Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today
The EU publishes an initial estimate of GDP growth. Analysts expect the euro-zone economy expanded 0.5% in the third quarter from the second. With economic sentiment high after a decade of malaise, the European Central Bank last week announced it will begin to gently dismantle the emergency stimulus it’s been providing.
Australia shuts down a refugee detention center. Fearing for their safety outside, hundreds of asylum seekers are refusing to leave the country’s controversial Manus Island facility in Papua New Guinea, even as authorities plan to cut off water, food, and power supplies. Refugees report being assaulted by local residents.
A flurry of earnings reports. Among the companies sharing their numbers today (pdf) are MasterCard, Aetna, Mosaic, Electronic Arts, Devon Energy, Archer Daniels Midland, and Under Armour. The last is expected to report slower sales growth as it loses ground to German rival Adidas.
While you were sleeping
China and South Korea agreed to shelve the dispute over THAAD. The two countries, each set to host Trump early next month, will restore a relationship that was strained by South Korea allowing the deployment of the US missile shield on its soil. Beijing said it still had concerns about the system but didn’t see South Korea as a strategic threat.
New Zealand said it will ban foreigners from buying existing homes. Making good on one of her campaign pledges, new prime minister Jacinda Ardern said, “We are determined to make it easier for Kiwis to buy their first home, so we are stopping foreign speculators buying houses and driving up prices.” The new rules, which won’t apply to Australians, will start early next year.
Apple is designing iPhones that would jettison Qualcomm components. The tech giant could make the devices only with modem chips from Intel or possibly MediaTek, reported the Wall Street Journal (paywall). Qualcomm has reportedly withheld testing software following a lawsuit in January, in which Apple said Qualcomm uses its market dominance to block competitors.
Samsung Electronics notched another stellar performance. After hitting record operating profit in the second quarter, the company did even better in the third with $12.9 billion, thanks to soaring memory chip earnings. The strong showing came despite turmoil at the top level of the company.
Quartz obsession interlude
Zheping Huang on China blocking the world’s hottest video game. “[Authorities] compared PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and similar survival games with ancient Rome’s gladiator battles, saying the violently competitive spirit behind them is ‘against our country’s core socialist values and the Chinese nation’s traditional cultural behaviors and moral principles, and bad for teenagers’ physical and mental health.'” Read more here.
Matters of debate
Trump is turning the Fed into a reality show. His selection process disrespects the institution and undercuts his eventual pick—reportedly Fed governor Jerome Powell.
Changing the topic won’t work for sexual harassers. Actor Kevin Spacey’s pivot to discuss his own sexuality is offensive—and it didn’t save House of Cards from cancellation.
Do robots have free speech? The Russian-backed bots that influenced the 2016 election raise a host of questions about who and what qualifies for constitutional protections.
Surprising discoveries
The alt-right is creating its own language. Quartz analyzed billions of comments to define terms like “hypergamy,” “femoids,” and “meeks.”
Google is fixing its inaccurate cheeseburger. CEO Sundar Pichai said the company “will drop everything” to address the Android emoji that stacks the cheese beneath the burger.
There’s a planet where it snows sunscreen. Titanium dioxide, the active ingredient in sunblock, falls from the sky on Kepler-13Ab, a scorching-hot planet six times the size of Jupiter.
Japan’s Halloween is a celebration of cuteness and grossness. From pumpkin decorations to faux-moldy hamburgers, the holiday is now bigger than Valentine’s Day and second only to Christmas.
An AI learned to write horror stories. “Shelley” generates spooky, off-putting plots after studying 140,000 original horror posts from Reddit.
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