(YouTube/Nasa2007)

On the 46th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing (or, yawn, was it…?)  Prof Stephen Hawking and Russian tycoon Yuri Milner announced a $100million project to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life.

CBS reports that the most extensive project of its kind, named “Breakthrough Listen”, 

..will survey the one million closest stars to Earth, across the plane of the Milky Way and toward its center where stars are densely packed and even other nearby galaxies.

The program’s instruments and detectors will be sensitive enough to discern emissions from Earth-level technologies, like air defense radars, some 2,000 light years away.

Hawking, of course, is famously on record as saying five years ago that finding alien life might not necessarily be a good thing.

“If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans,” the Times quotes him as saying.

***

* POLITICS * Closer to home, the Republican party continues to wrestle with its own “alien” problem, as Donald Trump emerged – in the aftermath of his controversial remarks about Sen John McCain at the weekend – as the clear GOP front-runner in a new Washington Post/ABC poll.

Although his support had fallen over the four days of the poll, he easily led the field with 24 per cent support – well ahead of his nearest rivals, Scott Walker on 13 per cent and Jeb Bush on 12 per cent.

The Des Moines Register – the most influential newspaper in the early primary state of Iowa – called on Trump to withdraw from the race. The paper writes in an editorial:

In the five weeks since he announced his campaign to seek the GOP nomination for president, Trump has been more focused on promoting himself, and his brand, than in addressing the problems facing the nation. If he were merely a self-absorbed, B-list celebrity, his unchecked ego could be tolerated as a source of mild amusement. But he now wants to become president, which means that he aspires to be the leader of the free world and the keeper of our nuclear launch codes.

***

* WORLD * As part of the latest official crackdown on corruption in China, a top aide of former President Hu Jintao has been arrested and removed from all official positions. 

Turkey is tightening security on its border with Syria after a suspected suicide bomb attack killed more than 30 people. Official statements blamed ISIS. Later, in Istanbul, pro-Kurdish demonstrators clashed with police.

The UN Security Council unanimously approved the agreement on Iran’s nuclear development reached between Tehran and the US and its allies last week. With the US congress now engaged in review of the deal, Secretary of State John Kerry will brief members of the House and Senate later this week.

And Sec Kerry will make an historic trip to Cuba to formally reopen the US embassy in Havana on August 14.

***

* BUSINESS * Toshiba President Hisao Tanaka is set to resign on Tuesday in the wake of a $1.2bn accounting scandal that saw the corporation overstate profits for six years.

Apple reports its third-quarter results on Tuesday – its first earnings numbers since the launch of the Apple Watch.

http://twitter.com/iPhone5S_ID/status/623356494604451840

Gold will likely continue to be in the market spotlight on Tuesday as prices continue to hover around five-year lows.

Finally, a couple of pieces of sad news..

***

* MEDIA * Two top editors at Gawker resigned after a controversial story was removed from the site on Friday.

***

* CULTURE * “Cheating” website Ashley Madison confirmed that its 37-million person database had been hacked, but did not disclose the extent of the breach. Alleged hackers had demanded that the parent company take the site down, or client information would be published.

(Daily Mirror/Tomorrow’s Papers Today)

***

* SPORTS *

Fifa President Sepp Blatter found himself the target of a protest against corruption during a press conference in Zurich. British comedian Simon Brodkin was escorted away by security and the meeting was halted temporarily. When Blatter returned, he announced details of a new Fifa presidential election in February next year, saying he would definitely not be a candidate.

Former Barcelona manager – and current boss of Bayern Munich  – Pep Guardiola will apparently stand in the Catalan election in September on a pro-independence platform.

A BBC investigation has revealed details of the trafficking of underage African players to Asia.

Six minors are still with top Laos side Champasak United, after it imported 23 under-age players from West Africa to an unregistered football academy in February, a BBC investigation found.

Fifa regulations prohibit the movement of players to a foreign club or academy until they are 18.

 

Finally, in an exciting four-hole play-off, Zach Johnson of the US won the British Open, beating Louis Oosthuizen of South Africa and Australia’s Marc Leishman.

President Obama and members of his administration have extended their aggressive campaign to sell the nuclear agreement with Iran at home and abroad.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter is in Israel on the first leg of a Middle East trip to reassure US allies in the region, and will meet his Israeli counterpart on Monday, having said that the deal does not mean military action is “off the table” when it comes to stopping Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.

On Sunday the agreement was submitted to Congress to begin the formal 60-day review period. The UN Security Council is set to vote on Monday morning to clear a path for sanctions against Iran to be lifted, as stipulated in the deal agreed in Vienna last week. The New York Times reports:

At least two senior Democrats have joined the Republican leadership in complaining that the Security Council action, expected Monday morning, would pre-empt the congressional debate. Their concern is that it would signal the international community’s intention to dismantle the sanctions — if Iran meets the nuclear terms of the accord — before American lawmakers have had time to vote on it…

A provision inserted into the agreement at the behest of American negotiators, he said, stipulates that the deal will not take effect until 90 days after the Security Council formally endorses the accord — giving Congress time for action.

Secretary of State John Kerry and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz appeared on the Sunday talk shows, maintaining there was “no viable alternative” to the deal for making the Middle East safer. The Washington Post reports:

Kerry said that if opponents in Congress get enough votes to override a presidential veto, the consequences will be dire, warning that Iran would resume enriching uranium to levels prohibited under the deal. “If Congress says no to this deal, then there will be no restraints on Iran, there will be no sanctions left,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Meanwhile, the executive editor of the Washington Post, Martin Baron, has urged the administration to “work harder” to secure the release of post journalist Jason Rezaian, held in Iran on espionage charges.

***

* WORLD *  British Prime Minister David Cameron – who at the weekend appeared on US television in support of the Iran nuclear deal – will on Monday set out his plan for a five-year approach to tackling Islamic extremism in Britain. The Independent reports:

In a speech in Birmingham, Mr Cameron will say Islamic extremist ideology is based on the same intolerant ideas of “discrimination, sectarianism and segregation” that led to the rise of Hitler and that still exist in the far right.

He will also reject suggestions that Western foreign policy has contributed to the rise of Isis and its popularity among Muslim populations in the West, arguing that such extremism existed long before the Iraq war.

