OK, that sequester thing feels real now. The Federal Aviation Administration announced Friday plans to close 149 air-traffic-control towers starting early next month. Pilots at affected airports (mostly small ones, though even O'Hare could see some changes) will be left to coordinate takeoffs and landings among themselves by communicating over a shared radio frequency. Besides the obvious safety concerns, it's unclear whether airlines will choose not to frequent airports without towers, meaning possible economic ramifications for communities that rely on transportation and travel business. The FAA is being forced to cut $637 million for the rest of the fiscal year as part of the $85 billion sequestration cuts that went into effect March 1.

Our long budget nightmare is over—for the next few months that is. The Senate announced Friday night it will pass its first budget in four years, a move which will mean an end to most fiscal debates until the expected summer arguments over raising the debt ceiling. Passage of a stop-gap funding measure Thursday means a government shutdown will be avoided as well. Once the budget passes, Congress is expected to focus on immigration and the gun control debates, which at the very least promise to be a bit more interesting, if not equally partisan. 

All it took is a little “Kumbaya” from Obama. The president reportedly brokered an apology from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday, restoring diplomatic relations between the two countries for the first time since 2010. Netanyahu apologized for the way in which he handled the deadly commando raid on a Turkish ship in 2010, when Israeli troops were enforcing an aid embargo. According to The New York Times, Obama at one point joined the phone call between the two leaders as they reconciled.

Renowned Nigerian author, poet, and novelist Chinua Achebe, the author of the seminal novel Things Fall Apart, died Friday at age 82. One of the leading voices in African literature, Achebe received countless awards for his 20 books, including the prestigious 2007 Man Booker International Prize for fiction. He fought vigorously for equality in his country, openly criticizing the government’s corruption in Africa. In 1979 he was the first to receive the Nigerian National Merit Award.

The Right to Life movement scored a major victory Friday when North Dakota became the first state to pass a fetal personhood amendment. The measure, which passed 57-35 in the State House of Representatives, grants legal personhood rights to embryos at the moment of fertilization. The amendment is not law yet—it will appear on the November 2014 ballot for voters to rule on whether it will pass. If accepted, the measure will ban all abortions in the state, with no exceptions in the case for rape, incest, or risk of life to the mother. Several forms of birth control could have their legalities questioned as well.

Those looking to the skies Friday night were treated to a fiery sight as a "large, vibrant" meteor streaked through the sky shortly after 7:50 p.m. ET. Eyewitnesses from the Washington D.C. area as well as New York City and New England reported sightings of the meteor traveling from west to east. Eyewitness accounts also describe the meteor as "very bright green with a yellow tail," suggesting that it meets the criteria of a fireball, which is a larger than normal meteor.

Police arrested two Georgia teens on Friday and charged them with the murder of a 13-month-old boy shot dead in his stroller. Seventeen-year-old De'Marquis Elkins and a 14-year-old companion (whose name was not released because he is a juvenile) allegedly approached the boy, Antonio Santiago, and his mother, Sherry West, while the two were on a morning walk on Thursday. West told the AP that the boys demanded money from her; when she said she had none, Elkins allegedly fired a shot at the ground, then two more at West's ear and leg. Then, West says, Elkins walked around the stroller and shot her child in the face. The older boy is being charged as an adult with first-degree murder.

It's kind of like when the most popular kid in school gets tripped. Tech news site The Verge said Friday it has found a step-by-step tutorial online showing how to change another user's Apple ID and hijack their account using a modified Apple URL. Though Verge did not post a link to the tutorial out of safety concerns, it recommended that users enable Apple ID's two-step verification, which sends users a new code every time they want to access their account. However, some users report notifications saying that they must wait three days before using the two-step verification. Apple, meanwhile, says they are working on a fix and have taken down the iForgot page, which was a key part of the hijacking process.

The 2012 presidential election could’ve been very different. Like, Mitt-Romney-not-the-GOP-nominee different. Apparently, in the weeks leading up to the Michigan primary, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum considered joining forces to form the “Unity Ticket,” consolidating their support to topple an increasingly vulnerable-looking Romney. So why didn’t it happen? The two men couldn’t agree on “who was going to be the sheriff and who was going to be the deputy,” according to Kellyanne Conway, Gingrich’s pollster. Each thought he brought more to the table and deserved the presidency, and therefore the Unity Ticket never came to fruition.

