Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today and over the weekend
Czechs go to the polls. Czechs will vote in the first round of a presidential election that will test the country’s future relationship with the European Union. Current president Milos Zeman has friendly relations with Russia and has made pronouncements warning against the spread of Islam in the country.
Donald Trump has a full physical… The junk-food-loving president will undergo his first (paywall) thorough physical examination as president today. The examination will take place at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and the current White House physician will give a readout afterwards.
…And makes a decision on the Iran nuclear deal. By Friday, the president must decide whether to reimpose sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program, which would effectively kill the Obama-era nuclear deal. French president Emmanuel Macron urged Trump to abide by the deal, and Reuters and others report he will.
Ferrero is buying Nestle’s US chocolate business. The secretive Italian confectionery giant and maker of Nutella is nearing a deal to acquire brands including Butterfinger and Babe Ruth for about $2.8 billion.
While you were sleeping
Trump lashed out at “shithole” countries. The president directed the crude comment at El Salvador, Haiti, and African countries, during a discussion with lawmakers over granting entry to immigrants from those countries as part of a bipartisan deal. News outlets around the world grappled with how to report—and translate—the remark.
Facebook is changing its News Feed. Facebook said it will prioritize posts that “spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people.” That means less passively consumed content will be appearing in people’s feeds, such as viral videos and news articles.
India sent up 31 satellites. They were launched into lower orbit in a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle from a spaceport located off the Bay of Bengal coast. Three of the satellites are Indian, whereas the rest come from Canada, Finland, France, South Korea, the UK, and the US.
Trump won’t open the new US embassy in London. Amid fears of large-scale protests, secretary of state Rex Tillerson will instead preside over the opening of the new embassy in southwest London next month. Trump tweeted that he won’t be there because the Obama administration made a bad deal when selling the old embassy.
Thieves behind the Paris Ritz heist dropped their bag of jewels. The loot, worth some €4.5 million ($5.4 million), was dropped by one of the five thieves as he escaped on a scooter. Three men have been arrested, and two remain on the run.
Quartz obsession interlude
Nikhil Sonad on why the world only has two words for “tea.” “With a few minor exceptions, there are really only two ways to say ‘tea’ in the world. One is like the English term—té in Spanish and tee in Afrikaans are two examples. The other is some variation of cha, like chay in Hindi… How they spread around the world offers a clear picture of how globalization worked before ‘globalization’ was a term anybody used.” Read more here.
Matters of debate
The Arctic will never be frozen again. Scientists say the region’s rapid warming is unprecedented and irreversible.
The James Franco allegations show what actresses have to deal with to make it. There’s an expectation that women must perform nude scenes before they’re taken seriously that doesn’t extend to men.
The case for equal pay in journalism is the case for better reporting. The BBC’s pay-disparity dispute highlights how having more women in media (paywall) lessens the preponderance of male perspectives.
Surprising discoveries
Some wild pigs mourn their dead. An eight-year-old discovered that skunk pigs repeatedly visited a fallen member of their herd, even protecting its corpse from scavengers.
A vegetable-selling app in China is valued at almost $3 billion. “Meicai,” which translates to “beautiful vegetable,” allows users to buy vegetables direct from farms.
Black snow blanketed a Kazakh city. Temirtau in central Kazakhstan is home to the country’s biggest steel-production plant—locals believe pollution has turned snow black.
Lobsters in Switzerland must be stunned before boiling. Under a new law, only electric shock or the “mechanical destruction” of the crustacean’s brain will be accepted methods of stunning it.
Cape Town has three months of water left. Unless the South African city institutes extreme rationing measures, it will be the first global city to completely dry up.
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