Banks across Greece are to re-open on Monday, as “the first cautious sign of a return to normal after a deal to start talks on a new package of bailout reforms” Reuters reports. The Athens Stock Exchange will remain closed and some capital controls on money transfers will still be in place.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told German TV on Sunday she is prepared to consider further debt concessions to Greece once its economic reforms are worked out, but she reiterated that there would be no debt write-off.

On Monday morning, the US and Cuba formally restore diplomatic relations after more than five decades. Reuters reports that

Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez will preside around 10:30 a.m. over the raising of the Cuban flag for the first time in 54 years over a mansion that will again serve as Havana’s embassy in Washington.

The hugely symbolic event will be followed by a meeting at the State Department between Secretary of State John Kerry and Rodriguez, the first Cuban foreign minister on an official visit to Washington since the 1959 Cuban Revolution.

***

* BUSINESS * Banking giant Barclays is planning to cut more than 30,000 staff over the next two years, The Times reports. The move would see the bank’s global workforce fall to under 100,000.

Japan’s Mitsubishi corporation on Sunday made an apparently unprecedented apology for using American Prisoners of War as forced labor during World War 2. At a ceremony in Los Angeles, “Hikaru Kimura, a senior executive of the firm, extended a “most remorseful” apology to 94-year-old James Murphy of California, who is among only two of the surviving US prisoners,” Al Jazeera reports.

***

* POLITICS * Donald Trump appears unapologetic after his remarks on Saturday about Sen John McCain. The GOP candidate writes in USA Today that “A number of my competitors for the Republican nomination have no business running for president. I do not need to be lectured by any of them. Many are failed politicians or people who would be unable to succeed in the private sector. Some, however, I have great respect for.”

http://twitter.com/DRUDGE_REPORT/status/622932752485126144

Chris Cillizza at The Washington Post writes:

If you were expecting anything else from Trump, you haven’t been paying much attention to his presidential campaign. Or his life. Trump’s appeal in the 2016 race appears to be built on saying things and acting in ways that other politicians would never dream of doing.  Trump, to his credit, appears to grasp that fact.

“I will say what I want to say, and maybe that’s why I’m leading in the polls because people are tired of hearing politicians and pollsters telling the politicians exactly what to say,” Trump told [ABC’s Martha] Raddatz.

***

* SPORTS *  Fifa President Sepp Blatter is expected on Monday to outline plans for reform of world football’s governing body. The BBC reports that 16 December could be the date for a new Presidential election, and that Uefa head Michel Platini may have been approached to stand for the post.

Meanwhile, British MPs are set to launch an inquiry into why key institutional players in the Fifa corruption scandal did not do more to expose wrong-doing.

Monday sees the unexpected final round of the weather-delayed British Open at St Andrews, with 22-year-old Irish amateur sharing the lead. The last amateur to win the Open was Bobby Jones in 1930, so the “bonus day” is set to be a hot ticket.

Of course you can always avail yourself of the Royal and Ancient’s “sick slip”..

Uh-oh.

Could this be the bridge too far..?

At the the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa on Saturday, an unguarded comment – as far as any of his comments are actually ever guarded – may likely prove to be the beginning of the end of the meteoric rise of Republican “front-runner” Donald Trump.

In an on-stage conversation with pollster Frank Luntz, Trump was asked about his recent Twitter spat with Arizona Sen John McCain. Referring to McCain’s status as a “war hero” Trump said, in an almost throwaway, we’re-among-friends quip:

“He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”

The audience reaction seemed to be an embarrassed half-laugh, not because it was funny, but probably because they couldn’t believe he’d actually said it. As the words sank in, there seemed to be some scattered boos. At the end of his session, about 15 minutes after the McCain exchange, there was more of the polite, even enthusiastic applause that had marked his answers to subsequent questions.

In one of them, Trump said he “didn’t think” he had ever asked God for forgiveness.

(YouTube/Voice of America)

The RNC and – significantly – virtually all his primary opponents immediately seized on the remark and issued condemnations.

http://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/status/622476545454645248

Even the defeated GOP candidate last time round weighed in..

Meanwhile, Trump’s own war record or lack thereof soon became a thing.

http://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/status/622445762258059264

Nate Cohn writes at the New York Times that this could represent the campaign’s turning point, saying the exchange “will probably mark the moment when Trump’s candidacy went from boom to bust.”

His support will erode as the tone of coverage shifts from publicizing his anti-establishment and anti-immigration views, which have some resonance in the party, to reflecting the chorus of Republican criticism of his most outrageous comments and the more liberal elements of his record.

Prophetically – or perhaps predictably – Michael Cohen wrote in this morning’s Boston Globe that the GOP’s problem “isn’t Trump, it’s the voters.”

The crash-and-burn phase of his embryonic campaign has not yet arrived — but it will.

Yet, more than any of the 17 people seeking to be the next GOP standard bearer, his run already tells us everything we need to know about why the Republican Party is in such desperate trouble.

And of course, the candidate’s timing was impeccable.

As if anything anyone else said at Ames on Saturday will now be of even remote interest, you can watch the full raft of candidate speeches from the conference on C-Span here

More to come, I feel sure. 

The German parliament voted in favor of continuing the process towards a third bailout for Greece. But a significant number of lawmakers in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party bloc voted against – more than double the number who had voted against the second bailout in February. Not much of a 61st birthday gift, but the Chancellor got her way in the end.

According to German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble, the New York Times‘ Paul Krugman “has no idea about the architecture and foundation of the European currency union.” Read the full interview at Spiegel here.

Former IMF executive Ashoka Mody has an interesting potential solution to the dilemma of preserving the single currency.

“A German return to the deutsche mark would cause the value of the euro to fall immediately, giving countries in Europe’s periphery a much-needed boost in competitiveness.

“The disruption from a German exit would be minor. Because a deutsche mark would buy more goods and services in Europe (and in the rest of the world) than a euro does today, the Germans would become richer in one stroke.

Meanwhile, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras reshuffled his cabinet to get rid of hardline leftists opposed to further austerity measures. But, The Guardian reports, “the limited nature of the reshuffle reinforced mounting speculation that elections would almost certainly be held in the early autumn.”

