Day 6 ratings for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics games is down to nearly two thirds of what day 6 ratings were for the prime time broadcast of of the first Thursday of the Sochi 2014 games garnered. With the games being aired on NBC, NBC Sports Network, and live stream, the total reach, as compared to the NBC only broadcast of the Sochi Olympics, viewership was considerably lower.

Deadline Hollywood reports:

With 19.3 million watching on NBC, NBC Sports Network and streaming in total audience delivery, last night's Olympics barely was basically even with Valentine's Day's all-time low for the 2018 games so far. Cutting into any minor celebration the Comcast-owned net might get out of being up 0.5%, all those Day 6 official competition platforms put together last night was still down over 15% from the first Thursday of Sochi 2014 - which was only seen on NBC in primetime.

Putting up NBC 2018 against the broadcast-only coverage of February 13, 2014's XXII Winter Games and things start to really sting. Last night's primetime featuring Mikaela Shiffrin and Nathan Chen in PyeongChang dropped a hard 29% in sets of eyeballs.

In smaller numbers but still significant for NBCUniversal, NBCSN had its best night of the 2018 Games so far with 2.75 million tuning in.

The Olympics have taken a back seat to standard television programming over the course of the last few games. Any number of different reasons could be put forward about why this is so, not the least of which might be the growing politicization of the games as they become another outlet for geopolitical rivalry, rather than healthy sports competition.

Investors pummeled Walmart shares Tuesday after the retail behemoth reported disappointing fourth-quarter earnings in results that revealed growing pains in its e-commerce buildout.

Walmart suffered one of its worst days ever on Wall Street, plunging 10.2 percent to close at $94.11, its biggest one-day decline in percentage terms in more than 30 years.

The company reported another solid quarter of gains in US comparable store sales, but quarterly earnings slumped 42.1 percent to $2.2 billion. Earnings were dented primarily by investments to keep prices low and by the effects of online sales of lower-margin items, chief financial officer Brett Biggs said.

Walmart also reported much slower growth in e-commerce sales than in the prior three months

Now that the gun control advocates have had their fifteen minutes of fame, let's start focusing on the real issues impacting the rise in school shootings since that infamous day in Columbine in 1999. Issue number one that no one in the mainstream media or government wants to acknowledge: fatherlessness. Specifically, the impact of fatherlessness on the boys who grew up to become school shooters.

Dr. Warren Farrell, author of the new book The Boy Crisis, explains:

Minimal or no father involvement, whether due to divorce, death, or imprisonment, is common to Adam Lanza, Elliott Rodgers, Dylan Roof and Stephen Paddock.

In the case of 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, he was adopted at birth. His adoptive dad died when Nikolas was much younger, and doubtless the challenges of this fatherlessness was compounded by the death of his adoptive mom three and a half months ago.

The rate of mass shootings has tripled since 2011. We blame guns, violence in the media, violence in video games, and poor family values. Each is a plausible player. But our daughters live in the same homes, with the same access to the same guns, video games, and media, and are raised with the same family values. Our daughters are not killing. Our sons are.

But boys with significant father involvement are not doing these shootings. Without dads as role models, boys' testosterone is not well channeled. The boy experiences a sense of purposelessness, a lack of boundary enforcement, rudderlessness, and often withdraws into video games and video porn. At worst, when boys' testosterone is not well-channeled by an involved dad, boys become among the world's most destructive forces. When boys' testosterone is well channeled by an involved dad, boys become among the world's most constructive forces.

How dirty is San Francisco? An NBC Bay Area Investigation reveals a dangerous mix of drug needles, garbage, and feces throughout downtown San Francisco. The Investigative Unit surveyed 153 blocks of the city - the more than 20-mile stretch includes popular tourist spots like Union Square and major hotel chains. The area - bordered by Van Ness Avenue, Market Street, Post Street and Grant Avenue - is also home to City Hall, schools, playgrounds, and a police station.

As the Investigative Unit photographed nearly a dozen hypodermic needles scattered across one block, a group of preschool students happened to walk by on their way to an afternoon field trip to city hall.

