CEASEFIRE AND FIRE: Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon continue to shoot at each other, endangering the US agreement with Iran to hammer out a permanent peace deal. Iran has made peace contingent upon  an end to fighting in Lebanon.

  An Israeli military official said the Iran-backed Hezbollah fired more than 50 weapons at Israeli forces in southern Lebanon overnight, prompting Israeli return strikes. 

  Iran pulled out of talks scheduled to start yesterday in Switzerland because of the continued fighting in Lebanon.

REFLECTIONS: Critics of Donald Trump have been gleeful about the problems at the refurbished National Mall reflecting pool with an algae bloom and failure of the blue coating on the pool’s bottom. 

  The “American Flag Blue” bottom coating has been floating up in sheets. But President Trump attributes the troubles to vandalism, saying on his Truth Social that, “they destroyed the grass outside of the Pool, they’ve also done everything possible to hurt the inside surface that was just installed.” Trump claimed chemicals were used to destroy the blue bottom and “Lightweight ABC Reporter, Jonathan Karl, was seen sticking his hand into the Pool, and trying to rip the rubber off of the surface.”

  Karl, in fact, in a television report on failure of the blue bottom had picked up a blue sheet that was floating to the surface. 

  Trump claimed, “The algae is 75% gone, and the condition will soon be completely remedied, and the area that was vandalized, fortunately, is just a small area of damage, and will be fixed early next week.” 

THAT’S PRESIDENTIAL: Speaking at the opening of his presidential library in Chicago on Thursday, President Barack Obama reflected on his arrival in Chicago going to work as a community organizer at age 23. 

  “I was possessed with this abiding faith that if we could give people more of a say in the forces that governed their lives,” he said, “if we could bridge some of the differences that drove us apart, then we could build an America where everyone counts, and everyone has a fair shot, and everyone belongs, even a mixed-race kid with a weird backstory and a name nobody could pronounce.”

  He said, “I learned leadership has less to do with titles or rank, or chasing attention than with helping others find their voice, reaching their potential.”

  “I am not immune to anger or doubt, but I do know this,” Obama said. “When we lose faith in each other, when we stop believing that voting matters, that citizenship matters, that our collective voices matter, that how we treat each other no longer matters, and then we give away our power to decide our futures, we open the door to the most ruthless, or the most careless, or the most fearful among us, who see some groups and some people as more equal than others, and see government as nothing more than a way to divvy up the spoils and punish enemies, and keep those who are different in their place.”

INFINITE SCROLL:

—  President  Trump’s relationship with Italy’s right wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is fraying since she would not join the war against Iran. And then there’s the photo dispute.

  Ttump claimed that Meloni “begged” him to have her picture taken with the First Ego while at the G-7 summit in France. Meloni posted a video saying, “Italy and I never beg.”

— President Donald Trump yesterday visited the Qatari 747 jumbo jet that has been converted to serve as Air Force One. Trump said the jet will deliver “a level of luxury that nobody’s ever seen before.”

  The jet that formerly flew the Qatari royal family was given to Trump by Qatar.

  “I asked the emir if we could use the brand new 747,” Trump said. “I said, ‘We’d like to use it for a little while, because the planes are pretty old, our planes are old.’ See, a normal president wouldn’t do this.”

  That’s true.

ON THE PITCH: The US men’s soccer team secured a spot in the World Cup knockout round yesterday, beating Australia 2-0 in Seattle. The Americans were missing their star, Christian Pulisic, who had an injured calf muscle.

THE OBIT PAGE: James Bradley, who wrote the best-selling book “Flags of Our Fathers” about the men who raised the American flag on Mt. Suribachi in the battle for Iwo Jima, died on June 5^th at age 72.

  Bradley began researching the book because he thought his father had been one of the men raising the flag, which turned out not to be so.

  The book about the six men who raised the flag spent 46 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list.

THE SPIN RACK: Judith Sheldon, 84, the daughter of  Oscar-winning director William Wyler, and her husband, Wylie, 86, were found dead in their running car in Oregon Monday on their route to a Shakespeare festival in Ashland. The Sheldons were devoted patrons of film and the arts. Investigators are looking into whether extreme heat and a failure of air conditioning contributed to the Sheldons’ deaths.  —  The Los Angeles Police Department released bodycam footage of an incident in which officers responding to a call about a woman screaming “Oh my God!” for 20 minutes ended up shooting her Bernadoodle dog. The woman had been screaming because she was a New York Knicks fan cheering their championship game.

BELOW THE FOLD: Back when presidents were presidential, Barack Obama shocked the country wearing a tan suit to a press conference. No obscenities or tearing down the East Wing of the White House, just a tan suit was the target of opprobrium.

  Fast forward to this week when in humor and honor of the graceful former president, a string of notables and comedians including Stephen Colbert and David Letterman wore tan suits to the opening of Obama’s presidential library.