Vox Sentences: North Korea just released an American prisoner. Here’s what you should know.

1. Meet Jeffrey Fowle, the American just released by North Korea

A protest for Kenneth Bae, the longest-held American prisoner in North Korea, on February 16, 2014 in Seoul, South Korea. (Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images)

• One of the three Americans imprisoned by North Korea has been released.

  [NYT / Peter Baker and Rick Gladstone]

• 56-year-old Jeffrey Fowle of Miamisburg, Ohio was arrested in May for leaving a Bible at a club for North Korean sailors.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• North Korea is, like most Communist states past and present, officially opposed to any and all religion.

  [The Guardian & NK News / Ji-Min Kang]

• Two Americans remain imprisoned in North Korea. 24-year-old Matthew Miller was accused by the North Korean government of "ripping up his visa on arrival to the country so he could go to prison and expose human rights violations there" and sentenced to six years hard labor last month.

  [CNN / Will Ripley and Madison Park]

• The final detainee, 46-year-old South Korean-born American citizen Kenneth Bae, was arrested in 2012 and is currently serving a 15 year sentence of hard labor due to accusations he worked as a missionary.

  [CNN / Chelsea Carter]

• The US State Department response: "While this is a positive decision by [North Korea], we remain focused on the continued detention of Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller."

  [NBC News / Tracy Connor]

• A UN report from earlier this year details conditions at the country's prisons: "young male inmates in North Korean prison camps became so desperate for food they would eat live worms or snakes caught in the field to feel something in their stomachs."

  [CNN / Madison Park]

2. Ebola update

Specialist doctor in infectious illnesses Jose Ramon Arribas (L) and specialist doctors in tropical medicine Fernando de la Calle (2L), Marta Arsuaga (2R) and Marta Mora (R) arrive to attend a press conference about the health of Ebola patient Teresa Romero at Carlos III hospital on October 21, 2014 in Madrid, Spain. (Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Images)

• The Spanish nurse who caught Ebola has now been cleared of the disease.

  [NYT / Raphael Minder]

• Same goes for an NBC News freelance cameraman who caught the illness in Liberia and was being treated in Omaha.

  [NBC News]

• The US is making people flying from countries with Ebola to come to one of five airports. It's not a travel ban, but it's one of the first travel restrictions the administration has announced.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• Rwanda, for its part, is screening travelers who've been in the US or Spain for the disease.

  [Washington Post / Adam Taylor]

• Journalist and Ebola expert Richard Preston: "Loved ones are dying in one another’s arms, so the virus is passed on from the dead to the living."

  [Vox / Julia Belluz]

• 9 questions you were embarrassed to ask about Ebola

  [Vox / Julia Belluz]

• "We haven’t seen any evidence yet that Ebola has had a substantial effect on the midterm elections."

  [FiveThirtyEight / Harry Enten]

• It's hard to believe this needs stating but no, ISIS is not going to infect its own members with Ebola and send them to the US on a suicide mission.

  [Vox / Amanda Taub]

3. What's killing McDonald's and Coke?

Mmmm McDonald's. (Jamie Rector/Getty Images)

• Profits at McDonald's are down 30 percent from the previous quarter.

  [Reuters / Siddarth Cavale and Lisa Baertlein]

• Coca-Cola also had a tough quarterly report.

  [Financial Times / Elizabeth Patton]

• So what's going on? Two concrete reasons at McDonald's: service is getting slower as the menu gets longer and more complicated, and the company has responded to slowing sales by raising prices, driving away low-income customers.

  [Business Insider / Hayley Petersen]

• There was also a scandal in China wherein a major McDonald's supplier was caught on camera repackaging expired meat.

  [AP]

• The troubles at McDonald's coincide with rising fortunes for Chipotle, suggesting consumers might be looking for something more upscale.

  [Slate / Alison Griswold]

• But what about Coca-Cola? They're struggling to keep regular soda sales constant as they try to shift, with the rest of the market, to still drinks like coffee and juice and tea and energy drinks.

  [Motley Fool / Asit Sharma]

• The company also knows that soda's contribution to obesity is harming its image — and it's moving toward smaller sizes as a result.

  [Businessweek / Claire Suddath and Duane Stanford]

• Speaking of soda being bad for you, it apparently hurts our cells in ways reminiscent of smoking.

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

4. Misc.

• What it's like to live in a city run by ISIS: "Water is available two hours a day only for the entire city of Mosul."

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• Top officials in Hong Kong debated five student activists on live television.

  [NYT / Michael Forsythe and Alan Wong]

• Inheritances actually decrease inequality in the short-run, by taking money from dead rich people and giving it to less-rich living people.

  [Project Syndicate / Edward Wolff]

• One of Eric Holder's biggest legacies: moving terrorism prosecutions from military tribunals to civilian court.

  [NYT / Matt Apuzzo]

• Wal-Mart has more than double the solar capacity of its nearest competitor.

  [Slate / Jordan Weissmann]

• Meet the retired Navy admiral running the Obama administration's war against malaria.

  [NYT / Donald McNeil Jr.]

• Here's why SpaceX's cheap launches are a BFD. Among other things: they could mean newer, better communications satellites, with tons of ensuing benefits.

  [Quartz / Tim Fernholz]

• Everyone knows that Dracula was based on Vlad the Impaler — except he wasn't.

  [io9 / Lauren Davis]

• Abraham Lincoln was expert at handling the press, often sending private letters he knew would be leaked.

  [NY Review of Books / Garry Wills]

5. Verbatim

• "Attractive and charismatic, Kelli would straight­forwardly explain to the television audience that her daughter was going to kill her."

  [NY Mag / Hanna Rosin]

• "The historical pedigree of property destruction as a tactic of resistance is long and frequently effective."

  [Rolling Stone / Jesse Myerson and José Martín]

• "All this two-day shipping, click-to-ship, and get-it-on-your-doorstep-by-noon-tomorrow has come at a price, paid by the people who live in the shadows of the mega-warehouses: lung-stunting, cancer-causing pollution."

  [Buzzfeed / Jessica Garrison]

• "Fund argues that voting shouldn’t be convenient because fast food is convenient and fast food can be unhealthy."

  [NY Mag / Jonathan Chait]

• "Every male student I talked to had a story about intervening on the dance floor or at a party, mostly by just saying hello to someone who looked like a target of unwanted aggressive attention."

  [NYT Magazine / Emily Bazelon]

• "The rise of very large philanthropies that are not shy about playing for big stakes in the public sphere raises crucial questions about philanthropic power and to whom it is accountable."

  [Democracy / Gara LaMarche]