This is already one heck of a tournament for anomalies. Florida Gulf Coast, which received a No. 15 seed on Selection Sunday, won its NCAA tournament game against Georgetown Friday, with a 78-68 victory. The win makes FGCU only the seventh No. 15 seed to ever beat a No. 2. The historic upset was no last-minute miracle, either: what was only a two-point lead at halftime became as many as 19 points throughout the second half of the game, with the Georgetown Hoyas never coming closer than within five points down the final stretch. Not bad for a team in only its second year of NCAA eligibility.

If you’re worried about how much the U.S. is spending on the wars we’re currently fighting, bad news: we’re still paying for the ones that are over. A child of a Civil War veteran in Tennessee and another in North Carolina are still receiving $876 a year in benefits. Ten people in the U.S. are receiving an average of $5,000 a year connected to the Spanish-American War, which took place in 1898. The payouts are among the $40 billion that are annually awarded by the U.S. government to soldiers and survivors of wars and their families. There’s another $20 billion paid out to survivors of WWI and their families, $5 billion connected to WWII, and $22 billion a year connected to the Vietnam War. The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq combined are already costing about $12 billion a year in benefits.

Three are dead after a shooting at Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia on Thursday night. All the victims were Marines, including the shooter, who took his own life. After the first person was shot around 11 p.m, authorities and the gunman—believed to have been a staff member at the base’s officer-candidate school—engaged in a standoff, with the suspect barricaded in the barracks. When the authorities finally entered the barracks early Friday morning, they found the shooter and another victim dead inside.

Anyone who thought President Obama might finally follow through on his promise to shut down the Guantánamo Bay detention center probably shouldn’t hold their breath. In fact, brand new Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is currently considering a proposal to replace the deteriorating detention facility used for “high-value detainees” with a new $49 million prison. “Most of the buildings and infrastructure were built for a short-term mission,” said a spokesman for the U.S. Southern Command—the organization responsible for all U.S. military activity in Central and South America. “We got down there in 2002, but never thought in a million years we would still have this in 2013 with no end in sight.”

File this under “maybe,” “possibly,” and “in our dreams”—and also “still fun to think about.” Page Six reports that Saturday Night Live head writer Seth Meyers could replace Jimmy Fallon, should Jimmy Fallon in fact replace Jay Leno on The Tonight Show—as has been widely speculated. Meyers is supposedly Lorne Michaels’s first pick to succeed Fallon, and it’s not a choice completely out of left field. Meyers also showed up on the wish list to co-host Live with Kelly Ripa before Michael Strahan got the gig. Nothing is confirmed, but it’s an intriguing possibility.

An unknown number are dead in Burma after deadly riots stretched into a third day Friday. The uproar, which began Wednesday, was sparked by an argument between Muslim owners of a gold shop and a Buddhist couple. The violence has left mosques and other religious buildings burning and charred bodies laying in the streets. Journalists are being denied entry into the region, forcing the media to rely on images and updates from social media. Reports on how many have been killed are varied, with state news claiming only five and other reports as many as 20. Tension has been brewing between Burma’s Muslims and Buddhists since the country was liberated from military rule two years ago.

Syrian extremists have killed the wrong Sunni cleric. Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti, a top Sunni preacher and supporter of President Bashar al-Assad, was one of 42 people killed in a suicide bombing at a mosque in Damascus on Friday. In response, Assad has stated that his forces will “wipe out” and “clean our country” of the Muslim extremists he believes are responsible for the attack—the first to target a mosque since the country’s civil war began two years ago. Meanwhile, the United Nations plans to investigate whether either the Syrian government or its rebel opposition has used chemical weapons against one another, as they both have claimed.

Who says you can’t eat roadkill? Like most states, Montana either destroys its roadkill or leaves it to rot. Not for long. On Thursday the state Senate passed a bill allowing residents to salvage large animals—like elk, moose, deer, and antelope—killed by cars for food. The bill puts the state Fish, Wildlife, and Parks department in charge of regulating which dead animals can be salvaged. Opponents, such as Sen. Kendall Van Dyk, are questioning the safety of eating an animal left for dead on the highway. “Are highway patrolmen and law-enforcement experts in meat inspection?” he asked. Fans of the bill point to the fact that animals killed through hunting do not undergo food-safety inspections to prove they are safe.

