Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today
Barack Obama travels to a devastated Louisiana. The US president will visit flood-damaged Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where at least 13 people have died and thousands have lost their homes. Separately, US secretary of state John Kerry will meet with foreign ministers from Nigeria, Kenya, and Saudi Arabia on issues ranging from counter-terrorism to economic stability.
Remembering the victims of slavery. UNESCO’s “International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition” marks a 1791 uprising of slaves in Haiti that became a turning point for the establishment of universal human rights. Researchers estimate that today some 21 million people remain in slavery.
The US Commerce department’s new home sales figures. Economists surveyed expect a 2% drop from last month, but that would still leave sales of single-family homes slightly above their second-quarter average—and indicate that the recovery is still intact.
While you were sleeping
Britain’s building firms brushed off Brexit worries. Despite dire warnings that the building industry would suffer after the Brexit vote, Persimmon, the UK’s second-largest housebuilder, saw home reservations rise by 17% in July from a year earlier. The Kier Group reported bagging three new contracts worth $6.6 billion since July for UK construction projects.
Volkswagen and its suppliers remain deadlocked. Seventeen hours of talks late into Monday night failed to fix the conflict between VW and two major parts suppliers, so production remains stalled at six of its 10 plants in Germany, with around 28,000 workers laid off or on part-time hours. Analysts estimate that a one-week production halt at VW’s Wolfsburg headquarters would cost the company around $113 million in lost gross profit.
Swiss watch exports kept on falling. The Swiss watch industry federation saw a global export drop of 14% in July—the 13 consecutive month of decline. But the post-Brexit drop in the pound had a silver lining for Switzerland’s luxury watchmakers, with shipments to the UK rising by over 13% in July (paywall).
The Philippines counted the toll of its war on drugs. At a Senate hearing, the national police chief said 1,900 people had been killed in the seven weeks since President Rodrigo Duterte took power and declared war on drug dealers. Human-rights organizations and the US have expressed their concerns at the killings and Dutere has warned the legislators not to try and stop him.
Germany’s private sector had a slow summer. The Markit composite purchasing managers’ index revealed a two-month low in August, slipping from 55.3 in July to 54.4 this month (paywall). The services sector performed worst. Neighbor France saw growth in service-sector output propel the overall rate of private sector expansion to a 10-month high.
Quartz obsession interlude
Anne Quito on fixing the most annoying feature of video calls. “Office workers who embrace the flexibility and productivity of working from home frequently rely on videoconferencing services to ‘call in’ to meetings—only to be distracted by their own physical flaws, bad hair days, and under-eye circles, which appear with awful clarity on screen. For the designers trying to fix it, this nagging distraction even has a name: the appearance barrier.” Read more here.
Matters of debate
Destroying history should be a war crime. The trial of destroying parts of Timbuktu acknowledges the sanctity of our cultural heritage.
Can toe-stretching improve the health of your feet? That’s the claim behind a new fad of weird-looking devices (paywall).
Women drink to deal with sexism. Society’s unrealistic expectations and ingrained misogyny are driving women to the bottle.
Surprising discoveries
Hey Siri, it’s Streisand, not Streizand. Tim Cook agreed to fix the pronunciation by Apple’s personal assistant of the iconic singer’s name after Streisand called him to complain.
Germany is to urge its citizens to hoard food and water. But don’t panic!
Ramen noodles have replaced cigarettes as a prison commodity. Food cost cuts in overcrowded US prisons are making the noodles a prized currency.
Nikola Tesla dreamed up killer drones a century ago. The inventor outlined a destructive wireless drone-like device in an 1898 patent filing.
Empathy training is a vital part of Denmark’s national curriculum. Schoolchildren learn to process their emotional responses in weekly sessions.
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