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 where the stock market is heading and the fourth-quarter earnings season may cloud the holiday.
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
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.
South Korean prosecutors tightened the noose on Samsung. They called for the arrest of vice chairman Lee Jae-yong, who they allege 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.
Essilor and Luxottica eyed a mega-merger. French eyewear manufacturer Essilor will put up €22.8 billion ($24 billion) to acquire Luxottica, the industry’s biggest retailer and owner of Sunglass Hut, Ray-Ban, and other brands. The merger will create an eyewear giant with an expected €15 billion in annual revenue.
The boycott list for Donald Trump’s inauguration grew. Quartz is keeping a running list of Congress members who’ve followed the lead of civil-rights icon John Lewis by announcing they won’t attend. Trump attacked Lewis and came in for widespread criticism; his pre-inauguration approval ratings are lower than those of his three immediate predecessors.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan edged closer to complete power. The Turkish parliament approved constitutional changes that allow the president to appoint and dismiss ministers and intervene in the judiciary. It abolishes the post of prime minister for the first time in the country’s history. A second round of voting and a referendum are needed for the reforms to pass.
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 Chinese foreign ministry on Saturday (paywall.) It called the policy the “political foundation” of the China-US relationship.
Quartz obsession interlude
Gideon Lichfield imagines “Democracy 3.0” in a science-fiction take on what’s next in America. “Mark’s body was still there, keeping his place in spacetime like a bookmark, but he was somewhere else. And I knew that when he went somewhere else like that, it was invariably to the future. He was racing ahead, playing out a development timeline. I tried to imagine what he was seeing, and had a sudden notion that I knew exactly.” Read more here.
Matters of debate
California ought to be its own country. So says Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire, who may make a run for governor in 2018, according to Politico—and a CalExit could follow.
The “globalization bullet train” is broken. It’s the West’s “moral obligation” to “work with the developing world,” according to China’s state mouthpiece, Xinhua.
Barack Obama paved the way for Donald Trump. By saving but not deeply reforming US banking when people were losing their homes, Obama sowed the seeds of disillusionment.
Surprising discoveries
The world’s eight richest people (all men) have the same wealth as the poorest 50%. Oxfam, which produced the report, called the situation “beyond grotesque.”
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.
A Japanese man spent 16 hours floating at sea on a surfboard. A container ship rescued him off the Australian coast.
An Austrian town is looking for a part-time hermit. It’s an unpaid gig and the hermitage has no heating or running water.
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 wax figures of Abe for $8,500 and Clinton for $675.
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