Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today
The EU’s big kebab debate. The European Parliament votes on whether phosphates can be used in meat cooked on spits, citing a possible link between the additive and cardiovascular health risks.
Donald Trump makes a final pitch for his tax plan. His speech will reportedly focus on how the Republican tax reform will benefit taxpayers and boost the economy.
The Federal Reserve announces its interest rate decision. The central bank is expected to raise its benchmark interest rate from 1.25% to 1.5%. It will be chairwoman Janet Yellen’s last major Fed meeting before being replaced by Trump pick Jerome Powell.
While you were sleeping
Alabama elected a Democrat to the Senate for the first time since 1992. Doug Jones beat Republican Roy Moore, who was accused of molesting teenage girls. The result is a poke in the eye for Trump, who strongly backed Moore—and suggests that the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment by powerful men means something to voters.
Google is about to open an AI research center in Beijing. Fei-Fei Li, chief scientist at Google’s cloud unit, will lead the new center. She’ll try to lure top-notch AI researchers from China, which has made artificial intelligence a national priority. Google faces fierce competition from Alibaba, Tencent, and other Chinese tech firms.
South Korea clamped down on crypto-craziness. It will only allow trading on certain approved exchanges, and is also looking into slapping a capital gains tax on cryptocurrency trading. Individual investors in South Korea and Japan are a driving force behind bitcoin’s meteoric rise (paywall).
Tui cruised to a profitable year. The world’s largest holiday company (paywall) said robust sales at its hotels and cruise ships boosted earnings by almost 12% to €18.5 billion ($21.7 billion) in the year ending Sept. 30. That helped it weather a rough year for its airline business, which was hit with flight cancellations and the Air Berlin bankruptcy fallout.
Toyota and Panasonic teamed up to make EV batteries. Panasonic, which supplies the batteries in Teslas, owns almost 30% of the global market for lithium-ion car batteries. Partnering with Toyota will allow it to extend its reach, and help the Japanese car brand with its goal to add fully electric vehicles to its model lineup.
Quartz obsession interlude
Taddy Hall on why data shouldn’t drive all of your decisions. “The power of big data to enable breakthroughs in many aspects of managerial and scientific endeavor is so staggering that it has generated a religious-like faith in its powers—if we can just get enough data, the truth will be revealed. But this faith is flawed.” Read more here.
Matters of debate
AI does not have enough experience to handle the next market crash. The data it uses is from an unusually stable period, which could make an extreme shock even worse.
The inexorable bloat of Twitter needs to stop. New “improvements” that allow longer messages will turn the microblogging service into a mishmash.
Being great at your job is harder than it used to be. An explosion in knowledge means having to build upon exponentially more “best practices.”
Surprising discoveries
Tokyo’s subway operator is getting into farming. Its hydroponic vegetable operation is run with Tokyo Metro’s trademark precision.
Nearly half of 2017’s Fortune 500 companies were founded by an immigrant or the child of one. Apple founder Steve Jobs, the son of a Syrian immigrant, and Russia-born Sergey Brin from Google are among the most famous.
America’s square-dancing tradition was a tool of white supremacy. Henry Ford funded it to undercut jazz, which he thought was part of a Jewish plot to take over the world.
No-name clothing is the most popular US brand. Increasingly well-made private-label apparel is boosted by companies like Amazon.
Robots are shooing away homeless people in San Francisco. A nonprofit used one to patrol outside its office and make sure homeless people didn’t set up camp.
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