Editor’s Note: The Nightshift will be published in abbreviated form for the next couple of weeks due to outside scheduling commitments. Weekend editions will be full-pack, but weekday commentary will be very streamlined.
Press Clippings:
Good Morning, It’s Friday, 21 April 2017, and this is the Morning Edition of The Nightshift: the world’s overnight news feed.
A terrorist gunman, Karim Cheurfi, used an AK-47 to kill one policeman and wound two others in Paris on Thursday. The attack took place on the Champs Elysee, perhaps the most famous street in the world. Cheurfi had served time in French prisons before. He was on a terror watchlist and been arrested as recently as February, when he was picked for attempting to obtain weapons to be used to kill police. He was released. The French internal security forces will have to answer some very difficult questions about how someone who was known to them, known to be radicalized, actively involved in trying to commit a terrorist act, was allowed to roam free in French society. With the French presidential election this weekend, the shooting could be the final tipping point to send France into a right wing posture. The ultimate victim is going to be some measure of individual freedom, as countries from Sweden to France to Germany, will not continue to be legally tolerant of those under terror watch (“innocent until proven guilty” switches to “guilty”) and will instead arrest suspected terrorists and detain them, perhaps permanently.
The media was in a feeding frenzy yesterday as the stories about Bill O’Reilly’s departure from Fox News hit the wires. O’Reilly’s drama is very well known by now–no need to revisit–but he was not exactly kicked to the curb, leaving a network that made him wealthy (and vice versa) with a $25M severance check. He was in the first year of a new contract that he will not be able to run out. Apparently, when Fox negotiated the new agreement they put an “exit clause” in it, knowing that the storm clouds were gathering and O’Reilly could go down in a nasty, ugly way (which he did). So what’s next for Bill O? A non-compete of unknown length will probably keep him off the TV airwaves and maybe radio as well. He joins Fox News founder and major domo Roger Ailes on the airwave sidelines–think those guys could raise the money for a new network? You betcha. A very public mea culpa tour, an apology (“rightly or wrongly, I have been accused of things I did not do, but in an effort to put it in the past, I apologize to anyone I might have unintentionally offended…”), some time in the background to let the dust and subpoenas settle, and then back to it. Or maybe, just maybe, both of those gentlemen will come to the conclusion that they have done all they want and call it a career. Except for the endings, they had an incredible run. We shall see.
It’s a little quieter in Far East as North Korea–after one last comical threat–has been convinced by someone to cool it. Who’s applying the pressure? China? The U.S.? Russia? All of the above? Some type of solution needs to be developed, but one thing is certain: the U.S. is not going to let an erratically governed, confrontational state like North Korea obtain the capacity to fire off nuclear tipped missiles at America, Japan or South Korea. The truth: if there’s going to be a confrontation with North Korea, it’s going to take place there, on the peninsula. Senator Lindsey Graham made that point in interviews yesterday, acknowledging that South Korea would/could absorb the brunt of the damage if a war breaks out due to North Korea’s increasingly belligerent posture. The realities of the modern world include some very blunt assessments about who gets damaged and who doesn’t. Not a happy circumstance for anyone.
Tiger Woods, at one time the very best professional golfer in the world, has had another back surgery; this one, his fourth, was to treat continuing pain in his back. With every surgery, the chances of Woods ever playing golf professionally again diminish and his possibilities for contending for major titles become even more remote. He’s relatively young, he’s wealthy and famous, and it’s over.
Now more than ever, catch up on the news in the rest of the world by reading the front pages of the World’s Greatest newspapers.
Don’t forget that both Politico.com and Bloomberg.com have been added to our go-to news resources.
The International Headlines are all at your fingertips. Have a great week.
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)
Bloomberg.com (New York)
The Jerusalem Post (Jerusalem)
The Japanese Times (Tokyo)
Sputnik (Moscow)
The Buenas Aires Herald (Buenas Aires)
The Sidney Morning Herald (Sidney)
Deadline Hollywood (Hollywood)
FiveThirtyEight (New York City)
Politico (Washington, DC)
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 1077 for this site. Thanks for reading. Now–catch up on the world.