Pants on Fire: Former Trump campaign boss Paul Manafort lied even after agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors, according to a filing yesterday by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

What was he thinking?

If he lied, Manafort loses his chance for a lighter sentence on his criminal convictions. He can’t withdraw his guilty plea because he it was irrevocable when he made the deal. He was convicted of financial crimes in one case and entered a plea before he went to trial in the second.

Both sides get damaged. Mueller also loses because by lying Manafort made himself an unreliable witness in the government’s investigation of Russian election-influencing. That might be a good thing for President Trump.

The filing suggests that Mueller’s team was not asking Manafort for information they didn’t know. They were looking for confirmation. The document only says Manafort lied “on a variety of matters,” but acknowledges that he says he told the truth.

Why Manafort may have lied is a mystery. He was already accused of witness tampering while in jail. He either thinks he’s smarter than everyone else, or he may have been led to believe President Trump will give him a pardon.

Curve Ahead: With fewer people buying cars, General Motors announced yesterday that it will shut five factories and lay off 14,000 salaried and hourly workers in both the US and Canada. They say they are adjusting to a different car market.

The announcement set off immediate outrage among workers and politicians.

President Trump’s tariffs on imported steel have cost GM a billion dollars so far. The company is mothballing car and parts factories in Ohio, Michigan, Ontario, and Maryland. They also say they are phasing out production of six sedans that have lost popularity in the age of the SUV.

President Trump has promised he’ll bring back car jobs. Yesterday he sniped at GM CEO Mary Barra, saying,  “I spoke with her when I heard they were closing and I said, you know, this country has done a lot for General Motors. They better get back to Ohio and soon.”

Temperatures Rising: Ukraine has declared martial law in areas bordering Russia in response to Russia’s attack on three naval vessels and taking them into custody. Russia might be trying to seize full military control of waters shared with Ukraine. They already took the Crimean Peninsula.

President Trump said, “We do not like what’s happening,” but has taken no action against the Russians. UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said, “As President Trump said many times, the United States would welcome a normal relationship with Russia, but outlaw actions like this one continue to make that impossible.”

Touchdown: The NASA space probe Insight  survived a perilous descent and successfully landed on Mars yesterday after asix-month, 300-million-mile flight. In the final six minutes the spacecraft had to slow its speed from 12,300 mph to a soft landing. It took more than eight minutes for radio waves to get back to earth with word of success.

The team of scientists and technicians broke into loud celebration at Jet Propulsion laboratories in Pasadena, Calif. InSight’s lead scientist Bruce Banerdt said, “Landing on Mars is one of the hardest single jobs that people have to do in planetary exploration,”

Insight is equipped with a drill that can go 16 feet deep to measure temperature and gather information on how the planet developed.

The Salad Bar: The government now says it’s safe to eat romaine lettuce again, so long as it was not grown on California’s north and central coast. That’s where they believe the lettuce contaminated with E. coli bacteria came from. When romaine returns to the shelves it will be labelled so you know.

The Obit Page: Italian movie director Bernardo Bertolucci, who pushed the boundaries of sex in movies with his 1972 “Last Tango in Paris,” has died at age 77.

Bertolucci also made “The Last Emperor,” a lavish 1987 historical picture about Pu Yi, who became emperor of China at age 3. It won nine  Academy Awards.

Early in his career Bertolucci was interested in Marxist revolution but it was the sexual revolution that brought him notoriety. “Last Tango” was about an older man played by Marlon Brando who has a torrid affair with a younger woman played by Maria Schneider.  The criticPauline Kael called it “the most powerfully erotic movie ever made.”

Other critics were not so kind, calling it pornography. Bertolucci was accused of criminal obscenity in Italy and ended up with a four-month suspended sentence and an order to destroy all copies of the movie in the country.

The Voice of an American: President yesterday suggested that the US should create a “worldwide network” to combat the “unfair” way the country is treated by the media, saying CNN doesn’t have enough competition overseas.

He tweeted, “Throughout the world, CNN has a powerful voice portraying the United States in an unfair and false way. Something has to be done, including the possibility of the United States starting our own Worldwide Network to show the World the way we really are, GREAT!”

The US government already has a worldwide broadcast operation called Voice of America, which was established in 1942. The CEO is appointed by the President.

In a Word: Dictionary.com has chosen “misinformation” as its word of the year. The Oxford Dictionaries chose “toxic” for their word. Jane Solomon, linguist-in-residence at Dictionary, recently told the Associated Press they chose “mis” over “dis” to serve as a “call to action” for vigilance against fake news, flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, and other purveyors of misinformation.

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