Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today
Samsung’s heir apparent is sentenced. Lee Jae-yong has been detained for a year over charges of embezzlement and bribery of political officials (including South Korea’s former president, Park Geun-hye). The appeals court could uphold a lower court’s sentence of five years, reduce it, suspend it, or overrule the conviction.
The mood in US markets. Janet Yellen’s farewell, rising wages, and the Federal Reserve’s inflation expectations have left markets skittish. The Dow tumbled 2.5% on Friday, its worst day since Brexit. Keep one eye on Wells Fargo; late Friday, the Fed announced sanctions that the company said could reduce its profit by up to $400 million this year.
Rex Tillerson visits Latin America. The US secretary of state will kick off his tour in Colombia, where the crisis in Venezuela and drug trafficking are expected to be high on the discussion agenda. He’ll also visit Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and then head to Jamaica.
Uber and Waymo head to court. A San Francisco jury will decide whether Uber stole trade secrets when it hired Anthony Levandowski, a top engineer from Google-owned Waymo who allegedly treated himself to a parting gift of 14,000 internal files. Waymo wants at least $1 billion in damages, but will have to prove trade secrets were stolen and used by Uber for “unjust enrichment.”
Over the weekend
The Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl. The Philly team beat the favored New England Patriots 41-33 in Minneapolis to win the title for the first time. Justin Timberlake’s half-time show, in part a tribute to Prince, was widely panned.
Greeks protested over Macedonia’s name. Some 140,000 people attended a rally in Athens to prevent the country from calling itself Macedonia as Greece claims the country as part of its territory. Greece calls the country Skopje, after the Macdeonian capital, or FYROM, short for the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
A Russian plane was shot down in Syria. The Sukhoi-25 ground-attack aircraft was shot down Saturday in a rebel-held part of Idlib. On social media, the jihadist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham alliance claimed responsibility. Monitoring groups say the region had seen dozens of Russian air strikes in the previous 24 hours.
Yellen’s not mad—just disappointed. “I would have liked to serve an additional term and I did make that clear, so I will say I was disappointed not to be reappointed,” the recently departed Fed chief said in a PBS NewsHour interview. This week, Yellen joins the Brookings Institution to continue her economic studies; her successor, Jerome Powell, is sworn in on Monday.
Quartz obsession interlude
Heather Timmons on the risks of dismissing the FBI’s Russia memo. “For the country and its people, the system that apportions specific powers among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches stands as a guarantee of the rule of law and a bulwark against authoritarian rule. When the intended balance is disturbed by one branch failing to follow the law or even long-standing standard protocol, the very idea of a representative democracy is threatened.” Read more here.
Matters of debate
The driverless revolution will be delayed. Autonomous technology is progressing, but not at the speed we were led to believe.
American football will keep killing players until we change the way it’s played. But taking hard tackles out of the game to prevent brain damage would probably end the sport entirely.
Xinjiang shows the reality of what a Chinese surveillance state will look like. Daily life in China’s far western region means being filmed by cameras (paywall) on every street corner, and relentless bag and body scans.
Surprising discoveries
Sea otters need more calories per day than gorillas. But blue whales are the kings (and queens) of calorie intake, consuming 3 million daily.
Amazon patented a way to tell Alexa to ignore “Alexa.” The company uses “acoustic fingerprinting technology” to help its voice assistant discern between a commercial and a command.
Trump’s tax plan may spur divorces. In 2019, a 76-year-old deduction for alimony payments will be eliminated—lawyers are advising clients to get their divorces in now.
No, there won’t be another Crocodile Dundee movie. The fake trailer for Dundee: The Son of a Legend Returns Home starring Chris Hemsworth was a Super Bowl-linked stunt to promote tourism to Australia.
Apple Music could overtake Spotify this summer. Apple’s US subscribers have been growing (paywall) about 5% monthly, compared with 2% for Spotify.
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