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The Commerce Department says retail sales last month rose just a tenth of a percent last month; New York Fed Chair John Williams says the economy is moving in the right direction; another whistleblower for Boeing; a new poll shows about half of Americans say it’s extremely or very important for the government to provide debt relief for medical bills.

Yet another Boeing whistleblower is set to testify at a Senate hearing this afternoon, citing a failure to properly track defective parts in the company’s factories. Plus, the tragedy of errors and shortcuts that led to last year’s Titan submersible implosion.

The Treasury and IRS announced a new initiative Monday to close a tax loophole for wealthy people that could raise more than $50 billion in revenue over the next decade. Plus, the evolving economics of “gayborhoods” in U.S. cities.

From the BBC World Service: Russia’s Vladimir Putin is visiting North Korea and its leader Kim Jong Un for the first time in 24 years, as the pair look to deepen their relationship in the face of international isolation. And: Wildfires forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate the Greek island of Rhodes last year – now there’s a focus on how to make tourism more sustainable.

Marketplace’s Lily Jamali recently visited the headquarters of Nautilus Biotech to meet with Parag Mallick, the company’s founder and chief scientist, who is also a magician and an associate professor at Stanford University. Since 2016, Mallick and his team have been building a machine that they say will revolutionize biomedicine by unlocking the secrets of the “dark proteome.”

With the elections for president, the Senate and the House just 4½ months away, misinformation is on the rise. We’ll get into the kind of false narratives to look for on the campaign trail. Plus, how loopholes in medical billing underscore the importance of change at the state and local levels. And, the story of a remote-controlled robot that rescues swimmers in distress.

Here’s everything we talked about today:


Post about the Republican National Committee from Jay Nordlinger on X
“Even Doctors Like Me Are Falling Into This Medical Bill Trap” from The New York Times
“Watch a robot race over Lake Michigan waves to help a swimmer” from MLive
“Which sentence do you think is grammatically correct?” from YouGov

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