Sumner Redstone, the hard-charging mogul who parlayed his father's New England drive-in theater business into a media empire that now flows into virtually every avenue of entertainment, has died. He was 97. He bested business rivals throughout his long career as he engineered deals for Viacom, Paramount and CBS and displayed an unwavering passion to win. Redstone was the controlling shareholder of the recently merged ViacomCBS, and previously CBS Corp. and Viacom, who made famous the mantra "content is king." read more
A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket carrying NASA's nuclear-powered Perseverance Mars rover roared to life and lifted off from planet Earth early Thursday, the first step in a decade-long program to search for signs of past microbial life and to collect rock and soil samples for eventual return to Earth. The $2.4 billion rover and its supporting cruise stage " equipped with solar panels, thrusters, navigation and communications systems " were released onto a near-perfect trajectory to Mars about 57 minutes after liftoff from Cape Canaveral. The journey will take seven months, putting Perseverance on track for landing on the red planet next February. read more
The world's biggest site for software developers is abandoning decades-old coding terms to remove references to slavery. This is the latest in a campaign to remove such terms from software jargon. The master-slave relationship in technology usually refers to a system where one - the master - controls other copies, or processes. read more
Democrat Lindsey Simmons, a 32-year-old attorney from Hallsville, is challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler for Missouri's 4th Congressional District seat. Simmons, a seventh-generation Missourian who grew up in Saline County before graduating from Harvard Law School, has never before sought public office. She has worked for several high profile Democrats from Missouri, including former Sen. Claire McCaskill, former Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster and former Rep. Ike Skelton, Hartzler's Democratic predecessor in the 4th District. She is married to an Apache helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army and has a 17-month-old son named Jace. read more
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan's approval rating has surged amid the coronavirus The poll, which included 810 registered voters who are likely to vote in the fall, showed Hogan's approval rating to be 78 percent, up eight percent from a poll released in early March. The Republican governor's approval rating was higher among Democrats than among members of his own party: 82 percent of Democrats, 74 percent of independents and 71 percent of Republicans thought Hogan was doing a good job. Hogan has been one of the country's most popular governors in multiple polls; a Morning Consult survey released in January found he had the second-highest approval rating of any U.S. governor. read more
To piggyback off Redial's comment:
The next step, if all goes according to the current (provisional) plan, comes with two launches in 2026. One launch will send the NASA-led Sample Retrieval Lander (SRL) mission toward Mars, and the second will loft the Earth Return Orbiter (ERO), which is helmed by the European Space Agency (ESA).
The SRL includes a rocket and a small, ESA-provided "fetch rover," which will do exactly what its name indicates: find the cached samples and bring them back to the lander. The samples will then be loaded into a football-size canister on board the rocket, which will launch itself into Martian orbit.
Once up there, the rocket will deploy the sample canister, which the ERO will pluck out of the void and ferry back toward Earth. When it nears our planet, the ERO will release the canister, which will land in the Utah desert in 2031.
www.msn.com
This presidency has been money to book publishers.
This book will likely be a better buy than Mary Trump's novel.