As if making some kind of allegorical visual point, much of the Greek countryside appeared to be in flames as firefighters tackled some 50 blazes it was suspected may have been lit as part of anti-austerity protests.

***

* WORLD * And there were also dramatic fires in California, when a brushfire jumped onto a freeway east of Los Angeles, sending drivers running for safety.

(ABC News)

As Chattanooga and the rest of the country mourned Thursday’s shooting at a military facility in the city that left four US Marines dead, details emerged of a more complete timeline of the incident, and of the lives of the victims.

UPDATE 2PM ET SAT – A fifth service member – U.S. Navy Petty Officer Randall Smith –died on Saturday from injuries sustained in Thursday’s attack.

A fuller picture also continues to emerge of the suspected shooter.

In several states there were executive or legislative moves on Friday to allow armed forces personnel to carry weapons inside recruiting stations.

ISIS claimed responsibility for a car bomb 20 miles north of Baghdad which killed more than 80 people who had gathered to celebrate the last day of Ramadan.

Hundreds of people were injured when two commuter trains collided in Johannesburg.

The Westgate Mall shopping center in the Kenyan capital Nairobi will re-open on Saturday, in what is being called a “triumph over terrorism”, two years after it was the scene of a four-day siege and massacre which killed more than 60 people.

Nasa released the first-ever close-up images of Pluto. And they are remarkable.

***

* POLITICS * 

Police in Columbia, South Carolina are preparing for rival rallies at the statehouse on Saturday afternoon, when Ku Klux Klan supporters will gather to protest last week’s removal of the Confederate battle flag. At the same time, there will also be a rally organized by Black Educators for Justice.

South Carolina’s Governor, Nikki Haley, asked citizens to stay clear of the statehouse, saying:

Our family hopes the people of South Carolina will join us in staying away from the disruptive, hateful spectacle members of the Ku Klux Klan hope to create over the weekend and instead focus on what brings us together. We want to make the Statehouse a lonely place for them. In doing so, we’ll honor those we have lost and continue to make our state stronger.

For the first time in this campaign cycle, all five Democratic Presidential candidates appeared together on Friday night, speaking at the Iowa Democratic Party’s Hall of Fame Dinner in Cedar Rapids. Meanwhile, two of the state’s leading elected Democrats – who had been instrumental in helping Barack Obama win in 2008 – endorsed Hillary Clinton.

Progressives have gathered for the Netroots Nation convention in Phoenix, where they heard a keynote speech from non-candidate Sen Elizabeth Warren. Candidates Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley will appear at a Town Hall meeting on Saturday. Hillary Clinton hasn’t attended since 2007.

Some of the leading Republican candidates are also in Iowa this weekend, attending the Family Leadership Summit in Ames. You can watch the speeches live on C-Span here.

UPDATE SAT 2PM ET – Uh-oh… This may be a bridge too far.

As Donald Trump continues to galvanize grassroots support among potential GOP primary voters, The Huffington Post made a decision about its coverage of his ‘campaign’.

..we have decided we won’t report on Trump’s campaign as part of The Huffington Post’s political coverage. Instead, we will cover his campaign as part of our Entertainment section. Our reason is simple: Trump’s campaign is a sideshow. We won’t take the bait. If you are interested in what The Donald has to say, you’ll find it next to our stories on the Kardashians and The Bachelorette.

Trump fired back at the “blog”, and the media generally piled on. Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post writing on why the HuffPo’s move is a bad idea.

What we in the media need to be doing is asking questions about what is behind the Trump surge — not dismissing it as a joke or totally meaningless or, even, using his candidacy to pull the sort of publicity stunts that we tut-tut at Trump for.

***

* MEDIA * Buckingham Palace was said to be “disappointed” by the publication of an image from a Royal home movie taken in 1933.

(The Sun)

The Press Association reported that the Palace had said:

Most people will see these pictures in their proper context and time. This is a family playing and momentarily referencing a gesture many would have seen from contemporary news reels.

“No one at that time had any sense how it would evolve. To imply anything else is misleading and dishonest.

“The Queen is around six years of age at the time and entirely innocent of attaching any meaning to these gestures.

***

* BUSINESS * As Google reported its earnings on Friday, its stock price surged, adding a total of $52 billion in market capitalization as of the start of trading, in what was reported to be the largest single-day gain. Ever.

***

* SPORTS * There’s a big weekend coming up in British sport with the conclusion of the British Open at St Andrews, (** UPDATE SAT 9AM ET – It appears The Open will now conclude on Monday, after play was suspended due to high winds. There was, as you can imagine, plenty of controversy about the decision, because Golf.)

England fighting to avoid defeat in the second Ashes test, and Carl Frampton defending his world super-bantamweight title in El Paso, Texas.

Japan dropped its plans for a $2.75billion stadium that would have been the centerpiece of the 2020 Olympics.

One stadium that is apparently moving one step closer, however, is the potential future home of David Beckham’s MLS franchise in Miami.

Finally, French Formula 1 driver Jules Bianchi passed away from injuries he sustained in a crash last year. He was just 25 years old.

http://twitter.com/F1_Int_Feed/status/622263393307660289

The FBI is taking the lead in what may be a terrorism investigation after four US Marines were killed in a gun attack at a military facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Officials said a single gunman opened fire at two locations – first at a recruiting station, then driving six miles to a Naval Reserve center where the four Marines were killed – before being fatally shot. It is still unclear whether he was killed by police or took his own life.

Authorities have also not yet said exactly how and where at the second location the Marines were shot, but neither location appeared to be a particularly high-security installation. 

CNN reported that at least three other people were injured, including a Chattanooga police officer a Marine recruiter and a Navy servicemember.

* Follow live updates from local paper the Chattanooga Times Free Press here.

* Special Report from ABC News and updates from the AP are here.

With more details of the circumstances of the attack expected to emerge over the coming hours, the FBI named the alleged shooter as Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez, reported to be a 24-year-old naturalized American born in Kuwait, but agents said it was “too early” to speculate on a motive.

The New York Times reviews what is known about the alleged gunman.

He played whiffle ball in a suburban neighborhood of swim meets and gently sloping lawns. He was a young man who was polite, who sometimes drove too fast, who was arrested on a drunken-driving charge. He was a hardened mixed-martial arts fighter who kept a blog where he mused about submitting to Allah.

