Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today
NASA conducts an emergency spacewalk to repair the International Space Station. Two astronauts will spend an estimated two hours replacing a faulty computer that runs crucial systems such as solar power, heating, and cooling.
Park Geun-hye’s corruption trial begins. The impeached former South Korean president is accused of colluding with an advisor to accept $26 million in bribes from major corporations including Samsung. A judge is expected to decide whether Park and her close female confidante, Choi Soon-sil, should be tried separately.
Donald Trump’s budget plan. The president’s proposed plan of tax cuts will, he says, balance the federal budget within a decade. It slashes funding for programs and institutions that directly impact low and mid-income Americans, for example by cutting off food stamps, jobs for vets, and student loan subsidies. The plan calls for more spending on the military and border security.
While you were sleeping
The death toll in the bomb attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester rose to 22. Police believe the attack, which also left almost 60 wounded, was carried out by one man who was killed at the venue after detonating the device. The incident is being treated as a terrorist attack, but it’s not yet known if he was acting as part of a network. Political campaigning ahead of the June 8 general election has been suspended for the moment.
Nokia and Apple settled their differences. After accusing Nokia of “using all the tactics of a patent troll,” Apple resolved a patent dispute with the Finnish company with an upfront cash payment and royalties. They sued each other in December 2016 after a long-term agreement on the use of Nokia’s patents expired—Nokia had been getting a cut of every iPhone sold.
Surprise! The German economy had another record-breaking month. The IHS Markit PMI for May jumped to 57.3, its highest level in six years (paywall) on the back of export growth. Germany’s quarterly economic growth rose to 0.6% in the first quarter of this year, thanks to healthy investment, trade, and more consumer spending.
The US started “extreme vetting” at Australian refugee centers. US Homeland Security officials are carrying out interviews at the offshore detention centers as part of the refugee swap agreement that Trump called a “dumb deal.” The Trump administration will honor the promise to take up to 1,250 asylum seekers as long as they pass security screenings.
Apple revealed it received a national security letter from the US government. The company disclosed the information as part of its latest transparency report (pdf), saying the letter demanded a customer’s personal information. It didn’t publish the order, or say when it was received. Apple and other firms face strict reporting restrictions on national security requests.
Quartz obsession interlude
Marc Bain on the history of America’s sexual coming-of-age costume: “A strange ritual takes place across the United States each spring… young people gather for a dance sanctioned by local elders, where they dress in fancy costumes that embody traditional gender tropes and old-fashioned notions of sexuality, to celebrate their transition from childhood to adulthood. The Americans call it prom.” Read more here.
Matters of debate
The inevitable future of Slack is your boss spying on you. The true value of The Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge lies not in its ability to enable productivity, but rather to measure it.
Donald Trump’s “Arab Nato” would be a dreadful mistake. Supporting a Sunni coalition that alienates Shia populations in countries like Lebanon, Bahrain, and Iraq is not in the US national interest.
HTTPS is taking the sting out of online censorship. Thanks to the way HTTPS encrypts browsing, during Thailand’s recent crackdown on Facebook, users were notified when the government was watching.
Surprising discoveries
The market gods have smiled upon the Church of England. Its £7.9 billion ($10.3 billion) investment fund returned 17% last year, second only to Yale’s endowment fund.
Hospitals are running low on baking soda. A shortage of sodium bicarbonate—used in open-heart surgery and as an antidote to certain poisons—is causing doctors to postpone operations (paywall).
Instagram is the most harmful social network for your mental health. Users are more prone to anxiety, depression, sleep deprivation, and body-image issues.
The world’s most popular index fund is ruled by a stock picker. Economist David Blitzer runs a committee that decides which companies go into the S&P 500 (paywall).
Freeze-dried mouse sperm can survive a trip to space. Researchers fertilized eggs with sperm that made a nine-month trip to the International Space Station.
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