INCOMING MESSAGE: Nearly 3,000 people were wounded and twelve killed yesterday when pagers belonging to Hezbollah militants in Lebanon simultaneously exploded. Lebanon’s health minister said in a press conference that the dead included a child and at least 2,780 people were wounded, including 200 in serious condition.

   Fourteen people were reported injured by pager explosions in Syria.

  The pager attack has the earmarks of an Israeli operation but Israel made no comment about it. In an incredible military/intelligence scheme, Israel is reported to have intercepted pagers made in Taiwan and inserted a small amount of explosives with detonators.

  Hospitals reported seeing many patients with hand, eye, and facial wounds as if the wounded were reading a message at the time their device exploded. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon was one of those wounded in his hand and face when his pager exploded, according to Iranian state media reports.

  Hezbollah has been using pagers for years as a more secure method for passing messages. The NY Times reports according a security source that the pagers were programmed to beep for several seconds before exploding.

  The pager attack came just a day after Israel warned of a stepped-up military campaign against Hezbollah, which has been firing rockets into northern Israel in support of the warring Hamas in Gaza.

 BAD BOY: A federal judge yesterday ordered music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs to be held without bail for now on charges of sex trafficking, racketeering, and transportation to engage in prostitution.

 The 14-page indictment unsealed yesterday after Combs’ Monday night arrest accuses the hard-partying 54-year-old of running a “criminal enterprise” that for 16 years threatened, abused, and coerced women. He’s accused of forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice. 

  The indictment says Combs staged sex and drug parties he called “Freak Offs” that sometimes lasted for days. Searches of Combs’ homes found narcotics, videos of the “Freak Offs,” more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant, as well as three AR-15 rifles with defaced serial numbers. 

  Marc Agnifilo, one of Combs’ lawyers, said his client is innocent and that the parties did not amount to sex trafficking, “Not if everybody wants to be there.”   

  The indictment of Combs is the biggest in the music world since the conviction R. Kelly, the R&B singer who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for child sex crimes, sex trafficking, and racketeering. The Combs indictment charges that he manipulated women with drugs and financial leverage  to have sex with male prostitutes. It also says that he abused women by “striking, punching, dragging, throwing objects at, and kicking them.”

SUCCESSION: Fox News patriarch Rupert Murdoch is in court in Reno, Nevada attempting to alter the irrevocable trust that gives his four oldest children equal votes over the future of the company.

  Murdoch’s problem is that he fears that his three more moderate offspring, James, Elisabeth and Prudence, will change the right wing and make it into something resembling a real news organization. Rupert wants his fellow-traveler son Lachlan to carry on with Fox as it is. That requires breaking the irrevocable trust.

  Rupert’s ideologically wayward son James hosted a fundraiser for Joe Biden in 2022 and recently endorsed Kamala Harris for president. James Murdoch believes Fox News is poisonous to democracy and wants to correct it. His father doesn’t like that. A story in the Rupert-owned Wall Street Journal said he “is arguing that shifting voting control of the trust to Lachlan should be allowed because it is in the best interest of all the beneficiaries, including his other children.”

BY THE NUMBERS: The latest poll by USA Today has Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by three points in the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania, but polling always presents a mixed picture. Insider Advantage says Trump leads by two points in Pennsylvania.

  The Real Clear Politics average of polls says Harris leads by two points nationally and though she led in four of seven battlegrounds just a few days ago now she’s down to three, according to RCP.

SECURITY BREECH: Donald Trump and running mate JD Vance are blaming liberals and Democrats for attempts on the former president’s life.

  “Don’t lecture Donald Trump about softening his rhetoric after two people tried to kill him,” Vance said. “It’s ridiculous. Tell Kamala Harris. Tell Joe Biden, tell all of her surrogates who are saying things like ‘Donald Trump needs to be eliminated.’ They need to cut that crap out, or somebody’s going to get hurt.”

  Trump has called Harris a Marxist, a communist, and a fascist yet he told Fox News Digital that, “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside and out.” 

  Following the disruption of a likely attempted assassination on Sunday, Trump has been told by the Secret Service that there will have to be more planning and security if he intends to keep playing golf.

  Trump went to play on short notice Sunday in West Palm Beach where a gunman was waiting behind a fence on the course perimeter. The Secret Service had not cleared the full course before Trump teed off, although an agent spotted a rifle barrel poking through bushes and opened fire.

THE SPIN RACK: The federal Reserve is expected to lower interest rates today, beginning to wind down higher rates to fight inflation. — The Miami Dolphins placed starting quarterback Tua Tagovailoa on injured reserve following his latest concussion last Thursday against Buffalo. 

BELOW THE FOLD: Tupperware, the original company that made plastic containers for preserving food, has filed for bankruptcy. Invented in the 1940s by the chemist Earl Tupper, Tupperware used to sell by direct marketing through “Tupperware Parties,” but housewives no longer put on cocktail dresses and serve martinis in the afternoon.

-30-