Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today
A Swiss pharma giant puts down roots in China. Novartis is opening a $1 billion R&D facility in Shanghai today, betting that there’s more room to grow in China than in more developed markets (paywall). Beijing hasn’t been very friendly to Western drugmakers since a GlaxoSmithKline bribery scandal in 2014.
OPEC and the ECB both meet in Vienna. OPEC will convene for the first time since Saudi Arabia’s King Salman replaced long-serving oil minister Ali al-Naimi. ECB president Mario Draghi is expected to leave monetary policy on hold and call on governments to turn around their economies without depending on monetary stimulus.
Germany pokes a stick in Turkey’s eye. German lawmakers are expected to approve a bill that would condemn the Ottoman Empire’s mass killing of Armenians in 1915 as genocide. Turkey has warned that the measure, which is backed by German chancellor Angela Merkel, could harm diplomatic ties.
While you were sleeping
Iran’s oil minister rejected a cap on oil output. On the eve of the OPEC meeting in Vienna, Bijan Zanganeh said such a cap would have “no benefit” for his nation, which instead backs a return to a national quota system.
Donald Trump lost a round. The PGA Tour moved the 2017 World Golf Championship from one of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s golf courses to Mexico. The organizers said Trump’s profile made it difficult to attract sponsors—and Trump is furious. The PGA “put profit ahead of thousands of American jobs,” he said.
Germany and France suffered severe flooding. Dozens of towns were inundated and five people died in storms on Wednesday. The large area of low pressure that has brought heavy rain to much of Europe recently is showing no signs of abating.
Sheryl Sandberg said she didn’t want the top job at Disney. The Facebook executive was widely considered to be in the running to take over from chief executive Bob Iger in 2018, but said at a Recode conference that she was happy where she was and didn’t want another job.
Singapore state funds bought $1 billion in Alibaba shares. Sovereign wealth fund GIC and state investor Temasek Holdings each purchased $500 million of the shares through subsidiaries, as part of an $8.9 billion sale by Japan’s SoftBank, Alibaba’s biggest shareholder.
Quartz obsession interlude
Michael Coren on a venture capital firm’s experiment with basic income. “Y Combinator’s pilot experiment will give about 100 families a minimum wage. The city was chosen for its social and economic diversity, alongside concentrated wealth and inequality—a good starting point for the US at large.” Read more here.
Matters of debate
The modern world doesn’t scale. Chipotle, Uber, San Francisco, and Tesla are proof that extreme growing pains may be unavoidable.
Don’t blame smugglers for the migration crisis—blame Europe. Refugees are dying in the Mediterranean because they are given no alternative.
If you’ve been holding out for a radically new iPhone 7, you’re going to be disappointed. An increasingly boring Apple is extending its product life span.
Surprising discoveries
Saudi Arabia issued a fatwa against using stealing another person’s wifi. Fatwas get issued all sorts of things—like the United Arab Emirates’ ban on travel to Mars.
Fifty years later, Australia brought home soldiers killed in Vietnam. The remains of 33 men buried in Malaysia and Singapore were flown to Sydney.
A dagger in Tutankhamun’s tomb was made with iron from a meteorite. It’s high nickel content and cobalt levels, “strongly suggests an extraterrestrial origin,” researchers said.
Pakistani saleswomen are selling contraception door to door. They usually have to make numerous visits before a couple agrees to buy birth control.
People were once very afraid of “bicycle face.” The “stress of incessant balancing” was thought to make “children unrecognizable to their own mothers.”
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