The Nightshift: 24 February 2018

Press Clippings:
Embed from Getty Images
Good Morning, it’s Saturday, 24 February 2018,  and this is the Morning Edition of The Nightshift.
Closing it out at the Olympics. Last night, the U.S. Curling team took the Gold Medal, beating Sweden in the finals. A historic win for U.S. Curling–it was the country’s first Gold Medal in the sport–which is a good thing considering the amount of television time the sport got. The U.S. also took a Silver in the Men’s Big Air snowboarding, thanks to Kyle Mack. Canadian Sebastian Toutant took the Gold. One of the most amazing stories of the 2018 Winter Olympics is Ester Ledecka, who took the Gold in parallel snowboarding (her primary sport); that Gold Medal goes with her Gold in the Women’s Super- G (her secondary sport). Ledecka becomes the first Winter Olympic athlete to win gold in two different sports. Will we see Ester on the F.I.S. World Cup Circuit?
You can see the running medal count with this direct link.
Rick Gates, former Trump national campaign manager Paul Manafort’s business partner and second-in-command, has caved and taken a plea deal after Special Counsel Robert Mueller made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Mueller had prepared and filed a new list of charges including tax fraud, money laundry, preparing false tax returns  and other crimes involving financial misdeeds against both Manafort (who vows to fight all the charges) and Gates. Gates apparently got the message and flipped. The longer Manafort waits to take a plea deal, the less value he has to the Mueller investigation. Drip, drip, drip.
In another odd bit of White House drama yesterday, Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General, called the White House (he spoke to General Counsel Don McGahn) and told them there were complications with finalizing a security clearance for Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and that such a clearance was not forthcoming. One attorney, asked about the situation and the unusual step of informing the White House about the problem (without specifically detailing the reasons for the delay) said that it was possible Kushner is under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team. Kushner has been noticeably–almost laughably–inept at completing the forms required for a top level security clearance. Drip, drip, drip.
Today is National Tortilla Chip Day. Get the salsa and guacamole–you know how to celebrate this one.
What we’re listening to in The Media Bunker: The Valentines 2018 playlist, compiled by our music editor/producer/DJ Tschugge. 
The front pages (and sometimes more) of the world’s great English language newspapers are linked below. The International Headlines are all at your fingertips, below. As always, thanks for dropping by.
 
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 Boston Globe (Boston)
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)
The Local (Oslo)
Sputnik (Moscow)
The Buenas Aires Herald (Buenas Aires)
The Sidney Morning Herald (Sidney)
Deadline Hollywood (Hollywood)
FiveThirtyEight (New York City)
Politico (Washington, DC)
Lawfareblog (Washington, DC)
Wired (San Francisco, CA)
The Weather Channel
CNN News Text Site
Ars Technica  
The Fine Print: Embed image courtesy of our friends at Getty Images, who have the photographic history of the 20th and 21s century on file and online. If you need an image, they are your source. This image has not been altered in any way. We thank them for sharing. This post is number 1657 for this site. The Nightshift is a continually evolving experiment in news communications and is a production of Perception Engineering and The Media Bunker. It’s rapid iteration.Thanks for reading. Now–catch up on the world.

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