kimblr.com

If all goes well, NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander will set down on the Martian surface near the planet’s North Pole at roughly 7:53 p.m. EDT on Sunday (tomorrow).
Two other missions, the Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, are alive and well — far past their designed lifetimes — in widespread locations near the Martian Equator so the new lander will send back information from a completely different region of Mars. (Unlike the two rovers, the Phoenix Mars Lander is not a rover, but will stay in one location.) Several other American spacecraft, along with the European (ESA) Mars Express, are posed to assist tracking and provide communications assistance.
You can find links to live online coverage of the landing on the Jet Propulsion Lab and on the NASA TV website.
However, my experience is that these live video sites get really clobbered up during such important broadcasts, so you might have a hard time maintaining a connection. But you can still join in by taking a look at Mars yourself. No telescope on Earth or even the Hubble Space Telescope will be able to see any of the spacecraft at Mars, but the planet itself is still well placed to see from your backyard, weather permitting. Go out about an hour after sunset (about the time it gets good and dark) and face west. Look high overhead and slightly to the left and you will see two bright “stars” close together. They will be just a bit farther apart than the width of two fingers held at arm’s length. The brighter one, Saturn, is to the upper left of the star Regulus. Now, hold out your left hand, at arm’s length, in front of you with palm toward you. Spread your fingers as wide as they will go. Place your thumb on the Saturn-Regulus pair, and point your little finger to the lower right. Mars should be in the general vicinity of the tip of your little finger. I can’t be terribly precise, but Mars is somewhere around 4 o’clock relative to the Saturn-Regulus pair.

blogs.earthsky.org

ATHENS, Greece - Regional rivals Greece and Turkey held a rare joint drill yesterday to improve relief responses to natural disasters. Twelve Turkish army rescuers joined 12 Greek air force experts, firefighters and special forces to practice using sound detectors and sniffer dogs to locate buried victims in case of an earthquake.
It was the third joint drill of its kind, organized as a confidence-building measure to ease tension between the neighboring nations’ armed forces. Two previous drills were held in 2006 in Ankara.
Greece and Turkey have come close to war three times since 1974 - over Cyprus and disputed Aegean Sea boundaries. But relations between the countries, both NATO members, have improved considerably since 1999 after destructive earthquakes in both countries resulted in exchanges of aid and rescue assistance. - AP
BEX, Switzerland - A Swiss pilot strapped on a jet-powered wing and leaped from a plane yesterday for the first public demonstration of the homemade device, turning figure eights and soaring high above the Alps. Yves Rossy’s performance in front of the world press capped five years of training and many more years of dreaming.
"This flight was absolutely excellent," the former fighter pilot and extreme sports enthusiast said after touching down on an airfield near the eastern shore of Lake Geneva. Rossy, 48, had stepped out of the Swiss-built Pilatus Porter aircraft at 7,500 feet and unfolded the rigid eight-foot wings strapped to his back before jumping.
Passing from free fall to a gentle glide, Rossy then triggered four jet turbines and accelerated to 186 miles per hour, about 65 miles per hour faster than the typical falling skydiver. A plane that flew at some distance beside him measured his speed. - AP
SANTIAGO, Chile - Chile’s environment minister, Ana Lya Uriarte, led an army operation to save pets left behind in the Patagonian town of Chaiten several days ago when an erupting volcano forced the residents to flee.

philly.com

SEN. BARACK OBAMA ( D-ILL.): Thank you. Thank you, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Thank you. Thank you, everybody, thank you. Thank you. I am fired up. I’m fired up. I am fired up to be in Michigan. I’m fired up to be in Grand Rapids.
Look at this crowd. It is unbelievable. I am so grateful to all of you for taking the time to be here. I know that we didn’t have a chance to campaign here during the primary. And I felt bad about it. I didn’t have a chance to talk to you guys about the issues. I felt guilty about not campaigning. And so, as a consequence, I decided that I would try to give you something special. I decided that, on my first full day of campaigning in Michigan, that I wouldn’t be fooling around; that I wasn’t going to just do the same old thing. But I decided that I was going to bring up one of the greatest leaders we have in the Democratic Party. Please give it up for my friend, John Edwards.
FORMER SEN. JOHN EDWARDS, D-N.C.: Thank you, thank you. So, the question is — thank you. Thank you. So the question is what am I doing here? You know, I was promised a jet ski. And I hadn’t gotten it yet. I am proud to be here with all of you, proud to be in Michigan, proud to be in Grand Rapids. During the course of this presidential campaign, I’ve gotten to know the candidates and the top candidates very, very well. We have all been out speaking about the causes that are so near and dear to our heart as Democrats. And now we’re here down to two amazing candidates. And before I get too far, I want to take just a minute and say a word about my friend and your friend, Senator Hillary Clinton.

washingtonpost.com

Ford Motor Co.
Ford Motor Co. (F) surprised Wall Street on Thursday with a $100 million profit in the first quarter as strong results from Europe and South America helped offset the impact of a slumping U.S. economy that cut car and truck sales in its main market. Its shares rose almost 5% in premarket trading.
The No. 2 U.S.-based automaker also said its latest round of early retirement and buyout offers netted 4,200 hourly workers, fewer than Ford had targeted.
It was Ford’s first profitable quarter since the second quarter of 2007 when it made $750 million. Ford reported a full-year loss of $2.7 billion last year, and it cautioned that the rest of this year will be tough.
“The remainder of 2008 will be a challenge but we are cautiously optimistic despite the external challenges,” CEO Alan Mulally said in a statement. “Our plan is working.”
Ford also lowered its industrywide U.S. vehicle sales forecast for the full year to a range of 15.3 million to 15.6 million. In January it had expected full-year sales of 16 million.
Ford says it earned 5 cents per share in the January-March period. Dearborn-based Ford lost $282 million, or 15 cents a share, in the same period last year.
Excluding special items, the company said it earned $525 million after taxes, or 20 cents per share. That beat Wall Street’s expectations. Thirteen analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had predicted a loss of 16 cents per share.
Its shares rose 36 cents, or 4.8%, to $7.88 in morning trading Thursday.
The profit came despite a $45 million pretax loss in Ford’s core North American automotive market. That was an improvement over a $613 million loss in the year-ago quarter, driven by $1.2 billion in cost reductions that helped buffer a U.S. sales decline.

foxbusiness.com