TO THE MOON: A Houston space company overcame last-minute technical difficulties to land the first privately built space vehicle on the moon as well as the first American craft to set down since 1972.

  There were some tense moments after the control center of Intuitive Machines reported a faint signal coming from the Odysseus craft on the freezing south pole of the moon. 

 “It’s faint, but it’s there,” said Tim Crain, the chief technology officer. “So stand by folks. We’ll see what’s happening here.”

  Minutes later Crain announced, “What we can confirm, without a doubt, is our equipment is on the surface of the moon and we are transmitting. So congratulations.”

  In the last hours, a laser instrument that was to guide the Odysseus to its landing had failed. Engineers were able to switch over to a NASA instrument that was also on board and make the landing.  

  One of the lander’s missions is to find whether there is ice on the moon, a source of water for future long-term manned missions. It is also a successful experiment so far in public-private exploration. NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to deliver six instruments to the moon, including a stereo camera and a radio receiver to measure the effects of charged particles on radio signals.

DEFINING LIFE: A second and third Alabama in vitro fertilization clinics suspended services following a state supreme court ruling that a fertilized embryo is actually a child and that destroying one qualifies as the unlawful death of a minor.

  IVF clinics typically create more fertilized embryos than a patient needs to become pregnant. Providers now fear that they or their patients could face criminal charges if they discard any embryos.The facility managers are also worried that their insurance costs will skyrocket.

  The Alabama Supreme Court did not address the question of whether parents can claim a child tax deduction for each of their frozen embryos. 

THE RUSSIA HOUSE: The mother of the late Russian dissident Alexei Navalny said she was allowed to identify her son’s body but is being “blackmailed” over the conditions of a funeral.

    Lyudmila Navalnaya said authorities showed her a medical report on Navalny’s death that said only that he died of “natural causes” and that they are withholding the body until she agrees to a secret funeral. She said she was warned that if she did not agree to a secret funeral, then “they will do something with my son’s body.”

  “They’re blackmailing me,” Navalnaya said in a video posted on her son’s YouTube channel. “They are setting me conditions on where, when and how Aleksei should be buried.”

  Without an independent autopsy or inquiry, the only conclusion to come to is that Navalny was murdered, the government is covering up the method, and they don’t want his grave site to become a shrine for dissidents.

  President Biden met yesterday in San Francisco with Navalny’s widow, Yulia, and daughter Dasha Navalnaya, who is a student at Stanford.   

NON CONFORMITY: A Texas judge has ruled that a local school district can ban a Black student from class for wearing braided locs without violating state law against discrimination in hairstyles.

  Darryl George, a junior at Barbers Hill High School, has been sent to in-school suspension since August for wearing his hair in braided locs. The Texas legislature last year passed the CROWN Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of hair texture or styles associated with race, including locs, braids, and twists.

  Nonetheless, Greg Poole, the white superintendent of the Barbers Hill Independent School District had posited that, “Being an American requires conformity.”

 The school district successfully argued yesterday that it can still enforce its own policy prohibiting boys from wearing hair that extends beyond eyebrows, earlobes, or collars even if it’s braided on top of the student’s head. George appeared at court yesterday with his hair intricately braided and afterwards asked in frustration, “‘All this because of my hair?’”

PILLOW TALK: A federal judge has ruled that My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell must hand over the $5 million he promised to anyone who could prove the data he held proving fraud in the 2020 election was false. 

  A prominent election denier and supporter of Donald Trump, Lindell issued the “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge in August 2021 claiming there was Chinese interference in the 2020 race. Robert Zeidman, a computer forensics expert who voted twice for Trump, proved Mike wrong and had to go to court to get Lindell to pay.

  The pillow man still faces a $1.3 billion defamation suit by Dominion voting systems. 

  After yesterday’s order, Zeidman said he doubts he’ll ever see the money. He said, “Getting the truth out is the most important thing.”

THE SPIN RACK: Speaking at a Christian broadcast convention in Nashville yesterday, the non-religious Donald Trump said liberals are persecuting Christians because “they know that our allegiance is not to them. Our allegiance is to our country, and our allegiance is to our creator.” — Former daytime talk host Wendy Williams has been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia and aphasia, a condition that makes it difficult or impossible for a person to express or comprehend language. The 59-yar-old Williams hosted “The Wendy Williams Show” for more than 10 years. — Jayo Archer, the Australian motorcyclist who was first to land a triple backflip in a freestyle motocross competition, was killed in an accident while practicing in Melbourne.

BELOW THE FOLD: Tens of thousands of AT&T cellphone customers across the country woke up without service yesterday, causing a national texting withdrawal and concern that the US might be under cyber-attack. AT&T could not be reached to explain because they are the phone company and no one answers the phone at the phone company.

  Late in the day they explained that they had been reconfiguring their system and it crashed.

  If you are still having difficulty, please remain on hold while we connect you to a customer service advocate.

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