Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today
Typhoon Lan makes landfall. The category-2 storm touched down along Japan’s southern coast Monday, bringing winds of 100 miles per hour (165 kph), and is now moving northeast. More than 70,000 people have been urged to evacuate. Also Monday, Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe will hold his first press conference since Sunday’s snap election.
Bowe Bergdahl gets sentenced. The US army sergeant, held by Taliban forces for five years, will appear before a judge to receive his punishment for deserting fellow soldiers in Afghanistan in 2009. “At least the Taliban were honest enough to say, ‘I’m the guy who’s gonna cut your throat,’” Bergdahl, who pled guilty, told The Sunday Times (paywall). “Here, it could be the guy I pass in the corridor who’s going to sign the paper that sends me away for life.”
Royal Philips reports third-quarter earnings. After the Dutch health tech conglomerate showed solid growth in Q2, analysts will be looking for the impact of a series of acquisitions, including of two vascular treatment companies, Spectranetics and CardioProlific.
While you were sleeping
Shinzo Abe succeeded. Exit polls from Sunday’s parliamentary election showed the prime minister’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) heading for a majority of seats, and perhaps even a two-thirds majority with its partner Komeito. Abe hopes to move forward with revisions to Japan’s constitution, and with more “Abenomics” policies aimed at curbing two decades of deflation.
North Korea wrote the West a doozy of a letter. In a communique dated Sept. 28—10 days after Donald Trump called Kim Jong Un “Rocket Man” in a speech to the UN—DPRK’s minister of foreign affairs implored the world’s parliaments to rally against “the heinous and reckless moves” of the Trump administration. The letter criticizes America-first arrogance and says the US president is threatening to “totally destroy the whole world.”
Trump will allow the release of classified JFK documents. The US government is expected to make public 3,000 never-before-seen documents relating to the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy. The release wasn’t Trump’s decision—it’s required by the 1992 Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act—but the president tweeted that he wouldn’t do anything to stop it.
The World Health Organization changed its mind about Robert Mugabe. The WHO withdrew its appointment of Mugabe as a goodwill ambassador just days after announcing it, following fierce backlash from critics of the Zimbabwean president’s human rights record.
Spain told Catalonians to fall in line. The country has threatened to suspend the Catalonian regional government, which Catalonian parliamentary speaker Carme Forcadell said amounts to a coup. On Sunday, the Spanish government urged Catalonian citizens to ignore secessionist leaders and accept authority from Madrid.
Quartz obsession interlude
Tim Fernholz on the financial system’s dangerous dependence on GPS. “Some of the earliest clues to the vulnerability of the Global Navigation Satellite System came from rebellion against The Man. As drivers began using GNSS to plot their routes through traffic, their employers realized they had an easy way to keep an eye on workers and company cars. Employees did not exactly like entering this panopticon, and the tech savvy among them discovered something interesting: It’s relatively easy to jam a GNSS signal.” Read more here.
Matters of debate
Developing countries should focus on data collection. As agencies and NGOs become more beholden to data, funding recipients will need to prioritize gathering it.
Nostalgia can be a problematic emotion. When our history is sold back to us in an idealized form, we end up overlooking the hard lessons of the past.
Russian trolls would love the US government’s plan to foil them. Superficial regulation like the Honest Ads Act helps malicious actors structure their work such that no rules are formally violated.
Surprising discoveries
Google’s AI are binge-watching human behavior. A new dataset of YouTube clips is being used to teach machines how humans move, from hugging to cooking to fighting.
Seventy-six years after Mount Rushmore was completed, its chief carver is being recognized. The family of Luigi Del Bianco spent more than three decades gathering evidence to prove his role in shaping the landmark.
TripAdvisor named this pub the world’s best restaurant. Black Swan at Olstead, nestled deep in the English countryside, received 1,200 bookings in four hours after the announcement.
The huddle is disappearing from American football. This season, some offenses have gone nearly half a game (paywall) without stopping to huddle.
A Berlin zoo hopes sex will cure a panda’s backwards walk. Zookeepers think a romance could keep Meng Meng from acting out.
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