Duck Disaster: Eleven people are dead and five missing after an amphibious duck boat capsized during a violent storm on a lake in Branson, Mo. Several children are among the dead. Another seven people are in the hospital, two of them in critical condition.

Divers worked until dark before they suspended their efforts.

Duck boats were created for use during World War II to ferry troops and supplies. They have been converted for civilian use, but they’ve been involved in some serious disasters. In 2015 in Seattle five college students were killed when a boat collided with a bus. Thirteen people died in 1999 after a duck sank near Hot Springs, Arkansas.

His Buddy, Vladimir: President Trump proposed a second meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to be held in Washington this fall even though his top advisers, including Director of National Security Dan Coats, have no idea what was said between the two men in Helsinki during their first one-on-one.

Allowing Putin in Washington would be equivalent to forgiving him for everything he’s done, from annexing Crimea to meddling with the US election.

Informed on stage by NBC’s Andrea Mitchell at the Aspen Security Forum that Trump made the invitation, Coats responded, “Say that again.” And when he recovered he said, “That’s gonna be special.”

Some days it’s near to impossible to explain Trump’s gyrations.

Yesterday — and it’s the third day in a row he’s had to retract something — he pulled back on what he had said was an “incredible” offer by Putin to give access to 12 Russian agents indicted for hacking the US election in exchange for allowing Russia to interrogate former US Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul. That would be part of what has been described as part of a politically-motivated case against William Browder, an American-born financier critical of Putin.

“It is a proposal that was made in sincerity by President Putin, but President Trump disagrees with it,” press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said in a statement. “Hopefully, President Putin will have the 12 identified Russians come to the United States to prove their innocence or guilt.” Like that would ever happen.

The Roundup: Denis Ten, the Kazakh skater who won Olympic bronze in Sochi, died after being stabbed in the streets of Almaty, Kazakhstan. He was 25. — Senate Republicans canned Ryan Bounds, President trump’s nominee to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, just minutes before he was to get a confirmation vote. Republican Tim Scott of South Carolina, the Senate’s only black member, was unhappy about things Bounds wrote disparaging multiculturalism while he was a student at Stanford University. — The Interior Department proposed drastic changes to the Endangered Species Act to make it easier for roads, pipelines and other construction projects to cut through undisturbed areas vital to wildlife. The Endangered Species Act has always been controversial, particularly in the West where development and exploitation of natural resources clash, but it’s what made possible the return of wolves, the bald eagle, and the Yellowstone grizzly bear.

Average Joe: In the quest for someone who can talk about what’s going on in America, journalists routinely search the suburbs and trailer parks for what they call the “Average Joe.” A man named Greg Packer, a retired maintenance worker, made somewhat of a career out of it. He managed to have himself noticed and interviewed by the press about 1,000 times. Packer appeared in so many stories that the Associated Press sent out a bulletin banning its reporters from quoting him.

Packer is now the subject of a short documentary called, “The Most Quoted Man in the News.” Producer Andrew David Watson said, “Greg is so used to quickly coming up with the best short sound bite that getting him to answer a question with more than five words proved difficult.”

The Obit Page: Adrian Cronauer, the former Air Force disc jockey who was the inspiration for Robin Williams’ character in the movie “Good Morning, Vietnam” has died at age 79. A lot of the movie took liberties with Cronauer’s real story, but he did use the wakeup call, “Gooooooood Morning, Vietnam!”

Appearances: Time magazine has published a cover on which the faces of Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Trump meld into each other to make one creepy face. Fortunately for both, few people even know Time exists anymore.

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