Greece: Banks opened today after three weeks of closure and Greeks woke up to a stiffly higher Value Added Tax of 23 percent on goods and services.

The daily cash withdrawal limit of $65 has been raised to a weekly $455, possibly relieving the long lines at ATM machines.

Greece agreed to some difficult stipulations in exchange for a three-year $95 billion cash infusion from the European Union. The retirement age will rise to 66 and the government must sell off publicly held assets including the electricity network. The agreement says, “Valuable Greek assets will be transferred to an independent fund that will monetize the assets through privatizations and other means.”

Nation: The Cuban flag is expected to be raised today over a Washington DC mansion that will serve as the Cuban embassy. The US and Cuba formally re-establish diplomatic relations today for the first time in 54 years.

>A rare July rainstorm over the weekend caused flooding that washed out a bridge and severed the I-10 freeway in California, the primary East/West artery between Los Angeles and Phoenix. It’s one of the busiest roads in the country and it is closed indefinitely.

This was an odd event for drought-stricken Southern California ,which rarely gets rain in the summer even in the best of years. The .36 inches of rain that fell in downtown Los Angeles broke a record set in July 1886. More rain is expected today.

World: Japan’s Mitsubishi corporation has apologized for using American prisoners of war as slave labor during World War II. While the Japanese government has previously apologized, this is the first time a major company has said it’s sorry.

Permawar: Eight Afghan soldiers have been killed in a US strike on a military checkpoint in an incident of so-called “friendly fire.” The Pentagon said two US helicopters had been fired upon and they shot back.

>A suicide bomber killed at least 27 people and wounded 100 in an explosion at a cultural center in a small Turkish town on the Syrian border.

>At least 43 people were killed and 120 wounded when Houthi rebels shelled the Yemen city of Aden yesterday. Aden has been the object of heavy fighting in recent months, but government troops took it back from the rebels with the help of Saudi Arabian air strikes.

Politix: Long shot Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders is packing in the crowds at his campaign events, speaking to 11,000 people in Phoenix yesterday. “Somebody told me Arizona is a conservative state,” he said at the Phoenix Convention Center. “Somebody told me the people here are giving up on the political process. That’s not what I see here tonight.”

Sanders appears to be collecting bigger crowds than frontrunner Hillary Clinton, but he’s 30 points behind her in the polls. She’s at 57 percent of Democratic voters and he’s just shy of 18 percent.

The Obit Page: Alex Rocco, the actor whose character Moe Greene was shot right through the eyeglasses on a Las Vegas massage table in “The Godfather,” has died at 79 in Studio City, California. Moe Greene was famous for talking back to Michael Corleone asking, “Do you know who I am?” Dead was what he was after that.

Rocco alternated between playing thugs and friendly fathers. He once said, “It always seems like if I’m not killing somebody, violently, I’m playing somebody’s dad.”