Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today
Facebook hands over Russian ads to Congress. It will turn in around 3,000 ads bought by people in Russia on the social-media platform in the months running up to the 2016 US election. The ads will be examined as part of the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the election.
The US Supreme Court begins a new session. In the months ahead, the politically divided high court will consider major cases on how voting districts are drawn, the rights of businesses to deny service to gay people based on religious belief, and the limits of law enforcement’s ability to track citizens with their mobile phones.
The winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology is announced. The likely contenders include researchers investigating DNA construction, gene-editing techniques, and how immune cells kill tumors.
Over the weekend
A shooting near a Las Vegas casino has killed over 20 people and injured at least 100. Police said that the “lone wolf” was killed after firing on crowds at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel. However, the police are searching for the gunman’s traveling companion, Marilou Danley.
Britain’s Monarch Airlines folded. Transport secretary Chris Grayling said the UK is launching the “biggest ever peacetime repatriation” to bring home around 110,000 stranded passengers after Monarch ceased operations early Monday morning. The UK’s fifth-largest airline joins Air Berlin and Alitalia, both of which went bankrupt this year.
Violence marred Catalonia’s independence referendum. Spain’s northeastern region held an independence referendum despite the country’s courts deeming it illegal. But police injured hundreds in violent confrontations. Regional leaders said they may soon declare independence, saying 90% voted in favor of it.
North Korea and the US are talking, for now. US secretary of state Rex Tillerson confirmed he’s in talks with North Korea, and is urging leader Kim Jong-un to stop developing missiles and nuclear weapons. Donald Trump undercut the efforts on Twitter, writing that Tillerson was ”wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man.”
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 ride-hailing giant.
France and Canada were hit by terrorist attacks. 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 into pedestrians outside a professional football game in Edmonton, Canada.
Quartz obsession interlude
Akshat Rathi on a former alternative-medicine “doctor” 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, 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 (1,126 km).
Surprising discoveries
Angry birds are murdering drones. Wedge-tailed eagles in the Australian Outback are taking out Kevlar-shielded mapping drones as if they were nothing (paywall).
Los Angeles is losing its look. The iconic palm trees that dot the city are dying from old age, beetle infestations, and fungi.
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.
Most of the fastest-selling used cars in the US are now electric. Their low price and rising reputation are leading to a brisk business.
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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