SpaceX moonshot, Uber exec ousted, human echolocation

Good morning, Quartz readers!

What to watch for today

A crucial update on the US economy. Q4 GDP figures, currently expected to show a 2.1% increase, will largely decide whether Fed officials will hike interest rates “fairly soon.

Apple’s annual shareholder meeting. Investors have plenty of reasons to be happy: shares closed at their highest price ever earlier this month. This will likely be the last meeting at Apple’s old Cupertino digs before it moves to a new spaceship-shaped headquarters.

Did Abenomics work in January? Retail sales are expected to rise by 0.9%, after Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe called on companies to pay their workers to fuel the economy. Industrial output figures are also due.

While you were sleeping

Uber ousted its head of engineering over sexual harassment allegations. Amit Singhal, who left Google in 2016, failed to disclose to Uber that he was under internal investigation for an alleged encounter with a female coworker. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, whose company is under scrutiny over an allegedly sexist culture, reportedly asked for Singhal’s resignation.

SpaceX said it will fly two space tourists around the moon in 2018. CEO Elon Musk said two anonymous private individuals—who would not fly the craft except in an emergency—have placed a “significant deposit” with the company. The mission would use SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and Falcon Heavy rocket.

Donald Trump vowed to boost military spending. The US president’s proposal would raise the Pentagon’s budget—already bigger than the militaries of the next eight countries combined—by 9% to $638 billion. The White House may try to pay for the increase by cutting money for foreign aid and environmental protection.

Jewish facilities across the United States suffered another wave of bomb threats. At least 16 sites in states including New York, Florida, and Michigan were evacuated; no evidence of explosives was found. Jewish schools, cemeteries, and community centers have suffered from a string of attacks in the last two months.

Quartz obsession interlude

Devjyot Ghoshal on Trump’s infuriating silence over an Indian engineer’s murder. “Indian-Americans are among the most successful and educated minority groups in the US today … If a well-educated, law-abiding, and legally-employed immigrant can’t work in the US without fearing for his life, who can?” Read more here.

Markets haiku

Who knew it was hard?
Fixing Obamacare? No:
Giving out Oscars

Matters of debate

The moon deserves to be a planet. A new paper argues it is geophysics, not orbit, that should determine planetary status.

Trump’s “America First” policies are non-discriminatory. They target all immigrants, as Hindu Indians are fast finding out.

Mobile phones are unnatural. Communicating with someone who isn’t physically present is disembodying and intrusive.

Surprising discoveries

A startup made a low-level employee a rupee millionaire. The sale of Mumbai’s Citrus Pay netted an errand runner Rs 5 million ($75,000) in stock options.

Humans and dolphins share a skill. Blind and sighted people alike can be trained to echolocate their surroundings with tongue clicks.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg has the world’s most important personal trainer. He keeps the 83-year-old US supreme court justice in shape and out of retirement.

Alphabet’s hate-fighting AI doesn’t understand hate. “Perspective,” a tool to fight online hate speech, is struggling to identify it.

Spain appointed a special commissioner to encourage baby-making. Edelmira Barreira Diz  will work to understand why Spain’s death rate is outstripping its birth rate.

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