Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today and over the weekend
Czechs go to the polls. The Czech Republic 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 leader will undergo his first (paywall) thorough physical examination as president today. The examination takes place at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and doesn’t include a mental health evaluation.
…And makes a decision on the Iran nuclear deal. Trump must decide by today 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.
While you were sleeping
Germany’s old coalition partners agreed to form a new government. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and the Social Democrats hammered out a preliminary deal early Friday morning—the main sticking points were refugee policy, taxes, and government spending. The breakthrough means Merkel is saved from early elections.
Trump lashed out at “shithole” countries… That’s how the president described El Salvador, Haiti, and African countries during a discussion with lawmakers over granting entry to immigrants from these countries as part of a bipartisan deal. News outlets around the world grappled with how to report—and translate—the remark.
…. And refused to 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.
Facebook is making its news feed “more meaningful.” It said the changes will prioritize posts that “spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people.” That means less passively consumed content, like viral videos and news articles, will appear in people’s feeds.
BMW failed to overtake old foe Mercedes. While BMW’s sales hit a new record in 2017, thanks to its popular SUVs and 1-Series, it failed to beat Mercedes-Benz, which saw its sales grow twice as fast last year. Mercedes held onto its crown as the top-selling luxury car brand in the US for the second year in a row, with BMW coming in second.
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.
Why aren’t critics critical enough? The majority of movies, books, and TV shows are “mediocre or worse.”
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
New Zealand’s inflation gauge now includes craft beer. It has ditched Sat-Nav and DVDs, as people spend on fancy beers and “body massages.”
Some wild pigs mourn their dead. 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.
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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