Across the country in Colorado, the shooter in another mass killing – at an Aurora movie theater almost three years ago – was found guilty on all first-degree murder charges and could now face the death penalty.

http://twitter.com/NicoleAuerbach/status/621859399905230848

President Obama became the first sitting President to visit a federal prison when he went to the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in Oklahoma and met with inmates. Sarah Wheaton writes at Politico on how this week has seen a focus by the White House on criminal justice reform – a message in part drowned out by unexpected news events.

Obama’s visit to a federal prison — the first by a sitting president — capped a week of efforts to swing the pendulum away from the “tough on crime” drug laws of the 1990s. It included the announcement that he commuted the sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders on Monday and a call to action — and Congress — at the NAACP convention in Philadelphia on Tuesday to change sentencing laws, better prepare prisoners to re-enter society and reform the juvenile justice system that starts the cycle of crime and prison for so many American youth — disproportionately black youth.

***

* WORLD *  The German parliament gets its chance on Friday to vote on whether to proceed with the agreed €86billion bailout for Greece.

On Thursday, the European Central Bank increased the emergency liquidity support for Athens, and it was announced that Greek banks would re-open on Monday.

If you haven’t already – and if you must – you can read the Euro Summit agreement on Greece annotated by former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis on his blog. An example:

Given the need to rebuild trust with Greece, the Euro Summit welcomes the commitments of the Greek authorities to legislate without delay a first set of measures [i.e. Greece must subject itself to fiscal waterboarding, even before any financing is offered].

 

Friday is the one-year anniversary of the shooting down of MH-17 over Ukraine, killing 298 people, with still no definitive attribution of responsibility.

Meanwhile, new footage obtained by NewsCorp Australia appears to show the immediate aftermath of the downing of the passenger jet.

In Britain, the Liberal Democrats, all but wiped out in May’s national election, named their new leader. Tim Farron faces a daunting challenge, to say the least.

***

* MEDIA * As Reddit says it will take steps to “hide vile content”, its former CEO writes in the Washington Post that “the trolls are winning.” Ellen Pao says:

Fully 40 percent of online users have experienced bullying, harassment and intimidation, according to Pew Research. Some 70 percent of users between age 18 and 24 say they’ve been the target of harassers. Not surprisingly, women and minorities have it worst. We were naive in our initial expectations for the Internet, an early Internet pioneer told me recently. We focused on the huge opportunity for positive interaction and information sharing. We did not understand how people could use it to harm others.

The foundations of the Internet were laid on free expression, but the founders just did not understand how effective their creation would be for the coordination and amplification of harassing behavior. Or that the users who were the biggest bullies would be rewarded with attention for their behavior. Or that young people would come to see this bullying as the norm — as something to emulate in an effort to one-up each other.

President Obama went on the offensive on Wednesday, taking on his political opponents – and skeptical allies – directly as he seeks to build support, or even mere acceptance, for the landmark nuclear deal with Iran.

In a more-than-one-hour press conference on Wednesday, the President repeatedly challenged those who oppose the deal to advocate for a different option, saying that the only alternative to such a deal is war. “If the alternative is that we should bring Iran to heel through military force, then those critics should say so. And that will be an honest debate.”

Glenn Thrush at Politico writes that Obama “has seldom worn his fierce urgency so publicly as he does now.”

When a wire service reporter asked an opening query about Iran’s military capability, Obama blew past as if he were invisible — and said he first wanted to dispense with critics’ attacks on the deal. For the next 10 minutes or so, he filibustered to the floodlights, leaning on the lectern as he laid out arguments pressed by congressional Republicans and Israel-centric Democrats, swatting them aside one-by-one. He never got around to answering the question.

Earlier, the President gave an interview to Tom Friedman of the New York Times.

Vice-President Joe Biden is set to head to Capitol Hill on Thursday to pitch the deal to Senate Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee.

With Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu engaged in another US media blitz against the deal, US National Security Adviser Susan Rice told Reuters that, under the agreement, Iran “will have no way to avoid inspections of military or other sites that the United States and its allies deem suspicious.”

The United Nations Security Council is expected to vote next week on a resolution endorsing the agreement and terminating targeted sanctions, “but to retain an arms embargo and ballistic missile technology ban, diplomats said.”

Jeffrey Goldberg writes at The Atlantic that the “morally dubious agreement might be a practical necessity.”

Does this deal significantly reduce the chance that Iran could, in the foreseeable future (20 years is the time period Obama mentioned in an interview with me in May), continue its nefarious activities under the protection of a nuclear umbrella? If the answer to this question is yes, then a deal, in theory, is worth supporting.

The degree of difficulty the President and his surrogates face over the coming weeks has been signaled over the past 24 hours by the often inflammatory rhetoric among the deal’s already committed opponents.

One of the most frequent soundbites was the use of the word “appeasement” – used by Jeb Bush, John Bolton and other GOP figures, as well as radio talk-show hosts.

But for every mention of Chamberlain, there have been plenty of references to more recent Conservative icons, recalling either Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, or as EJ Dionne writes at the Washington Post how Obama “echoes Reagan”.

It’s worth remembering that Reagan’s willingness to bargain with Gorbachev weakened the hard-liners in the Soviet Union, creating the opening for its collapse. And there are parallels between the two-step approaches that both Reagan and Obama took to a problematic foe. The Gipper was very tough at the outset of his presidency, and the Soviet Union realized it could not keep up with U.S. defense spending. Gorbachev came to the table. Obama got our allies to impose much tougher sanctions, and Iran came to the table.

There is no way of knowing if this deal will lead to a dramatic transformation inside Iran, and there are some legitimate doubts that it will. But then, Reagan’s conservative skeptics were also insistent that the Soviet Union could never change, and surely never fall. They were wrong and Reagan’s bet paid off. Obama is now making a comparable wager.

***

* POLITICS * The ongoing mess surrounding Fox News‘s national polling criteria for inclusion in the first GOP televised debate, and its potential for marginalizing the early primary states, took a turn when those states fought back by organizing their own debate, three days ahead of Fox’s “first.”

The Manchester Union-Leader in New Hampshire, the Cedar Rapids Gazette in Iowa, and the Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina have joined together – partnering with C-Span – to host a televised candidate forum on Aug 3rd.

