Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today
The UN Security Council votes on Jerusalem. Member nations will consider a draft resolution that reportedly calls upon the US, while not specifically mentioning it, to withdraw its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The draft has broad support, though the US has veto power on the council.
Bitcoin futures have their first day of trading on CME. They made their debut a week ago on the CBOE, but now they’re hitting the big time: CME’s trading volume was about 55 times larger than that of the CBOE during the first nine months of the year. Trading started Sunday evening ET.
The EU investigates Ikea. The furniture retailer reportedly dodged nearly €1 billion ($1.7 billion) in taxes from 2009 to 2014 by taking advantage of loopholes (paywall) in numerous countries. The probe is part of a broader European crackdown on corporate tax avoidance that has already targeted McDonald’s and Apple.
Over the weekend
Thousands of passengers were stranded at Atlanta’s international airport. An 11-hour power outage on Sunday paralyzed Hartsfield-Jackson, the world’s busiest airport. The outage, triggered by a fire in an underground electrical facility, caused the cancellation of more than 1,000 flights.
Donald Trump said he wasn’t planning to fire Robert Mueller. However, over the weekend, Republicans ramped up their attacks on special counsel Mueller over his probe into links between Trump’s campaign and Russia in the 2016 election. A lawyer for the presidential transition team on Saturday accused Mueller of getting thousands of emails by illegal means.
Austria got a far-right coalition government. The controversial coalition agreement means 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz, head of the conservative People’s party, becomes chancellor, while the far-right Freedom party will control defense, interior, and foreign ministries. The Freedom party is strongly anti-immigrant and has close ties to the Kremlin.
Sebastiàn Piñera became Chile’s president—again. The pro-business conservative billionaire secured a wider-than-forecast margin in a race that had been considered a toss-up. The 68-year-old Piñera was president from 2010 to 2014.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan continued his pro-Palestine campaign. The Turkish president announced plans to open an embassy in East Jerusalem during a speech on Sunday. Last week, he urged the world to recognize the city as Palestine’s capital at a summit of international Muslim leaders in Istanbul.
The Last Jedi raked in $450 million globally on its opening weekend. The latest Star Wars picture added a bright note to an otherwise disappointing year for Hollywood, and is expected to become the top-grossing film of 2017. Disney is working on at least five more Star Wars installments.
Quartz obsession interlude
Dan Kopf on the nutty math showing how quickly bitcoin has grown. “People often describe the growth of the value of bitcoin as ‘exponential,’ but that doesn’t really do it justice. When we tried to come up with a formula that fit the growth of the value of all bitcoin in circulation (or its ‘market capitalization’) since May, we found that it was more like a fourth degree polynomial. (The exact formula: $ billion = 7E-07^4 – 0.0003x^3 + 0.0328x^2 – 1.07x + 39).” Read more here.
Matters of debate
The best television is happening in video games. Narrative works like Telltale Games’s The Walking Dead are opening space for stories barred by the constraints of traditional TV.
The Republican tax bill will worsen the US trade deficit… Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says Trump’s ignorance of economics will result in his trade policies failing.
… And could actually push US jobs overseas. Experts note that the new tax legislation has failed to eliminate incentives (paywall) for companies to move jobs out of the US.
Surprising discoveries
The Vatican paints its buildings with milk. The ancient recipe, based on mixing milk from the Pope’s cows with slaked lime and pigments, lasts longer than modern paints.
Dogs can group smells by categories. The finding suggests better ways to train bomb-sniffing canines, who are currently taught to identify unique scents.
Belgium’s telegram service will end on Dec. 29. The service is 171 years old, but just 10 businesses and a handful of bailiffs use it these days.
Only 20% of the 45 million tons of electronics thrown out in 2016 were recycled. Chargers alone accounted for 1 million tons of waste.
Facebook admits that social networks can be bad for relationships and mental health. Its solution: to use its service more actively.
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