Marco Rubio announced in Miami on Monday evening – having told major donors earlier in the day – that he was seeking the Republican Presidential nomination. In a speech with a clear generational theme – something that could work for him in attacking both 67-year-old Hillary Clinton and 62-year-old Jeb Bush – the 43-year-old Rubio said: “Just yesterday, a leader from yesterday began a campaign for president by promising to take us back to yesterday. Yesterday’s over, and we are never going back.”

In front of his campaign slogan “A New American Century” (not, apparently, connected to the  neo-conservative think tank) Rubio told supporters:

“My candidacy might seem improbable to some watching from abroad. In many countries, the highest office in the land is reserved for the rich and powerful. But I live in an exceptional country where even the son of a bartender and a maid can have the same dreams and the same future as those who come from power and privilege.

I recognize the challenges of this campaign, and the demands of the office I seek. But in this endeavor as in all things, I find comfort in the ancient command to, “Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”

(image: AP/Mashable)

Rubio, whose website experienced some technical difficulties following his announcement, is the third Republican to have declared their candidacy and the GOP field could get busier still on May 4, when retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson makes an announcement in Detroit.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton arrived in Iowa after her pseudo-incognito, totally-spontaneous “road trip” from New York complete with a stop at an Ohio-area Chipotle, conveniently captured on security camera.

She might as well just hire Armando Iannucci to run her campaign, now that the satirist has a little extra time on his hands.

(HBO/Hiago de Carvalho)

On Tuesday, the candidate starts a series of what’s called “private listening sessions” with potential voters; a concept slightly reminiscent of an early scene in Robert Altman and Garry Trudeau’s groundbreaking political mockumentary, Tanner ’88.

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* BRITISH ELECTION * The Conservatives launch their election manifesto on Tuesday, including controversial promises on additional funding for the NHS and cuts to welfare spending. On Monday, Labour leader Ed Miliband launched his own party’s campaign blueprint. The Guardian writes:

Miliband is determined to junk the post-Thatcher consensus that promoting economic growth meant protecting “wealth-creators” at the top of society – a view he and his supporters believe was comprehensively disproved by the great recession and its aftermath.

By making long-term pledges for government spending on infrastructure, rewriting institutional shareholders’ responsibilities to prevent them chasing short-term profits and shaking up the banking sector to promote competition, Labour hopes to boost investment, lift productivity and ultimately nurture a more successful economy.

The Liberal Democrats and UKIP both release their manifestos on Wednesday, then there is an opposition leaders’ TV debate scheduled for Thursday.

(Daily Telegraph / Tomorrow’s Papers Today)

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* WORLD * Four former employees of the Blackwater private security firm were sentenced for their role in a 2007 shoot-out in Baghdad that left 17 people dead. One man was sentenced to life in prison, and three others to 30 years.

President Obama will meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-abaci at the White House on Tuesday to discuss action against Islamic State.

With Secretary of State John Kerry briefing Congress this week on the Iran nuclear agreement, eager to clear up any “misrepresentations”, public discourse on the issue appears as sharply partisan as ever. Yet, Politico reports that an accommodation may be near that would allow Congressional review of any deal, possibly heralding a veto-proof majority.

Key congressional negotiators are confident they can strike a bipartisan agreement just hours ahead of a Tuesday afternoon committee vote on the bill, which would allow Congress to block President Barack Obama from quickly lifting legislative sanctions on Tehran. Iran’s leaders want the sanctions — which have battered their economy — to be waived swiftly after a final nuclear deal is reached.

Meanwhile, there is concern in the US after Russia lifted a ban on supplying Iran with a sophisticated wire defense missile system.

Greece is preparing to declare a debt default if it cannot reach a deal with its creditors by the end of this month, the Financial Times reports.

Although it would not automatically force Greece to drop out of the eurozone, a default would make it much harder for Alexis Tsipras, prime minister, to keep his country in the 19-nation area, a goal that was part of the platform on which he and his leftist Syriza party won election in January.

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* BUSINESS * SpaceX will try again on Tuesday to launch its Falcon 9 rocket on a resupply mission to the International Space Station after the planned launch on Monday was scrubbed due to weather. The launch opportunity will be at 4.10pm ET, and you can watch a livestream here.

Procter & Gamble CEO AG Lafley may be preparing for a summer exit, according to the Wall Street Journal.

A report from the Halifax finds that cashless payments have soared to now account for 83.4 per cent of all transactions.

Americans bought 1million Apple Watches in six hours. Go figure.

The latest US domestic airline rankings were released, showing that passengers are complaining more, but they have more to complain about. In terms of customer satisfaction, Virgin America was ranked top, followed by Hawaiian Airlines and Delta.

An Alaska Airlines flight returned to Seattle after a ramp agent had fallen asleep in the cargo hold. In a statement, the airline said:

The agent had been on a four-person team loading baggage onto Flight 448, which departed for Los Angeles at 2:39 p.m. The aircraft returned to Seattle after 14 minutes in flight when the captain heard banging beneath the aircraft.

After the landing, the employee, who was in a pressurized, temperature-controlled portion of the cargo hold, walked off the aircraft. He told authorities he had fallen asleep.

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* MEDIA * Business networking site LinkedIn launched Elevate, “a paid mobile and desktop app that suggests articles to its users — based on algorithms from its news recommendation services Pulse and Newsle, as well as “human curation” — and then lets users schedule and share those links across LinkedIn and Twitter, with the aim to add more networks like Facebook over time,” TechCrunch reports.

As sales of vinyl albums continue to increase, a new chart was announced in the UK ahead of Record Store Day on April 18.

(Drop The Needle Again – Ryan Hanratty)

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* CULTURE * Nobel literature laureate Gunter Grass, author of The Tin Drum, died aged 87. The New York Times writes:

Mr. Grass was a playwright, essayist, short-story writer, poet, sculptor and printmaker as well as a novelist, but it was as a social critic that he gained the most notoriety, campaigning for disarmament and broad societal change.

But ultimately, his uncompromising antimilitarism and his warnings that a unified Germany might once again threaten world peace led some of his countrymen to criticize him as a pedantic moralist who had lost touch with real life.

He revealed his Nazi past himself, days before a memoir, “Peeling the Onion,” was to be published, bringing on accusations of hypocrisy. Mr. Grass had long said that he had been a “flakhelfer” during the war, one of many German youths pressed to serve in relatively innocent jobs like guarding antiaircraft batteries. But in an interview with the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine, he admitted that he had been a member of the elite Waffen-SS, which had perpetrated horrific crimes. By then some knew that he had understated his role during the war, but the specific information came as a shock.