Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today and over the weekend
Brussels airport reopens. Zaventem airport, which has been closed since March 22 after suicide bombers attacked the departure hall, will partially resume operations as early as Friday evening.
Bouygues and Orange try to seal the deal. The French conglomerate has delayed a final decision (paywall) about selling its telecoms business to Orange, the country’s biggest telecoms operator. The companies now have a Sunday deadline to make the call.
The US reports employment figures. Employers likely added about 200,000 jobs in the last month. The jobless rate is expected to hold steady at an eight-year low of 4.9%, despite a weak global economy.
While you were sleeping
Anbang Insurance Group dropped its pursuit of Starwood Hotels. The Chinese company had offered $14 billion but made a surprise withdrawal to avoid a protracted bidding war, according to one of the Chinese insurer’s consortium partners. This now clears the way for Marriott to take over Starwood.
Tesla unveiled the Model 3. After years of offering only high-end models, the electric-car company finally presented its mass market car at an exclusive event in San Francisco. The luxury entry-level vehicle costs $35,000, seats five adults, and has two trunks — and over 115,000 customers placed pre-orders within 24 hours.
McDonald’s announced a major expansion in China. The US fast-food giant will add a further 1,250 new outlets to the 2,200 restaurants it already has in China over the next five years. This would make China the second-largest market after the US for McDonald’s, and help it fight off a growing threat from cheaper local competitors.
Britain introduced a “National Living Wage.” It’s a big social experiment as workers over the age of 25 now get a minimum of £7.20 ($10.30) per hour—up from £6.70 currently. The government called it (paywall) “one of the biggest increases in the legal minimum wage that any government has done in the western world in living memory.”
North Korea launched another missile. The isolated nation appeared to have test-fired another missile, just hours after Barack Obama and Xi Jinping pledged cooperation on North Korea. The Chinese president also agreed to sign last year’s Paris climate deal on April 22.
A banana giant expanded into mushrooms. The Irish tropical-fruit giant Fyffes paid C$145 million ($111 million) for Highline Produce (paywall), Canada’s largest mushroom producer.
Quartz obsession interlude
Nico Lang on legal name changes for transgender Americans. “Kinkade explains that many of his clients have faced sexual violence from police after being targeted for not having up-to-date identification that reflects their chosen name and their gender identity. It means that many of the trans people he works with have stopped even going to the grocery store, in fear of what will happen if they encounter a police officer.” Read more here.
Matters of debate
Manufacturing still matters, even in knowledge economies. It creates more well-paying jobs than any other sector.
America may finally be tiring of Donald Trump. He’s still the odds-on Republican nominee, but his antics are getting boring.
Naive attorneys are killing the legal profession. They all want to be like the fictional Atticus Finch.
Surprising discoveries
The next Superman is a Chinese teenager. In DC Comics’ new series, Clark Kent is a 17-year-old from Shanghai—but he has a Japanese name.
Peru is the world’s leading producer of counterfeit US dollars. It takes ten to 12 people to create a fake bill, but the profits are huge.
An Italian village filled with centenarians is under the microscope. Many are older than 110, despite enjoying cigarettes and never exercising.
Tyrion is the mathematically proven protagonist of “Game of Thrones.” Researchers used a network-analysis technique that’s also used to track terrorists.
Christian Louboutin is making “nude” shoes to match every skin tone. They range from “porcelain” to “deep chocolate”—and cost from $675 to $875.
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