Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today
SpaceX launches the world’s most powerful rocket. The Falcon Heavy will lift off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center between 1:30pm and 4pm ET. The test flight will carry a Tesla Roadster.
Mike Pence arrives in Japan. The US vice president’s three-day visit will focus on security measures in the face of Pyongyang’s nuclear threats. He’ll then head to South Korea for the Winter Olympics, bringing the father of American student Otto Warmbier, who was jailed and tortured by the North Korean regime, and later died from his injuries after returning to the US.
GM wheels out its results… The American carmaker is expected to post robust year-end results (paywall), thanks to sales of high-margin SUVs, but the outlook for this year and next is mixed.
… And watch out for Walt Disney. Disney’s quarterly revenue should reflect the success of The Last Jedi and Thor. Shareholders will also be keen to hear how its $52 billion takeover of most of Fox is going.
While you were sleeping
The US stock plunge sparked a global sell-off. After the Dow dropped 4.6% yesterday and the Nasdaq and S&P 500 also fell, billions were wiped out in Asian and European markets on Tuesday. Oh, and bitcoin continued its downward dive as well.
BP got its groove back. Eight years after the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico hammered the company with tens of billions in costs, the British oil giant’s profits more than doubled in 2017. A surge in oil and gas production and the launch of seven new fields have fueled the turnaround.
Hong Kong overturned the jail sentences of the Umbrella Movement leaders. Joshua Wong, Nathan Law, and Alex Chow were convicted for unlawful assembly for the 11-week-long democracy protests in 2014. They will now go free, but were warned that they’d be harshly punished for any future acts of civil disobedience.
Singapore and Malaysia announced a stock-trading hookup. Connecting Bursa Malaysia and the Singapore Exchange by year’s end will help lower trading costs and encourage cross-border investment, authorities from the neighboring countries said. A project to build a high-speed rail line between the two nations is also in the works.
Quartz obsession interlude
Joon Ian Wong and John Detrixhe on bitcoin’s sketchy foundations. “Some people think bitcoin’s spectacular price rise last year was manipulated by a cryptotoken called Tether that’s supposed to be pegged to the US dollar. Now, an anonymous report answers the question: What would bitcoin be worth without Tether? The answer: around $4,500.” Read more here.
Matters of debate
Stop freaking out about the stock market drop. If you’re rattled by a 6% daily drop maybe it’s time to refocus on long-term returns—not least, for your mental wellbeing (paywall).
Cape Town’s water crisis is due to politics, not climate change. A feud between the ruling African National Congress and the minority Democratic Alliance is to blame.
AI makes politics hackable. The coming era of fake news video (paywall) could undermine democracy.
Surprising discoveries
The ozone layer is deteriorating over heavily populated parts of the globe. The shield, which protects us from dangerous UV radiation, is mending over the poles, but thinning elsewhere.
Facebook is battling anti-Black Panther plots. The company shut down a group of racist trolls that was using bots to generate low scores on the Rotten Tomatoes reviews site.
Your friend’s brain processes the world the same way as yours. Neuroscientists used fMRI scans to find that the closer the friends, the more similar their neural responses.
Birds of paradise have feathers that act like black holes. Their nuanced structures trap the tiniest iotas of light to capture female attention.
A pet crayfish learned how to clone itself. The marbled crayfish is now an invasive species threatening ecosystems around the world.
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