A soggy holiday for some
Posted: Saturday, May 23, 2009 3:48 PM by Ian Sager
Filed Under:
Lester Holt
By Lester Holt, NBC News anchor
Good afternoon. I hope you are enjoying a restful holiday weekend – and a dry one. The rain is not only watering down the plans of millions of Floridians, it is also leaving the crew of the space shuttle Atlantis in orbit for yet another extra day. The plan now is to try to bring them into the Kennedy Space Center, or Edwards Air Force Base tomorrow, weather permitting of course.
In the meantime, NASA is facing some much bigger crossroads in the next couple of years, and we learned today it will do so under the leadership of Marine Corps veteran and former space shuttle commander General Charles Bolden. The president is naming Bolden as NASA administrator, and he will be the first African American to hold that position. He has quite a story to tell of rising from segregated South Carolina, through the top tier of the military ranks, and into the space program. NBC's Tom Costello will have a lot more on General Bolden on the broadcast tonight.
We're hearing that President Obama's pick to replace retiring Justice Souter could come soon. We'll chat with “Meet the Press” moderator David Gregory about that.
We've also got one of those stories that has many of us asking "what would you do?” Well, what would you do if the bank mistakenly applied several million dollars to your bank account?" It happened to a New Zealand couple – who apparently had little trouble deciding what to do.
And on this Memorial Day weekend, we will share a great story about the efforts one organization is going through to make sure some World War Two vets get to see an honor to their service that was a long time in the making.
I hope you can join us tonight for NBC Nightly News.