The Nightshift: 16 March 2017

Press Clippings:

Good Morning. It’s Thursday, 16 March 2017, and this is the Morning Edition of The Nightshift, the world’s overnight news feed.
The NCAA tournament kicks off today. The first games are early–12:15PM Eastern. Get the full schedule here along with media coverage.  Also–just in case you don’t have a bracket, print it out here. Enjoy the Madness. It’ll be a nice change from the political intrigue that’s tying up progress in Washington.
Gert Wilder’s bid for power in Holland fell short. Maybe Europe is not quite ready for far right popularism. In Australia, scientists are reporting that parts of the Great Barrier Reef are already dead. Let’s face it: we haven’t treated the earth very well and as a result there will be serious problems ahead.
The Federal Reserved raised (finally) the rate for federal funds by 1/4 of 1%. The earth did not wobble and business went on as usual. The result will be slightly higher rates for credit cards, auto loans, and mortgages. It is anticipated that–if the economy keeps moving ahead–there could be up to more small increases in 2017. The government charged Russian hackers with hacking Yahoo to the tune of 500 million (one-half a billion) names. Trump advanced the first draft of his proposed budget: more for defense and homeland security; less for the State Department, the EPA, and others.
Finally, mega-luxury store Neiman-Marcus is apparently on the ropes (aren’t most if not all department stores?). Hudson Bay Company is said to be in talks to acquire Stanley Marcus’ legendary retailer. The scenario that brought NM down is familiar to anyone who follows the equity buyout firms: take a firm over at a relatively high valuation with a lot of borrowed money and then be forced out when the acquired company can’t grow and afford to service the debt. The lesson here is simple: no one cares more about a company than the people who have both a financial and an emotional stake in it–like Stanley Marcus did. If it’s just a numbers game–especially in an industry under siege like department store retailing–and no one has a plan to revive/revitalize the acquired entity, it’s going down.
The 12 Hours of Sebring endurance race is this coming Saturday and Arnold Palmer’s golf tournament starts today at Bay Hill in Florida. Add in March Madness, the World Alpine Skiing Championships in Aspen and there’s plenty of great world class sports to watch this weekend. Enjoy.
Catch up on the news in the rest of the world by reading the front pages of the World’s Greatest newspapers.
The International Headlines are all at your fingertips:
The Times (London
Financial Times (UK)
The Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland)
The Wall Street Journal (European edition)
Washington Post (Washington, D.C.)
New York Times (New York)
The Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles)
Daily News Egypt (Cairo)
South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
The Moscow Times (Moscow)
Le Figaro (Paris)
The Jerusalem Post (Jerusalem)
The Japanese Times (Tokyo)
The Buenas Aires Herald (Buenas Aires)
The Sidney Morning Herald (Sidney)
Deadline Hollywood (Hollywood)
FiveThirtyEight (New York City)
The Fine Print:  Embed courtesy of our friends at Getty Images, who have the photographic history of the 20th and 21st century on file. They remain the internet’s go-to source for photos.  This visual has not been altered in any way. We thank them for sharing. The Nightshift is a production of Perception Engineering and The Media Bunker. This post is number 1023  for this site. Thanks for reading. Now–catch up on the world. 

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