Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today
EU foreign ministers meet in Brussels. They’ll look at the year ahead and review the situation in the Middle East and Syria. The gathering comes a day after Israel sat out Mideast peace talks in Paris.
Markets in the US are closed. US traders are off to celebrate Martin Luther King Day, though anxiety over the markets may cloud the holiday. Last week, a sharp increase in demand for call options of a key volatility index suggested investors expect a market fall after the inauguration of Donald Trump.
The Chicago Cubs visit the White House—minus one star player. The pennant winners are honored in the Oval Office thanks to some last-minute scheduling arrangements. Jake Arrieta, who sent out a controversial tweet following the US election in November, says he can’t make it.
Over the weekend
South Korean prosecutors called for the arrest of Samsung vice chairman Jay Y. Lee. Investigators allege he paid over $3 million to a company co-owned by Choi Soon-sil, the confidante of president Park Geun-hye, in exchange for the approval of a merger of two Samsung subsidiaries. Lee is the heir apparent to the entire Samsung Group, and a conviction would threaten the leadership transition.
More US Congress members said they will give Donald Trump’s inauguration a pass. Quartz is updating a running list of who’s out following senator and civil rights icon John Lewis’s announcement that he would not attend the event. “I don’t see this president-elect as a legitimate president,” Lewis told NBC’s Meet the Press.
Beijing said the One China policy isn’t up for debate. In an interview last week, Trump said, “Everything is under negotiation, including ‘One China.’” Not so, said the China foreign ministry on Saturday (paywall.) It called the policy the “political foundation” of the China-US relationship.
Protesters gathered in US cities to denounce anti-immigrant talk. Americans marched to protest Trump’s rhetoric. Some carried signs that read, “Tu, yo, todos somos America,” or “You, me, we all are America.”
SpaceX returned to inventing the future. For the first time since one of its rockets caught fire last September, the company successfully launched 10 Iridium satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket before flying the first stage of the rocket back to a floating platform in the Pacific Ocean.
US troops were formally welcomed in Poland as part of a NATO buildup. The Pentagon has said that the rotation of some 4,000 US soldiers into Poland will send a strong signal to Russia while strengthening ties with NATO allies.
Quartz obsession interlude
Gideon Lichfield imagines “Democracy 3.0” in a science fiction take on what’s next in America. “I remember… watching a journalist who was sitting in the front row when someone asked Mark the first question. It was something about tax reform, and as he began to answer it, this journalist started crying. There were tears running freely down her cheeks, but she was smiling and nodding and they were tears of happiness, just because this young, polite man with a warm, welcoming face had been asked a question about taxes and was answering it calmly, in complete sentences, quoting real facts and figures, and making a logical progression from one point to the next. They hadn’t seen anything like it in so long…” Read more here.
Matters of debate
California ought to be its own country. So says Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire. Thiel may make a run for governor in 2018, according to Politico, which means CalExit could follow.
The “globalization bullet train” is broken. It’s the West’s “moral obligation” to “work with the developing world… if they want to keep their interests and competitiveness intact,” according to China’s official media outlet, Xinhua.
It’s time for Republicans to call it a wrap with Trump. The GOP already has all the rationale it needs to start an impeachment process, which could preserve the conservative movement.
Surprising discoveries
Yahoo Japan may cut the workweek to four days. The company embraced a government-led campaign to improve the work-life balance in a culture where “death by overwork” has a name, karoshi.
Domino’s Pizza’s total stock returns since its IPO have outpaced Google’s. An analyst did the math and surprised his Twitter followers with a comparison chart.
Complaining about cow bells will deny you citizenship in Switzerland. Residents of a Swiss village voted to deny the privilege to a Danish citizen and animal rights activist who has repeatedly complained about the sound and weight of the bells.
Abraham Lincoln and Hillary Clinton attracted the winning bids in an unusual auction. The Hall of Presidents and First Ladies Museum in Gettysburg sold off its wax figures. Abe went for $8,500, Clinton got $675, the highest for a first lady.
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