THE COCONUT TREE: Former President Donald Trump said late yesterday that he would debate Vice President Kamala Harris on September 4th in an event to be moderated by Fox News.  The debate would take place in Pennsylvania, a critical battleground state.

  The Vice President has not announced whether she agrees to do it.

  Harris has secured enough delegates to lock down the nomination for president, according to the Democratic National Committee. She would be the first Black woman and person of South Asian heritage to run at the top of a major party’s ticket.

  It will be official when the party’s virtual roll call vote ends on Monday. Harris is meeting over the weekend with the final candidates to be her running mate.

THE BIG SWAP: Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and other prisoners freed from Russia were taken to a medical facility in Texas for evaluation and counseling.

  Critics of the deal say it will only encourage lawless countries like Russia to grab innocent people as trading cards.

  One of the Russian dissidents who were part of the swap, Ilya Yashin, said he was traded into exile against his will and had told his jailers he did not want to leave Russia even if it meant staying in prison.

  “I will never make peace with the role of an emigrant,” the 41-year-old Yashin said at a news conference in Germany.

  He told reporters that he wrote a statement before he was moved from his penal colony that, “The Russian Constitution bans sending a citizen of the Russian Federation abroad without his consent. As a Russian citizen, I confirm that I do not give permission to be sent outside of Russia.”

  On the other side of the swap, a Russian couple straight out of an espionage movie arrived back home. Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva had been posing as an Argentinian couple in Slovenia where they were caught and convicted of spying. Their two children, a boy and a girl, flew back to Russia with them and only when they were on the plane did the kids learn that they were actually Russians. They don’t speak the language.

  The family was greeted on the tarmac by President Vladimir Putin and the children had no idea who he was.

THE USUAL SUSPECTS: Following the embarrassing security breach that led to the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, Iran has arrested more than two dozen people, including senior intelligence officers, military officials, and staffers at the military-run guesthouse in Tehran where a planted bomb killed Haniyeh and his bodyguard.

  It was, in part, an inside job but it is believed to have been engineered by Israel. The Revolutionary Guards Corps’ specialized intelligence unit for espionage has taken over the investigation, a frightening thing for anyone who might be a suspect. 

  With Iran threatening massive payback for the assassination, possibly triggering all-out war, the US is sending a carrier strike group, a fighter squadron and additional warships to the Middle East.

DEALBREAKER: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin yesterday cancelled the plea agreement that would have allowed the mastermind of the September 11th attacks and two accomplices to avoid the death penalty. 

  The Pentagon also removed from the case the retired Brigadier general who had approved the deal for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Many families of the nearly 3,000 dead were outraged at the plea deal. Austin said that because of the gravity of the case, the “responsibility for such a decision should rest with me.” 

FIVE RINGS: The US leads the Olympic medal race with 44, nine of them gold. France is second with 37 and China third with 31.

DREAM ON: The timeless rock band Aerosmith announced that it will stop touring because lead singer Steven Tyler has been unable to recover from an injury to his voice. He’s been screaming “Dream On” since 1973 and he’s now 76.

   “We’ve seen him struggling despite having the best medical team by his side,” the band said in a statement on its website.  “Sadly, it is clear, that a full recovery from his vocal injury is not possible. We have made a heartbreaking and difficult, but necessary, decision — as a band of brothers — to retire from the touring stage.”

THE SPIN RACK:  A New York judge awarded the heir of an art collector killed in the Holocaust a multi-million dollar painting looted by the Nazis. The 1917 piece “Portrait of the Artist’s Wife” by Viennese artist Egon Schiele’s, was awarded to Eva Zirk of the Bronx, the only surviving heir of Karl Maylander, an Austrian art collector who owned the painting before he was deported to Poland and killed by the Nazis. — At least 32 people were killed and dozens injured in a suicide attack at a beach restaurant in the Somali capital of Mogadishu yesterday. Six members of the Somali militant group al-Shabaab attacked the restaurant. Five attackers were reported to have been killed. 

BELOW THE FOLD: The New York Post and its photographers like to follow Bianca Censori, the current wife of Kanye West who appears frequently dressed nearly naked in public. She wears transparent outfits and sometimes almost no outfit at all. She has the body for it. The paper often has to blur certain spots in photos of the buxom Censori but you get the idea.

  In their latest report they show Censori dressed head to toe in a fishnet bodysuit. The headline: “Un-Censori-ed.”

For an audio review of the week’s news, click here.

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