American Morning
Confessions of text-obsessed parents
(CNN) – There's no question about it, teens and pre-teens are generally the titans of texting. Remember that 13-year-old girl who sent over 14,000 texts in one month? But more and more, it's parents who have their eyes glued to their phones, and not their kids. Alina Cho reports on some interesting developments about what can be a damaging distraction.
Find out more about the mom in our story and read her articles on parenting
New era in space flight? SpaceX to test launch rocket Friday
By Rich Phillips, CNN
Cape Canaveral, Florida (CNN) – Paid for by the money and dreams of a millionaire, a newly developed rocket stands ready to blast off from Cape Canaveral on its first test flight. It serves as a symbol of the future and could carry astronauts and cargo to the international space station.
This commercial venture by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, is scheduled to launch its Falcon 9 rocket on Friday. On top will be a mock-up of its space capsule, called Dragon.
Pay Pal co-founder Elon Musk is the CEO of the company. NASA hopes companies such as SpaceX can take over transportation to the international space station.
"It's time for NASA to hand that over to commercial industry who can then optimize the technology and make it more reliable, make it much lower cost and make it much more routine," said Musk in an interview with CNN last month.
Musk says he believes the U.S. is at the beginning of a profound, fundamental renaissance in space exploration, perhaps greater than when President Kennedy declared the U.S. was going to the moon during the infancy of the space program. Read more
Underwater robots toil in the abyss
(CNN) – For the past 45 days, we've been relying on underwater robots to fix the man-made disaster deep in the Gulf of Mexico. They've been our eyes – providing live feeds of the disaster, and our hands – holding saws that are gnawing through thick pipe at the bottom of the sea. Our Rob Marciano got a look at some of the underwater ROVs being used to stop the Gulf Coast oil spill.
Facebook's privacy troubles
(CNN) – Concerns over Facebook's new privacy policy and the online social network's recent efforts to spread its information across the Web have led some of the site's faithful to delete their accounts - or at least try to.
On Wednesday's episode of a podcast called This Week in Technology, host Leo Laporte, a well-known tech pundit, said he had to search wikiHow, a how-to site, to figure out how to delete his Facebook account permanently.
After finding the delete button, which he said is hidden deep within the site's menus, Laporte proceeded to delete his account during the online broadcast.
"That's it. It's gone," he said during the show. "And I think that's the right thing to do."
It's unclear how many people have chosen to delete their Facebook accounts in recent weeks. The popular social network doesn't publish statistics on how many people quit the site. Read more
Air Force launches space plane on secret mission
(CNN) – A mystery, unmanned space plane operated by the Air Force is orbiting the earth. Its mission in space is top-secret.
The spacecraft, dubbed the X-37B, lifted off last night from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Military officials say the launch was a success, but they won't say much else. Our Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr has the report.
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