“Fox says only the ‘top’ 10 candidates, as judged solely by national polling, will be allowed on its stage,” the publishers said. “That may be understandable later, but the first votes are half a year away, and there are a lot more than 10 viable candidates. The early primary process gives all candidates a chance to be heard. If networks and national polls are to decide this now, the early state process is in jeopardy, and only big money and big names will compete.”

One candidate who would appear certain to be included under the Fox criteria is Donald Trump, whose personal wealth seems to be rising along with his poll numbers, the New York Times reports.

Mr. Trump issued a statement Wednesday saying that his net worth was now in excess of $10 billion, more than the $8.7 billion he said he was worth when he announced his presidential candidacy a month ago.

The statement noted that Mr. Trump had filed his financial disclosure report with the Federal Election Commission, a requirement of presidential candidates, and the commission confirmed his filing.

DJ Gallo writes at The Guardian on the man who could be the Republicans’ “secret weapon” – NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

Yes, the man who earned countless headlines over the past 12 months for his incompetent and tone-deaf corporate leadership – and consider how hard it is to stand out in the crowded incompetent and tone-deaf world of corporate leadership – was to spend this week advising Republican elected officials.

Former President George H W Bush broke a bone in his neck following a fall at his home in Maine on Wednesday night. A spokesman tweeted:

The 41st President celebrated his 91st birthday last month.

***

* WORLD * The Greek parliament overwhelmingly approved a tough package of austerity measures required as a condition of a third Eurozone bailout. But there were riots on the streets of Athens as the proposals were debated. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras saw more than 30 of his own MPs vote against him in the late-night session, but won the vote by 229-64.

Eurozone finance ministers will hold a conference call on Thursday morning to discuss next steps. Then, the European Central Bank will meet to discuss how to prevent Greece’s banks – which have been closed for two weeks – from collapsing.

There were protests inside and outside parliament as Japan‘s lower house passed legislation to change the country’s long-standing defense policy, which could lead to a shift in the role of its military.

http://twitter.com/MichaelSin_/status/621551999142592512

As Nasa had promised yesterday, there were more amazing pictures of Pluto from the New Horizons probe.

***

* BUSINESS * Fed chair Janet Yellen makes her second appearance of the week before a Congressional committee on Thursday, when she speaks to the Senate Banking Committee at 2.30pm ET. At her appearance on Wednesday, she was upbeat about prospects for growth and spoke about the likelihood of a rate hike.

(Financial Times)

Toshiba’s CEO is to step down, and the company faces some $3bn in charges related to an improper accounting investigation, CNBC reports.

Goldman Sachs reports second-quarter earnings ahead of the open on Thursday. The Wall Street Journal offers five things to watch for.

Wednesday was – possibly – the final ride on the giant piano keyboard as iconic New York toy store FAO Schwarz closed its doors at its location near Central Park.

***

* MEDIA * Netflix, the top stock in the S&P 500 this year, saw its Internet TV service grow to 65.6 million subscribers in the second quarter, thanks largely to original shows such as “Orange Is the New Black,” Bloomberg reports.

***

* SPORTS * A big day for British sport on Thursday, with the beginning of the second Ashes test between England and Australia at Lord’s – with England holding a 1-0 lead –  as well as the opening round of the 144th British Open golf championship from St Andrews, a competition all the poorer for the absence of title holder Rory McIlroy, who withdrew because of injury.

(Daily Telegraph)

UPDATE 10PM ET 15 JULY 2015

The Greek parliament late on Wednesday voted in favor of a raft of strict austerity measures required for the country to qualify for a bailout from its creditors.

As the measures were being debated, riots broke out in Athens as an anti-austerity demonstration brought an estimated 12,000 protesters onto the streets.

more in tomorrow’s Note

MIDNIGHT 14 JULY 2015 – Greece set for bailout vote as IMF warns on debt relief

Greece heads for a crunch parliamentary vote on Wednesday as the deadline approaches for acceptance of sweeping austerity measures ahead of a European bailout.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who has been trying to unite a fractured country – and his own party – behind the deal reached at the weekend, warned that the country’s banks could remain closed for a month, before any bailout could take effect.

* Follow developments at The Guardian‘s live blog here.

* CNBC‘s Squawk Box live blog is here.

Reuters reports, meanwhile, that the IMF has thrown something of a spanner in the works by warning that Greece will need much greater debt relief than its creditors have previously contemplated.

The IMF study, first reported by Reuters, said European countries would have to give Greece a 30-year grace period on servicing all its European debt, including new loans, and a dramatic maturity extension. Or else they must make annual transfers to the Greek budget or accept “deep upfront haircuts” on existing loans.

The Debt Sustainability Analysis is likely to sharpen fierce debate in Germany about whether to lend Greece more money. The debt analysis also raised questions over future IMF involvement in the bailout and will be seen by many in Greece as a vindication of the government’s plea for sweeping debt relief. A Greek newspaper called the report, which was initially leaked, a slap in the face for Berlin.

The New Statesman has the first interview with former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis since his resignation.

***

* WORLD (AND OTHER WORLDS) *

Space scientists on Nasa’s New Horizons probe team are promising “bigger and better images” on Wednesday after an initial successful flyby of Pluto. The BBC reports:

Data in its first call home since Tuesday’s flyby suggest the spacecraft experienced no upsets as it hurtled past the icy world at 14km/s (31,000mph). The signal came through a giant dish in Madrid, Spain – part of a Nasa network of communications antennas.

The message took four hours 25 minutes to traverse 4.7 billion km of space.

* Follow developments at The Guardian‘s science blog here.

Commentators and citizens have been digesting the Iran nuclear deal announced on Tuesday, and what it means for the future of the Middle East.

Elsewhere in the region’s troubled geopolitics, Charles Glass writes at The Intercept on the transformative nature of the Syrian refugee crisis.

To imagine that the long-term plight of millions of Syrian refugees in the Middle East and Europe will have no consequences is folly on a greater scale than predicting the Palestinian refugee problem would disappear after 1948. This is a political more than a humanitarian issue. For the refugee exodus to stop, the war must end.

