Sixty years ago, this JFK speech launched America's race to the moon
CNN
On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced America's intention to land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Sixty years later, that speech remains an important part of space history.
Just five months into his presidency, he was reeling from two political blows: the first, on April 12, when the Soviets sent cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space -- getting a human into orbit before the Americans -- and the second, less than a week later, with the botched Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. On the ropes, the Kennedy administration needed a win. So, the president stood and delivered a 46-minute, nearly 6,000-word speech that required 81 printed pages for him to read in a time before teleprompters.The US began pulling military equipment and additional personnel out of Niger on Friday after waiting months for the ruling military junta to approve US military flights into the country, two sources familiar with the matter said Saturday, ahead of a September 15 withdrawal deadline agreed to by the two countries.
The judge who oversaw Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial in New York on Friday informed the former president’s defense team and prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office that a comment was posted on the New York State Unified Court Systems’ public Facebook page last week by a poster who claimed to be a cousin of a juror, saying that Trump would be convicted.