Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today
Berkshire Hathaway reports its quarterly earnings. This year’s extreme weather did a number on Warren Buffett’s collection of insurance groups. Analysts expect major losses, but Berkshire should still turn an operating profit.
Donald Trump visits Hawaii on his way to Japan. Pearl Harbor is the president’s first stop before touring Asia. Japan is up first, then South Korea, China, Vietnam, and finally, the Philippines. Trump’s not visiting the North Korean border, calling the Demilitarized Zone a “cliché.”
The US releases October jobs data. The US economy shed jobs for the first time since 2010 in September because of weather disruptions. Economists are predicting around 300,000 new jobs (paywall) were added last month.
Clocks go back this weekend in the US. It’s the end of daylight saving time in the US and Canada on Sunday.
While you were sleeping
Asia went mad for the iPhone X. Apple’s newest phone went on sale today, and lines formed outside stores in Singapore, Japan, and Australia. Though investors worried that announcing three iPhones at once was a mistake, Apple’s quarterly earnings yesterday smashed all estimates, and shares hit a record high.
Carmakers united to create a pan-European EV-charging network. IONITY, a joint venture between BMW, Daimler, Ford and VW, will build 400 fast-charging stations for electric cars by 2020, 100 of which will be up and running next year. This could help calm European drivers’ range anxiety and give EV sales a boost.
Twitter briefly silenced Trump. The social network said that the president’s Twitter account was shut down for 11 minutes by a departing customer-support employee on the last day of the job.
A raft of local news sites were shuttered. Joe Ricketts, the billionaire who founded TD Ameritrade, shut down DNAinfo, Gothamist, Chicagoist, Shanghaiist, LAist, and other blogs after New York-based staff decided to unionize last week. Their archives still exist, however, and are likely to be resurrected.
Venezuela started restructuring its debt. President Nicolas Maduro said the government will transfer funds for a $1.1 billion principal payment on state-owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela bonds that matured yesterday, and will then renegotiate the terms of its debt with creditors.
Quartz obsession interlude
Michael J. Coren on how Amazon competing with so many companies may not end well. “Amazon’s unprecedented logistics and delivery infrastructure, paired with access to personal data about Americans’ purchasing habits, means it is unique in the history of global commerce. No company has ever wielded this combination of consumer insight and infrastructure, say historians and legal analysts, which means the company grows stronger and less assailable with every purchase.” Read more here.
Matters of debate
The economic disparity in innovative cities is no coincidence. Growth in high-tech innovation causes a widening gap between the rich and the poor.
The new Fed chair isn’t an economist, and that’s fine. A chair with more political savvy than a lifelong academic may be what’s necessary to maintain the Fed’s independence.
We shouldn’t separate work from life. We should seek work-life integration by incorporating our personal and business interests into our daily routines.
Surprising discoveries
Scientists discovered a void inside the Great Pyramid of Giza. The mysterious 30-meter-long space may have been a burial chamber, a gallery, or just a sealed-off construction passage.
NASA found another 20 promising planets for human colonization. If confirmed, this would increase the number of known, habitable exoplanets to around 50.
Kleptopredation is a new scientific term for super-sizing a meal at sea. It refers to a previously unknown behavior: a predator eating prey that itself just filled up on prey.
The world’s most expensive whisky was a fake. Lab tests found that a £7,600 ($9,928) dram of 1878 Macallan bought by a Chinese millionaire was likely distilled after 1970.
The Unicode Consortium can’t agree on a new poop emoji. Some argue that one “frowning pile of poop” is enough.
Our best wishes for a productive day. Please send any news, comments, habitable exoplanets, and real whisky to hi@qz.com. You can follow us on Twitter for updates throughout the day or download our apps for iPhone and Android.