WASHINGTON — By the first week of January, when U.S. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James called SpaceX founder Elon Musk, the relationship between their two camps was already knotted and tense. The Air Force and SpaceX were still tangled in a lawsuit over the service’s sole-source contract to the company’s archrival, United Launch Alliance, for a large batch of rockets. Meanwhile, the Air Force still had yet to certify SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to carry national security satellites despite pledging to do so by the end of 2014.

LOS ANGELES, June 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Rihanna has announced that she will add an additional stop to her critically acclaimed LOUD tour. The additional date will be in Birmingham, Alabama on July 11th at the Jefferson Civic Center Arena, with all proceeds going to benefit local community relief efforts from the devastating tornadoes that tore through Alabama in early 2011. Three charities will receive donations from the show, Project Team Up, Tuscaloosa Disaster Relief Fund, and the Mayor’s Disaster Relief Fund.

Last week, the M&T Charitable Foundation, the philanthropic arm of M&T Bank (NYSE:MTB),  unveiled $900,000 in grants through its 30 & 30 Giving Initiative including one organization from Schuylkill County. This initiative earmarks $30,000 grants for 30 organizations across the bank's footprint.Pottsville-based Schuylkill Community Action stands among the 30 organizations chosen for its commitment to providing shelter and intensive case management to diverse groups, including low-income individuals, survivors of domestic violence, and those in recovery from substance use.

CNN  —  In one of the most high-profile abortion cases since thefall of Roe V. Wade, a Texas woman has been battling the state to terminate her high-risk pregnancy — a legal dispute that could have ripple effects for many as the Texas law, one of the strictest in the country, is tested. Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two, filed a lawsuit last week to end a pregnancy she and her doctors say threatens her life and future fertility.

Enchant Neither television or poets tell the truth. Björk discovered this and tells us. For various reasons of our nature (and/or our artifice), for more than half a century television has been consecrated as a totem. That little box has ended up forging a kind of collective adoration around itself, setting itself up as a center of gatherings and a vehicle of cultural autocracy. But beyond the mental delights or ideological distaste that it can provoke in each of us, we must admit that television is a surprising object.