Good morning, Quartz readers!
Apologies for the delay in this morning’s brief due to an error in our system.
What to watch for today
Central bank decisions in Japan, Switzerland, and Britain. The Bank of Japan is expected to maintain its short-term interest rates at -0.1%, while the Swiss National Bank could either tighten up its ultra-loose policy or stick with it for now. It will be a big surprise if the Bank of England doesn’t hold steady.
Dozens of cities in China roll out property curbs. New regulations will tighten lending conditions for homebuyers and limit non-residents to just one home purchase in the Shandong province. Regulators are trying to cut down on an influx of speculators inflating the market.
Donald Trump’s latest travel ban takes effect. The US president’s executive order bars citizens from six Muslim-majority countries from entering unless they have a pre-existing visa. The order may face the same fate as its predecessor, depending on the results of lawsuits filed in Hawaii and Maryland.
While you were sleeping
The Fed’s rate hike went off without a hitch—until investors read the fine print. The US central bank raised its benchmark interest rate by 0.25 percentage points, as expected. But markets lurched—stocks up, bond yields and the dollar down—when investors realized that Fed chair Janet Yellen and her colleagues didn’t come off nearly as hawkish as expected.
The US charged two Russian spies in a major Yahoo hack. The FSB officers allegedly hired hackers to pilfer 500 million Yahoo user accounts in 2014. The spies used the information to target dissidents, US government officials, and journalists; the hackers used it for spam, phishing attacks, and fraud.
The Dutch voted for their next prime minister. According to exit polls, incumbent Mark Rutte’s center-right party won 31 of 150 seats, with the Freedom Party of anti-immigrant candidate Geert Wilders tying two other parties with 19 seats each. Full results are expected tomorrow, though it may take months for a governing coalition to form.
Tesla announced plans to raise more cash. Elon Musk’s electric carmaker will issue $250 million in new shares and $750 million in convertible notes to fund production of its mass-market Model 3 sedan. Musk himself will buy $25 million worth of stock.
Large swaths of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef were confirmed dead. Overheated seawater contributed to the demise of hundreds of square miles of coral—nearly two-thirds of the reef’s once pristine northern section. Southern sections of the reef are also starting to bleach, a process that precedes coral death.
Quartz obsession interlude
Echo Huang on the dilemma of China’s “Korean” companies: “Chinese consumers’ love for South Korean products inspired several local companies to provide similar offerings. But as tensions between the two countries heat up over South Korea’s deployment of a US-built antimissile defense system, some Chinese companies are reconsidering the wisdom of that strategy.” Read more here.
Matters of debate
Coding is still a man’s world. Despite the efforts to support diversity, the sexist undertones of Silicon Valley culture persist.
Hollywood has run out of ideas. A reboot of “The Matrix” after only 18 years is proof that the studios are fatally risk-averse.
Deep state America does not exist. There is no nexus of institutions conspiring to smear the president, Trumpian conspiracy theories notwithstanding.
Surprising discoveries
The CIA trains spies with board games. Officers are encouraged to bend the rules.
There’s only one effective emoji insult. The mental effort of deciphering pictographic curses blunts their impact—except for🖕.
People with children live longer. It may be because kids offer emotional and physical support to their aged parents.
An Oxford comma decided a Maine labor lawsuit. An appeals court ruled that the missing punctuation introduced too much grammatical ambiguity into a state law.
Government marijuana does not look like marijuana. The cannabis used by US medical researchers is grown at a single facility that is not too picky about stems and leaves.
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