 

US government officials said that none – that’s right, none – of the 21.5million Americans whose personal information was compromised two months ago in a breach of government data from the Office of Personnel Management has yet been formally notified. Meanwhile, an ex-NSA official called the OPM hack the “biggest counterintelligence threat in my lifetime.”

An FT investigation into cyber insecurity finds that, as budgets are cut, “US agencies responsible for vital national interests have been revealed to lack basic IT defenses.”

***

* POLITICS * Reaction to the Iran deal from both sides of the political spectrum predictably dominated Tuesday’s news cycle. Some of it was just as hyperbolic as you’d expect.

Karen Tumelty and Paul Kane at the Washington Post write on what the deal means for Hillary Clinton, saying that:

The 2016 Democratic presidential front-runner’s endorsement stands against nearly unanimous Republican opposition, led by denunciations from the large and growing field of GOP candidates. The clash offers further evidence that foreign policy could loom as a crucial issue in the election.

As Congressional Republicans organize their attack plan for the next 60 days, the agreement will also have serious implications for the GOP Presidential race. Eli Stokols and Katie Glueck at Politico write:

Looking past the initial race to react, the Iran deal brings two near-term shifts in the crowded Republican race.

One, it puts foreign policy even more sharply at the forefront of the campaign discussion. With Congress due to review the deal for the next couple of months, the issue of Iran and the larger Middle East turmoil will be very much a live one during the first Republican debates. That’s good news for those with foreign policy chops, and not-so-good news for those still studying up.

And two, it could give senators a perception edge currently enjoyed by governors, who typically are able to present themselves as the action-oriented executives. In this case, the senators get to not only talk the talk, but walk the walk.

The aforementioned Ted Cruz will be in New York on Wednesday to meet with the man who, in some polls, is the current Republican “front-runner.” But before that, Donald Trump had a bit of a Twitter flap to deal with.

***

* MEDIA * The Guardian reported that Google had “accidentally” revealed data on its ‘right to be forgotten’ requests.

The data, which has not been revealed publicly until now, was found during an analysis of archived versions of Google’s transparency report and details the numeric breakdown of each request and associated link by country and issue type. The underlying source code has since been updated to remove these details.

In a strange-ish story on Tuesday afternoon, Twitter said that a report that it had received an offer to be acquired, was fake. The story appeared to come from Bloomberg, but ran on a domain that had only been registered on July 10, Reuters reports. Stock in Twitter spiked some 8 per cent on the report.

***

* BUSINESS * Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen testifies before Congressional panels on Wednesday and Thursday. The Wall Street Journal looks at five topics that might come up.

http://twitter.com/DRUDGE_REPORT/status/621137204383854592

Because Black Friday isn’t enough, Wednesday is Amazon’s self-styled “Prime Day” ostensibly to celebrate the company’s 20th birthday, but as Christian Camerota writes at Harvard Business Review,

[Marketing expert Sunil] Gupta said the main goal for Amazon in hosting Prime Day will clearly be customer acquisition, whether by attracting brand new customers through the sale’s buzz, or by getting occasional shoppers to make the leap to a Prime subscription. Not to be forgotten, current Prime subscribers will benefit from large savings on big ticket items. But the company may have other motives in mind, as well, such as fending off up-and-coming online retail competition. Many other companies (Walmart among them) have begun their own membership clubs that mimic Amazon’s low costs and reduced shipping rates. In these cases, however, Gupta believes Amazon has and can exploit a distinct advantage.

***

* SPORTS * The Anaheim Angels’ Mike Trout was named MVP of Tuesday night’s baseball All-Star Game in Cincinnati. The slugger – who is now the first player to win the award in consecutive seasons – led off the game with a home run off the LA Dodgers’ Zack Grienke as the American League went on to win 6-3.

UPDATE 8AM ET, 14 July

Negotiators from the US and other world powers said  an agreement had been reached to limit Iran’s potential capability for developing nuclear weapons, in exchange for relief from economic sanctions.

Announcing what is likely to be the key foreign policy element of his tenure, President Obama said that “the deal offers an opportunity to move in a new direction. We should seize it.” Iran’s President Rouhani said the deal’s biggest achievement is “that there is a new atmosphere in the region.”

Reuters reports that the agreement caps “more than a decade of negotiations with an agreement that could transform the Middle East.”

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the deal as an “historic mistake.”

Global oil prices fell on the news, although there were no immediate details on how and when sanctions on oil might be eased.

* Follow latest updates on the BBC‘s live-blog here.

* Follow live updates from The Guardian here.

* Follow hashtag #IranDeal here.

The focus – at least in the US – now moves to Congress, where there is expected to be significant opposition during the 60-day discussion period.

Charles Krauthammer, writing in the Washington Post, calls the deal “the worst agreement in US diplomatic history.”

The devil is not in the details. It’s in the entire conception of the Iran deal, animated by President Obama’s fantastical belief that he, uniquely, could achieve detente with a fanatical Islamist regime whose foundational purpose is to cleanse the Middle East of the poisonous corruption of American power and influence.

Peter Bienart at The Atlantic writes that the deal angers President Obama’s critics because it “highlights the limits of American power.”

The actual alternatives to a deal, in other words, are grim. Which is why critics discuss them as little as possible. The deal “falls apart, and then what happens?” CBS’s John Dickerson asked House Majority Leader John Boehner on Sunday. “No deal is better than a bad deal,” Boehner replied. “And from everything that’s leaked from these negotiations, the administration has backed away from almost all of the guidelines that they set out for themselves.”

In other words, Boehner evaded the question. The only way to determine if a “bad deal” is worse than “no deal” is to consider the latter’s consequences. Which is exactly what Boehner refused to do.

Roula Khalaf at the Financial Times says the agreement represents a “victory for pragmatism in Iran” and has the potential over time to be a “geopolitical game changer in the Middle East.”

The most important political aspect of the accord is the promise of a détente between the US and Iran, whose estrangement has been a principal source of tension in the Middle East. The Iranian regime and the US are beginning to turn the page on 35 years of hostility that followed the 1979 Islamic revolution and the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran, a painful atrocity etched in the collective American memory.

Developing

MIDNIGHT ET, 13 July 2015 – Negotiators said to be ‘on brink’ of Iran nuclear deal

After 17 days of negotiations in Vienna, diplomats seem poised to finally announce on Tuesday an historic agreement on Iran’s nuclear capability.

