two people to death in Marseille, France, while five were injured when a car plowed through pedestrians outside a professional football game in Edmonton, Canada.
Quartz obsession interlude
Akshat Rathi on an ex-alternative medicine “doctor” who is debunking health pseudoscience. “Instead of thinking about the techniques as adjunct therapies to proven modern medicine, many naturopaths will reject the pharmaceuticals and other treatments that we know save lives. Over her seven years of training and practice, Susan Hermes had had doubts about naturopathy, but she had always found ways to dismiss them. This time, however, her boss’s comment worried her: Was she doing something illegal? Could she be in trouble?” Read more here.
Matters of debate
There’s bad math behind Facebook’s political problems. The company made a fatal assumption about how much information you can handle.
The crisis in Puerto Rico is a perfect storm of Donald Trump. Driven by cable news, incompetence, and the culture wars, Trump’s failure to respond to a natural disaster is just a preview of crises to come.
You should believe in electric airplanes. Within a decade, advances in battery technology will make it possible to fly hybrid gas-electric jetliners with a range of 700 miles on short-haul flights.
Surprising discoveries
Eagles are murdering drones. Wedge-tailed eagles in the Australian Outback are taking out 7-foot, kevlar-shielded mapping drones as if it were nothing (paywall). The aerial predators are known to attack kangaroos, and it seems they are not ready to give up alpha status to small flying machines.
Los Angeles is losing its look. The iconic palm trees that dot the city are dying from old age, beetle infestations, and fungi.
VCs with daughters have more success. According to a Harvard study, venture capitalists who have an extra daughter versus an extra son have a higher chance of their companies being sold or going public.
A French farmer smuggled hundreds of refugees into his country. “If we have to break the law to help people, let’s do it,” he says.
Amazon has 5,000 people working on Alexa. The company isn’t messing around when it comes to investing in its AI-driven digital personal assistant.
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