The arrival of election season — are we ever out of season? — brings with it a new round of political campaigns ads, those curious, sometimes comedic, 30 seconds to one minute occasional, unintended master classes in pretzel logic.

A critical NASA mission in the search for life beyond Earth, Mars Sample Return, is in trouble. Its budget has ballooned from US$5 billion to over $11 billion, and the sample return date may slip from the end of this decade to 2040.

The mission would be the first to try to return rock samples from Mars to Earth so scientists can analyze them for signs of past life.

SULPHUR, Okla. (AP) — Small towns in Oklahoma began a long cleanup Monday after tornadoes flattened homes and buildings and killed four people, including an infant, widening a destructive outbreak of severe weather across the middle of the U.S.

As the Nebraska Legislature put another session in the books last week, my thoughts went to U.S. Sen. George Norris of Nebraska, the fiercely independent progressive Republican and progenitor of the state’s Unicameral. Norris was one of eight subjects in the Pulitzer Prize winning book “Profiles in Courage.”