Peanut Butter News

Full Story at NBC Olympics.com

VANCOUVER — After she won silver in the 1,000-meter race late in these 2010 Vancouver Games, short-track speedskater Katherine Reutter met the press with an American flag draped over her light-blue warm-up jacket.

The flag wasn’t going anywhere and neither was the big smile on her face.

“I have a lot of pride to have done this for my country,” she said. “The USA can honestly say we went to the Olympics and we came back victorious.”

The 2010 U.S. Olympic team put on a performance for the history books. When they gave out the final medals Sunday, the Americans — for the first time since the 1932 Games in Lake Placid — stood atop the overall medals table, with 37.

Full Story at msnbc.com

GOHEUNG, South Korea – South Korea’s first rocket blasted off into space Tuesday following an aborted attempt last week and just months after its rival North Korea drew international ire for its own launch.

The launch of the two-stage Naro rocket could boost the country’s space ambition but the North warned it would keep a close eye on the international response to Seoul’s launch.

South Korea initially planned to launch the rocket in late July but delayed it several times due to technical glitches. Last Wednesday, the country aborted the launch plan just minutes before the scheduled blast off.

Full Story At msnbc.com

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – When the Soviet Union was beating America’s pants off heaving cosmonauts into orbit, a young president named John Fitzgerald Kennedy called a handful of top space experts in and decided Americans would walk on the moon.

Kennedy wanted to win the space race with the Russians — but more importantly, it was his dream to send astronauts to the moon. They needed to go because Earth is finite, a cradle for humans, and if humans are to survive they need homes out there.

America won that space race, and eventually the Cold War as well. Now another young president is facing a choice in space, and his decision could be as momentous as the one Kennedy made more than four decades ago.

Full Story At news.yahoo.com

BALTIMORE – Girls rule! The best 3-year-old in the land just happens to be a filly named Rachel Alexandra. Jockey Calvin Borel all but guaranteed victory in the Preakness Stakes and, boy, did she deliver, becoming the first filly in 85 years to win the second leg of the Triple Crown.

A rangy bay — as big as most of the horses she beat — Rachel Alexandra shot to the front Saturday and wasn’t seriously challenged until a late close by Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird.

By beating him she ended any chance that thoroughbred racing would have a Triple Crown winner this season. Affirmed was the last Triple Crown winner in 1978.

Full Story At  sports.yahoo.com

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP)—The cowboy and his horse beat them all.

Four Hall of Fame trainers. The ruler of Dubai. Two very sentimental favorites.

Trainer Bennie Woolley Jr. hitched Mine That Bird to the back of his pickup and drove to the Kentucky Derby from New Mexico. With an inspired ride on the rail from Calvin Borel, it all added up to one of the greatest upsets in 135 years of America’s most famous horse race.

“Those cowboys,” trainer Bob Baffert said, “they came with a good horse.”