Stars and Bars: The movement to cast out the Confederate flag is quickly growing. So far the big retailers Walmart, Sears, Amazon, eBay and Etsy all say they won’t sell the flag or merchandise that features it.

In Charleston yesterday a crowd of about 1,000 people chanting “Take it down, take it down,” rallied at the South Carolina State Capitol for the removal of the Confederate flag from the Capitol grounds. Legislators passed a resolution to consider a law to strike the flag.

The Reuters news agency quotes state legislator Leon Howard saying, “Anyone who gets in front of this train is going to get run over.”

The train might run through other states as well. In Virginia, Gov. Terry McAuliffe, says it doesn’t belong on the license plate and Mississippi’s house speaker said it should be removed from the state flag.

Faster: The Senate is expected today to give President Obama what he desperately wants; fast track authority to negotiate the big Pacific trade deal. It took 60 votes to close debate yesterday, but passage will require only 51.

Nation: Convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is scheduled to be formally sentenced to death today in a Boston court. More than 20 victims and survivors will be there to speak about the impact of the bombing on their lives.

The Gathering Crowd: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindahl is expected to announce today that he’s a candidate for the Republican nomination for president. He’ll be number 25.

World: French President Francois Hollande has called an emergency meeting of his defense council following the Wikileaks release of documents that say the US spied on the last three French presidents. And he has summoned the US ambassador. The documents say the US even recorded cellphone conversations.

>As many as 750 people died during a three-day heat wave in Karachi, Pakistan. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif declared an emergency, but wind and rain have cooled the air. Many of the dead have been the homeless, drug addicts, and the elderly.

The Food Chain: Once the big fish that ate Time Warner, AOL has been gobbled up by Verizon in a $4.4 billion deal. At the beginning of Internet time AOL was the king of dialup service. It’s now best known for owning The Huffington Post.

Extreme Makeover: Coty, Inc., the fashion and makeup conglomerate, is paying its new CEO $1.8 million to go away, more than a month before he was supposed to start the job. After signing Elio Leoni Sceti, Coty decided to buy a $12 billion piece of Proctor & Gamble. Then they decided that their new guy wasn’t up to the job of running the bigger company.

The Obit Page: Actor Dick Van Patten, who played the father on the long-running television show Eight Is Enough, died yesterday in Santa Monica, Calif. at age 86. Van Patten’s television career spanned from 1949 with I Remember Mamma to 2011 with an appearance on Hot in Cleveland.

Van Patten was also an animal lover who founded the successful company Dick Van Patten’s Natural Balance Pet Foods.

> Donald Featherstone, who created the pink plastic lawn flamingo has died at age 79. He made the plastic flamingo for a Massachusetts plastics company after seeing a picture in National Geographic and the suburbs were never the same. John Waters even named a movie after them. “Pink Flamingos.”

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