"We see poop, we see pee, we see needles, and we see trash," said teacher Adelita Orellana. "Sometimes they ask what is it, and that's a conversation that's a little difficult to have with a 2-year old, but we just let them know that those things are full of germs, that they are dangerous, and they should never be touched."

In light of the dangerous conditions, part of Orellana's responsibilities now include teaching young children how to avoid the contamination.

The Russian air grouping in Syria has officially joined the Syrian Army's looming East Ghouta offensive, backing up heavy raids conducted by government warplanes against militant position across the region on Monday with many of its own strikes.

Military-affiliated sources report that Russian airpower conducted heavy precision strikes across multiple rebel-held districts east of Damascus city targeting militant tactical positions, gatherings and movements.

As of the last reports two hours ago, Russian jets were still carrying-out raids over East Ghouta.

In particular, it is believed that the Russian combat aircraft have placed considerable emphasis on striking rebel fire support positions (such as anti-tank missile dug-outs and heavy machine gun nests) with precision weapons.

During the past couple of days, opposition sources have claimed that Russian warplanes raided East Ghouta, however all such reports are untrue and it is not until around midnight on Monday to Tuesday that Russian jets started to conduct strikes against militant targets throughout the region.

Newsweek published a story about the company's financial ties to a mysterious church, but editors said the company attempted to thwart their reporting efforts.

Several Newsweek staffers threatened to resign earlier this week, accusing the company of attempting to muzzle the publishing of a story further detailing internal turmoil at the magazine and ties to a controversial Christian college.

On Tuesday evening, Newsweek published a story about previously unreported ties between Newsweek Media Group (which also owns International Business Times) and Olivet University's efforts to develop a campus in upstate New York. Olivet, which is affiliated with a mysterious religious sect called "The Community," has numerous connections to former leaders of NMG.

But not before several reporters and editors made it clear to management that they would quit if Newsweek did not publish the story.

A former friend of teenage Florida gunman Nikolaz Cruz repeatedly warned their school of his disturbing behavior. Ariana Lopez claimed Cruz had sold knives at school and sympathized with terrorists in Syria.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student Lopez told ABC's Good Morning America she had warned school officials "multiple" times in 2016 and 2017 that Cruz had been selling weapons in school, beating his girlfriend and supporting Syrian terrorists.

The Turkish authorities have decided to toughen the punishment for pedophile child abusers in view of the crime's fourfold rise over the last decade.

Turkey's government will submit a law to parliament that would allow the court to order the chemical castration of child abusers, the country's Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul said Tuesday, as quoted by Turkey's Anadolu news agency.

According to the official, the measure was proposed "to reduce or eliminate" the sex drives of people convicted of sexually assaulting minors, while the law itself would be presented "within a few days."

Data provided by the Justice Ministry showed a fourfold increase in child sexual abuse over the last decade, with some 21,189 cases in 2016 compared to 3,778 in 2006, while more than 60 percent of suspects were convicted.

The PLO's Committee for Prisoners and Freed Prisoners revealed on Monday that the Israeli authorities pay stipends to Jewish settlers indicted of crimes against Palestinians, Quds Press has reported. Israel has complained frequently about payments to the families of Palestinian prisoners by the Palestinian Authority, claiming that they "encourage terrorism".

As an example of the Israeli payments, the rights group mentioned the case of Israeli settler Yoram Skolnik, who shot dead Musa Abu Sabha while he was lying with his face on the ground and his hands tied behind his back in March 1993. The killing took place near the illegal settlement of Susia in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, and the killer has been receiving a monthly salary in addition to his national insurance payments.

The Netherlands has started to resemble "a narco-state," with criminals running a parallel economy, and law enforcement is struggling with resource shortages and poor facilities, the Dutch police union has warned.

In the eyes of many Dutch investigators, "the country already has a lot of features of a narco-state," according to the national police association's report, which was published on Tuesday. "In the last 25 years, I've seen small dealers grow into large entrepreneurs with good contacts in politics and into so-called respected investors," said one of 400 detectives quoted in the report on condition of anonymity.