Russia

Update: It's past 10 pm in Moscow, and while many didn't expect a response from the Russian government to the news of its Winter Olympics ban, a representative from Russian state television said it will not broadcast the Winter Olympics unless its national team is allowed to compete, according to Interfax.

Meanwhile, the president of the Russian skating union says the IOC decision to ban Russia from the Olympics is offensive and insulting, and will ultimately harm the Olympic movement.

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Days after it emerged that former Special Counsel investigator Peter Strzok was fired from Robert Mueller's Trump-Russia probe in August for sending anti-Trump text messages to his mistress while the two were working together on the Clinton email investigation, Sara Carter of Circa told a Fox News panel that there are more anti-Trump messages sent by Mueller's team floating around.

Special counsel Robert Mueller objected Monday to a tentative "agreed-upon bail package" reached with Paul Manafort last week, after the lobbyist was discovered to have ghost-written a draft of an op-ed with an associate in Russia allegedly tied to Russian intelligence, according to court filings.  Prosecutors argued that Manafort's collaboration with the "Russian intelligence" colleague - as recently as last week - would violate the sweeping gag-order issued last month by U.S. District Judge Amy Jackson. 

Authored by Eric Zuesse,

The Stanford mathematician William J. Perry was a strategic nuclear advisor to U.S. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, and then he became U.S. Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton.

Authored by Robert Parry via ConsortiumNews.com,

The Russia-gate prosecutors have taken the scalp of ex- National Security Adviser (and retired Lt. Gen.) Flynn for lying to the FBI. But this case shows how dangerously far afield this 'scandal' has gone...