‘Hidden Figures’ of the space race receive Congress’ highest honor at medal ceremony
CNN
The hidden figures of the space race were recognized with Congress’ highest honor at a medal ceremony on Wednesday.
The hidden figures of the space race were recognized with Congress’ highest honor at a medal ceremony on Wednesday. The Congressional Gold Medal was presented to the families of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and Christine Darden at the US Capitol. Darden watched the ceremony from her Connecticut home. A medal was also given to all the women who worked as mathematicians, engineers and “human computers” in the U.S. space program from the 1930s to 1970s. “By honoring them, we honor the very best of our country’s spirit,” said author Margot Lee Shetterly, whose book “Hidden Figures” was adapted into a film in 2016. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics – a precursor to NASA – hired hundreds of women to crunch numbers for space missions. The Black women hired worked in a segregated unit of female mathematicians at what is now NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia. Johnson’s hand-written calculations helped John Glenn become the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 – the nation’s highest civilian honor.
FBI says it has disrupted major Chinese hacking operation that threatened US critical infrastructure
The FBI has used a court order to seize control of a network of hundreds of thousands of hacked internet routers and other devices that Chinese government-linked hackers were using to threaten critical infrastructure in the US and overseas, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Wednesday.
The Federal Reserve is preparing to cut interest rates for the first time in the Biden era after the White House spent the last three years grappling with Americans’ dissatisfaction with the cost of living, raising new questions about the health of the economy and the impact on voters at the ballot box.
Israeli officials notified the US that the country was going to carry out an operation in Lebanon on Tuesday but did not give any details about what they were planning, according to three sources familiar with the matter, including in a call between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant early Tuesday morning.