* Follow live updates from The Guardian here.

* Follow hashtag #IranDeal here.

Vox.com has three crucial issues to watch for in any deal, while Reuters reports that the draft deal specifies that UN inspectors “would have access to all suspect Iranian sites – including military ones.”

Iranian President Rouhani tweeted an apparently congratulatory message, before abruptly deleting it and replacing it with a more cautious text.

The New York Times reports that negotiators on both sides “went virtually silent” on Monday after warning that a potential deal was still “fragile”.

The agreement runs more than 80 pages, including annexes, and covers the pace of research and development on advanced uranium enrichment, the size of nuclear stockpiles over the next 15 years and the pace at which oil, financial and other sanctions will be lifted. If a deal is announced in the coming days, Congress will have 60 days to review it, and opponents of the deal in Congress and in Israel made clear on Monday that they planned to make the most of that time.

Any agreement would likely face a tough road in Congress, as opposition at home and abroad has been well-marshalled for some time, if not perhaps fully focused.

Gov Scott Walker, who launched his Presidential campaign on Monday  – more of which later – accompanied by a former hostage from the 1979 crisis, said Iran is “not a place to do business with” and that any deal “needed to be terminated on the very first day in office”.

Overseas, the office of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyau launched a Twitter feed in Farsi to criticize the deal.

But the last, best word, as so often, goes to this flashback from The Onion ..

http://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/620694597082050561

***

* WORLD *  Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras continues his efforts to win domestic support for the proposed €86 billion ($96 billion) bailout deal and its associated austerity measures.

The Guardian writes:

Tsipras, locked in fraught negotiations with EU leaders in Brussels until Monday morning, indicated that he would carry the Athens parliament, despite some defections, in a vote on the package by Wednesday.

Determined to keep his party together ahead of an expected onslaught by MPs opposing the outlined deal, Tsipras summoned his closest allies to a meeting in Athens before a gathering of his parliamentary party on Tuesday.

New York City reached a $5.9million wrongful death settlement with the family of Eric Garner, the man whose killing a year ago following a chokehold arrest by police prompted widespread protests.

There’s a very fine piece of storytelling by Terrence McCoy in the Washington Post, on the homeless man who lives on the streets of the capital, who graduated law school with Chief Justice John Roberts.

There’s also a remarkable read in the new issue of the New Yorker by Kathryn Schulz on the coming earthquake in the Pacific Northwest.

The first sign that the Cascadia earthquake has begun will be a compressional wave, radiating outward from the fault line. Compressional waves are fast-moving, high-frequency waves, audible to dogs and certain other animals but experienced by humans only as a sudden jolt. They are not very harmful, but they are potentially very useful, since they travel fast enough to be detected by sensors thirty to ninety seconds ahead of other seismic waves. That is enough time for earthquake early-warning systems, such as those in use throughout Japan, to automatically perform a variety of lifesaving functions: shutting down railways and power plants, opening elevators and firehouse doors, alerting hospitals to halt surgeries, and triggering alarms so that the general public can take cover. The Pacific Northwest has no early-warning system. When the Cascadia earthquake begins, there will be, instead, a cacophony of barking dogs and a long, suspended, what-was-that moment before the surface waves arrive. Surface waves are slower, lower-frequency waves that move the ground both up and down and side to side: the shaking, starting in earnest.

***

* POLITICS * Scott Walker is in, and so is whomever is apparently running with him.

Jeff Greenfield writes at Politico on “primary amnesia” and what the press forgets every election season.

The key lesson we forget every four years is that the nominating process stands in sharp contrast to the general election, where “fundamentals” often hold sway. While I’m skeptical about the predictive ability of academics and experts to call an election a year or two out, there’s good evidence that a combination of variables—mostly, but not exclusively economic—can provide a useful, if sometimes blunt instrument for gauging the outcome of an election. (When you get within a week or two of a presidential Election Day, you’d be pretty reckless not to trust the kind of analysis made famous by Nate Silver.)

The Atlantic‘s John Meroney has a Q&A with former President Jimmy Carter.

Meroney: Is there more racism in the country now than when you were president?

Carter: I think there is. After the civil-rights movement was successful—about a hundred years after the end of the War Between the States, the Civil War—there was a general feeling in this country that the main elements of racism, of white superiority, had finally been overcome. With the news media showing the police abuse toward black people in some places, and the terrible events in Charleston, South Carolina, maybe we’ve been awakened to say that we’ve still got a long way to go. The burgeoning of obvious, extreme racism has been a sobering factor for us.

***

* MEDIA * There were reports that a third hearing was held in Tehran on Monday in the espionage trial of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. The New York Times reports that

Mr. Rezaian is one of at least three American citizens in Iranian prisons, an issue repeatedly raised by the American side in nuclear talks with Iran, though there has been no indication that their release would be part of any deal.

After 25 years, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoon strip Bloom County by Berke Breathed makes something of a  return, and it’s apparently all because of one of the Republican candidates…

***

* CULTURE *  Another author publishing again after an extended layoff – although hardly as funny and with presumably less waterfowl – is Harper Lee, whose Go Set A Watchman hits  bookstores. Not everyone who liked her previous work seems to be happy. Sam Sacks in the Wall Street Journal writing that for those who hold To Kill A Mockingbird dear, the “new” book will “be a test of their tolerance and capacity for forgiveness.”

***

* SPORTS * Tuesday is Major League Baseball’s All Star Game, in Cincinnati.

UPDATE, 4PM ET, 13 JULY

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has begun the tricky task of attempting to win domestic support for unpopular austerity measures to help secure a third bailout by creditors, after a marathon overnight meeting ended in a “deal” that would keep Greece in the European Union.

As Reuters reports,

..he must pass legislation to cut pensions, increase value added tax, clamp down on collective bargaining agreements and put in place quasi-automatic spending constraints. In addition, he must set 50 billion euros of public sector assets aside to be sold off under the supervision of foreign lenders and get the whole package through parliament by Wednesday.

So perhaps understandably, he faces something of a revolt, not least from within his own party.

MIDNIGHT ET, 12 JULY 

An emergency summit of Eurozone leaders is still meeting in Brussels in the early hours of Monday, in a bid to find some resolution to the quagmire that is the Greek financial crisis, and agree some immediate practical next steps.