Nitrous oxide is all the rage in Southern California. The drug, used by dentists as laughing gas and often referred to by kids as whippits, has evolved from a rave staple to a mainstream party favor, according to Los Angeles authorities, and has been the cause of numerous rapes, car accidents, and teen deaths in recent years. The L.A. County Sheriff’s Office said it’s cracking down on nitrous use, using a new social-media team that monitors discussion of illegal activities online. Since September the experts have busted 350 illegal parties where people were selling the drug.

Last but not least, Jordan. Making the final stop on his three-day tour through the Middle East, Obama was received in Amman, Jordan’s capital, by an enthusiastic group of guardsmen, donning swords and playing bagpipes. The president brought a long list of things to discuss with Jordan's King Abdullah II, including the estimated 400,000 Syrian refugees fleeing into his country. In an effort to assist with the crisis, Obama says he plans to ask Congress for $200 million. Abdullah was happy to hear the news, saying that the issue of asylum for Syria’s Assad is beyond his “paygrade.”

Every March Madness tournament has a Cinderella story. Rarely—in fact, never—does that story star the nation’s most famous Ivy League school. Harvard University scored its first-ever NCAA basketball tournament win Thursday night, defeating No. 3–ranked New Mexico 68–62. It wasn’t a buzzer beater or come-from-behind victory, either. The Crimson held a solid lead for almost the entire game, outplaying their heavily favored opponent on all measures. Up next for the Ivy Leaguers: a face-off with Arizona in the team’s first-ever round of 32.

In one of the most striking images of his presidency to date, President Obama is shown kneeling down to honor the victims of the Holocaust at Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial. Obama was accompanied by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli President Shimon Peres, who listened as he delivered remarks at the memorial. “Our sons and daughters are not born to hate. They are taught to hate. Let us fill their young hearts with the same understanding and compassion that we hope others have for us.” Next on his Mideast agenda is a stop at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where he’ll be joined by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, before meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, an ally who’s been up against a lot of criticism from his citizens lately.

It’s official, Hillary Clinton will make an appearance at the fourth annual Women in the World Summit—one of her first since leaving the State Department. Clinton has been a part of Women in the World since the very beginning, having appeared at every summit. The former secretary of State will join Meryl Streep, Oprah Winfrey, Ambassador Susan Rice, and other influential names on the stage at Lincoln Center. The event is set to take place April 4 and 5 in New York City.

Rengan Rajaratnam is following in his brother Raj’s footsteps—all the way to the courthouse. Like his older brother before him, the younger Rajaratnam was charged by federal prosecutors Thursday with one count of conspiracy and six counts of securities fraud. He also faces similar allegations from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which filed a civil suit. Rajaratnam, who worked for his now incarcerated brother at his New York hedge-fund firm Galleon Group, had been living in Brazil prior to the indictment and was considered a flight risk by U.S officials.

Get your Powerball tickets while they’re hot! Since no one claimed Wednesday night’s $260 million ticket, the Powerball jackpot has soared to $320 million and could continue to grow before the next drawing Saturday. Wednesday night’s drawing was the 12th in a row without a Powerball winner. A few smaller prizes have been given, including $1 million to three lucky people in Florida, Oklahoma, and Kentucky, whose tickets had the first five numbers correct. This is the third time in the past year that the Powerball jackpot has topped $250 million.

Pro–Bashar al-Assad hackers got their hands on several BBC Twitter accounts Thursday and broadcast tweets that ranged from political and anti-Semitic to comical. While the Twitter accounts are now back under BBC control, and the inappropriate tweets deleted, the British broadcaster also discovered phishing emails—messages that include a fake link used to steal information—being sent around the company’s internal network. “If you receive these emails it is very important that you do not click on the link,” the BBC warned its staff in an email. The emails—which may not be related to the Twitter hacks—had links to fake websites of The Guardian and Human Rights Watch that send users to an imitation Web-mail log-in. “It is very important that you do not enter your details into this page,” the staffwide email urged.

It’s been a big week for Colorado. First Gov. John Hickenlooper signed a landmark gun-control legislation; now he’s legalized same-sex civil unions. Ending Colorado’s 20-year reputation as the “hate state,” Hickenlooper signed the Colorado Civil Union Act into law Thursday as onlookers cheered and cried with joy. “The gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual community is part of all of us,” Hickenlooper said as he signed the bill at Denver’s History Colorado museum. “There is no excuse that people shouldn’t have the same rights.”