Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today and over the weekend
It’s US jobs report day. Economists expect employers to have added 205,000 jobs during February (paywall) and predict the unemployment rate will come in at 4.0%.
China votes to change its constitution. On Sunday, the National People’s Congress will decide on the measure (paywall) that could keep Xi Jinping in power indefinitely. A 1982 rule restricted presidential terms to two five-year stints.
Cuba holds its legislative elections. Interest in the polls is high given that the new parliament will convene next month to elect president Raul Castro’s successor, who will be the first in the position not to belong to the Castro family in decades. Castro announced last year that he wouldn’t seek a third term.
North Korea and South Korea march separately at the Paralympics. The two countries haven’t been able to agree on a unified flag for the opening ceremony today.
While you were sleeping
Donald Trump agreed to meet with Kim Jong-un. It would be the first time a sitting US president has met with a North Korean leader. South Korean officials, speaking at the White House, said the meeting would take place by May. They added that Kim had agreed to halt nuclear and missile tests and was committed to denuclearization.
Barack Obama is in talks with Netflix. The former president is reportedly mulling a partnership deal with the streaming service, either as a moderator or as a producer of a show about uplifting American stories. Getting Obama would be a coup for Netflix, and give the former president a platform to reach a big global audience.
German exports took a nosedive. Exports between December and January suffered their biggest drop (paywall) since June, falling 0.5 % to €111 billion ($136 billion) in January. Trump’s steel and aluminum tariff announcement yesterday is also increasing the sense of uncertainty for the EU’s biggest exporter.
11 countries signed an Asia-Pacific trade pact in Chile. The signatories of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership forged ahead with the deal despite the US pulling out. Officials from Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam attended a ceremony in Santiago.
Quartz obsession interlude
Tim Fernholz on why spies should stay off LinkedIn. “If your business intelligence work involves meeting former double agents to hoover up info about Russian national security operations, maybe keep a lower profile. Especially if you live in the United Kingdom, which Russia’s intelligence services treat as a kind of sporting field for targeted murder.” Read more here.
Matters of debate
Trump’s trade threats are just bluster. Much like the Muslim ban and the US-Mexico border wall, the president is writing checks he can’t cash.
Uber drivers should earn more, period. Their shockingly low pay and lack of benefits and protections put Uber jobs in a category more akin to the shadow economy than the gig economy.
To-do lists try to do too much. We often over-expand the simple checklist with tasks that we should leave to other modern tools (paywall).
Surprising discoveries
NASA found mega-cyclones on Jupiter. The massive polar storms form steady, synchronized patterns across the planet’s surface.
Fake news travels six times faster than the truth on Twitter. An MIT study found that people, not bots, are most likely to share false information.
Italy’s first black senator is a member of its far-right anti-immigrant party. Toni Iwobi believes immigration “shouldn’t cost a cent to the host country.”
Pedestrians are attacking self-driving cars. Two autonomous vehicles were hit by humans in San Francisco, adding to the Bay Area’s growing list of human-robot conflicts.
Leopards are solving a stray-dog problem in Mumbai. Researchers believe the leopards keep rabies in check since dogs make up 40% of their diet.
Our best wishes for a productive day. Please send any news, comments, redundant to-do lists, and Twitter block buttons to hi@qz.com. You can follow us on Twitter for updates throughout the day or download our apps for iPhone and Android. Today’s Daily Brief was written by Jill Petzinger and edited by Lianna Brinded.