Quartz Daily Brief—East Coast snowpocalypse, Apple and Yahoo earnings, Facebook outage, TeslaBnb

Good morning, Quartz readers! What to watch for today Greece’s new prime minister unveils his cabinet. Alexis Tsipras will divvy up jobs between MPs from his radical left-wing Syriza party and the right-wing Independent Greeks party, its coalition partner. Tsipras reiterated to the BBC that it is impossible for Greece to repay its debt in full. Apple talks earnings. The company is expected to post its biggest quarterly profit growth in two years due to record iPhone sales. including perhaps selling more phones in China than the US for the first time. Procter & Gamble talks sell-offs. The consumer goods giant is in the process of selling off half of its brands to focus on the ones that generate over 90% of its profit. Its fiscal second-quarter earnings results are a chance to update investors on how that two-year process is going. Yahoo talks Alibaba. CEO Marissa Mayer will reveal what the internet company plans to do with its roughly $40 billion stake in Chinese e-commerce giant, which went public last year. The key question is whether Yahoo can sell some of the shares without incurring a massive tax bill. Obama visits the new Saudi king. The US president is cutting short his visit in India to pay his respects to the late King Abdullah and meet with his successor, King Salman. Some think he shouldn’t be going at all. While you were sleeping A blizzard shut down the northeast US. Five states have declared a state of emergency and thousands of flights have been canceled as heavy snow continues to hit the east coast. In New York City, mayor Bill de Blasio banned non-essential travel from 11pm Monday until further notice—and that includes real-time delivery services like Seamless and Amazon. Mixed messages in Britain’s GDP. The UK’s economy grew by 2.6% in 2014, the fastest pace since 2007, but was hindered by fourth-quarter growth of just 0.5%. That was lower than expectations and below the 0.7% growth seen in the third quarter, due to a slowdown in construction, mining, and energy. Siemens was a euro zone casualty. The engineering group reported a fiscal first-quarter profit of €1.1 billion ($1.2 billion), down from €1.4 billion a year earlier. Falling energy prices and lower levels of investment from European utility companies squeezed the company’s profits. Qantas and AirAsia scrapped their fuel surcharges. The Australian flag-carrier said it would restructure its tariff system due to low oil prices, but customers aren’t likely to see much benefit, as the cost of fuel will now be included in ticket prices. AirAsia, still reeling from the loss of flight QZ8501 last month, said it hoped its move would bring down travel costs and boost the tourism industry. Alibaba’s rival launched a food fight. JD.com, China’s second-largest e-commerce company, announced a partnership with food producers in the Americas, Europe, and Australia in an attempt to dominate China’s fast-growing imported food market. JD.com plans to offer goods including ale, orange juice, fresh fruit, and Starbucks coffee. Facebook and Instagram went down. The world’s largest social network confirmed that a “major outage” of unknown origin lasting one hour also affected its Instagram photo sharing service. Facebook’s WhatsApp messenger continued to operate as usual, and all services are now back online. Quartz obsession interlude Zachary M. Seward on how the future of TV has finally arrived.“For sports fans, Sling TV will be an appealing option because it’s the cheapest way to access ESPN. For everyone else, the service is more symbolic—worth following, if not subscribing to—because it showswhat TV is becoming as it moves to the internet.” Read more here. Matters of debate Japan needs to legalize satire. Comedians face serious reprisals for poking fun at the powerful. Sand is a matter of national security. Some countries reclaiming land from the ocean are actually buying sand stolen from their neighbors. Syriza has some hard choices ahead… Greeks hate austerity butdon’t actually want Greece to leave the euro. …But writing down Greece’s debt is far from crazy. West Germany benefitted from the same approach in 1953. It’s smart to ditch your smartphone. A “dumb” Nokia will save your sanity and make you a better friend. Surprising discoveries The world’s best restaurant is serving shrimp covered with ants.Noma Tokyo’s dish includes “citrus notes” from the insects. Peruvian catcallers are getting maternal payback. A reality TV showdressed up the men’s mothers and filmed their angry responses. The asteroid that just flew past Earth had its own moon. The mini-satellite is only 230 feet (70 meters) wide. You can sleep in a Tesla via Airbnb. A US man put his Model S up on home-share app for $85 a night as a “Tesla hotel.” A French couple tried to name their child “Nutella.” A judge truncated the name to “Ella” lest it “lead to teasing or disparaging thoughts.” Our best wishes for a productive day. Please send any news, comments, snowpocalypse tales, and chocolate-hazelnut baby names to hi@qz.com. You can follow us on Twitter here for updates throughout the day. You’re getting the Americas edition of the Quartz Daily Brief. To change your region, click here. We’d also love it if you shared this email with your friends. They can sign up for free here.