While the war burns at the edges, the world kept building things. Artemis II broke a 50-year record today. A hedge fund bet $64 billion on the future of music. And tonight, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich play one of football's great fixtures — live, in front of 80,000 people at the Bernabéu.
Yesterday, April 6, four astronauts aboard NASA's Orion capsule reached 252,756 miles from Earth — the farthest any human has ever been from the planet, breaking a record set by Apollo 13 in 1970 during an emergency mission that almost ended in disaster.
The crew flew within 4,070 miles of the lunar surface and witnessed a solar eclipse from space — Earth blocking the sun as they swung around the Moon. Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen completed the free-return trajectory flyby that serves as the critical test for Artemis III — the mission that will land humans on the Moon for the first time since 1972.
The crew launched April 1 from Kennedy Space Center and are now heading home. While every headline was about Tehran, four people were farther from Earth than any human since Nixon was president.
First woman to travel to the vicinity of the Moon — Artemis II lunar flyby, April 6 2026.
Christina Koch spent 328 days aboard the International Space Station in 2019–20 — a record for female astronauts — and performed the first all-female spacewalk. At 44, she is now mission specialist aboard Artemis II, making her the first woman to travel to the vicinity of the Moon.
A North Carolina native with degrees in electrical engineering and physics, she worked in remote scientific stations at both poles before NASA selected her. She does not speak in grand declarations. When asked about the mission's significance, she said: "I hope every girl who looks up tonight understands this seat was made for her."
The Artemis II crew returns to Earth in the coming days.
— Christina Koch, AP interview, Artemis II pre-launch
Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Capital announced today a $64.4 billion cash-and-stock offer for Universal Music Group — home to Taylor Swift, Drake, Billie Eilish, The Rolling Stones, and virtually every major recording artist. The offer values UMG at €30.40 per share, a 78% premium to last close, and sent the stock up 13%.
Ackman has long argued that music rights are among the most durable assets in the economy — scarce, infinitely reproducible, and immune to the war premium currently compressing every other asset class. This is the largest proposed entertainment acquisition since the Disney-Fox deal. Whether UMG's board accepts is uncertain. That Ackman is making the move today — in the middle of a war — says something about where serious capital sees value.
UMG isn't just a music company — it controls the licensing agreements, catalogue rights, and royalty streams for the music that defines this generation. When Ackman wins this deal (if he does), he becomes one of the most powerful men in culture without creating a single song.
The Streisand Effect, the AI training data fight, the artist ownership debate — they all run through whoever controls the major label system. Watch what Ackman says about AI licensing in the next 30 days. That's the real play.
Bill Ackman's $64.4bn bid for Universal Music Group is not a music story. It is a bet that whoever owns the master recordings owns the training data for the next generation of AI music models. The AI licensing war has already begun — and Ackman is buying the fortress before the siege.