German chancellor Angela Merkel said that “the situation is extremely difficult if you consider the economic situation in Greece and the worsening in the last few months, but what has been lost also in terms of trust and reliability.” The Washington Post writes that “this echoes what a lot of other Europeans are saying – that Greece simply cannot be trusted to deliver on its end of any deal.” But the lack of trust goes both ways.

Athens has been told its government must pass a series of sweeping austerity measures by Wednesday for discussions to begin on a possible bailout. But as the Wall Street Journal reports, supporters of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras are “struggling to understand how the new deal on the table is tougher than the one they rejected.”

http://twitter.com/EconBizFin/status/620380246303461377

Amid talk of a “humiliation” of Greece, details had spread of the creditor demands, including a €50bn transfer of Greek state assets, required ahead of discussions over a new loan. The hashtag #ThisIsACoup was quickly trending on Twitter.

Paul Krugman writes at the New York Times that the Eurogroup’s demands constitute “pure vindictiveness”.

It is, presumably, meant to be an offer Greece can’t accept; but even so, it’s a grotesque betrayal of everything the European project was supposed to stand for.

John Cassidy writes at the New Yorker on Germany’s “indecent proposal” and the claims of former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis that his German counterpart, Wolfgang Schäuble, isn’t interested in a deal to keep Greece in the Eurozone.

Dirk Kurbjuweit, in an editorial in Spiegel writes that, with so much at stake, it’s time for “realpolitik” and “small steps.”

This means that Germany must display forbearance. Germans have been forgiven for so much in their own history that they should also be capable of forgiving others. Despite mistakes made by the Greeks, solidarity remains the correct course. That’s not to suggest that the Tsipras administration can ignore the treaties Greece has with the EU. Nor should there be a debt haircut, because Spain and Portugal would demand equal treatment and that would place an unbearable strain on the euro zone. However, deferments and interest rate discounts are possible. No one should be too proud to talk about the possibility of concessions.

* Follow live updates at The Guardian here.

* Follow live updates at the BBC here.

* Follow live updates from CNBC here.

* Follow live updates from Politico here.

Meanwhile, CNN reported that Russia was preparing to throw Greece an “energy lifeline.”

Again, here are some explanations of why what’s happening, and how it gets resolved, is important:

***

* WORLD * An announcement of an Iran nuclear deal is thought to be possible on Monday, according to diplomats.

But the agreement has already attracted criticism from Republicans in the US and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

After the escape of drug baron El Chapo from Mexico‘s most secure prison, Patrick Radden Keefe writes at the New Yorker that 

Details are still emerging about the nature of the escape, but, at a press conference this morning, Mexico’s Commissioner of Public Security, Monte Alejandro Rubido, announced that Guzmán had entered a tunnel, which appears to have started inside the shower in his cell. In the tunnel, he hopped onto a motorcycle that was specially modified to run on rails, and escaped. Chapo is not one to dig his own tunnels, and according to Rubido, this passage was an industrial feat.  It featured lighting and ventilation, and extended 1.5 kilometers to a house outside the prison walls. By the time authorities searched the house, Guzmán had vanished.

And perhaps predictably..

***

* POLITICS * In what passes for “real” politics, the GOP field grows again on Monday when Wisconsin Gov Scott Walker is expected to declare his candidacy, after jumping the gun slightly on Twitter the other day. His entry brings a potential midwest electoral strategy into play for the national election, if he makes it out of the primary.

Patrick Healy at the New York Times writes that while Walker has been running strongly in GOP opinion polls in Iowa, some previous gaffes have had donors and the party hierarchy concerned.

The goal is to no longer sow doubts with comments like comparing pro-union protesters to Islamic State terrorists, refusing to answer a question about evolution, or saying he does not know if President Obama is a Christian or if he loves America.

Whether Mr. Walker can demonstrate that he has a command of the challenges facing America, and is big enough for the presidency, will be tested in the coming weeks on the campaign trail and in televised debates.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton delivers a business-themed speech at the New School in New York on Monday in which she will say that “businesses are too fixated on short-term profits, especially on Wall Street, and she will pledge to help workers get better pay and more family-friendly workplaces,” Reuters reports.

According to Politico, the end of the campaign might be closer than you think..

With the exception of the 2000 election—which was an outlier on every front—voters locked in their attitudes about the direction of the country, the state of their own well-being and the presidential candidates—and their political party—prior to the start of the general election. Once voters’ views solidified, subsequent campaign events or activities simply served to reinforce their initial perceptions about the candidate and party best prepared to lead the country.

***

* MEDIA * The government has announced details of its advisory panel which will review the future of the BBC.

***

* BUSINESS * Nintendo President Satoru Iwata died aged 55. “Video games are meant to be just one thing. Fun. Fun for everyone.”

Tiffany Hsu writes at the Los Angeles Times on the boom in luxury real estate marketing, and why it takes a $40,000 video to sell a $33million house.

***

* SPORTS * Raheem Sterling is set to become the most expensive English footballer after a £49m transfer was agreed between Liverpool and Manchester City.

(Tomorrow’s Papers Today/Daily Express)

Finally with Baseball’s All Star Game festivities under way in Cincinnati, CBS’s Major Garrett makes total and absolute sense, writing at the Washington Post that it’s finally time to End the Home Run Derby.

Baseball is a beautiful game with a startling array of subtle skills displayed within the varied geometric dimensions of every ballpark. Let the stadium for each All-Star Game become a shrine for the best baseball produces — not this clownish descent into slow-pitch slobbery.

In true pomp-rock end-times fashion, if you Google “final countdown” and “Europe” you – of course – get this…

But over the next couple of days we’ll see if the expectations of cataclysm for Greece, the Euro and the European project in general prompted by Sunday’s deadline actually come to pass.

http://twitter.com/Rwoods101/status/619146650519498752

http://twitter.com/dominicru/status/619146198608420864

Here are a couple of places to follow along as the story unfolds:

* The Guardian‘s live blog is here

***

* Due to unforeseen circumstances – not anything to do with yesterday’s “glitches” I promise – the next Note update will be at the weekend. There will definitely be plenty to talk about.