Shock and Anger: The initial shock after the enormous explosion in Beirut Tuesday is turning into national anger over the decision by port authorities to store thousands of pounds of highly explosive ammonium nitrate fertilizer in a place where it could lead to disaster.

  The people responsible have been put under house arrest.

  Much of Beirut is devastated, reduced to rubble. Thousands of buildings are damaged or destroyed. A wedding photographer captured the moment a bride was blown away. As rescuers dig for the injured and dead. At least 137 people are confirmed dead and 5,000 injured.

  The ammonium nitrate came from a financially-troubled Russian ship abandoned in the port in 2013. Port officials decided to store it right next to critical facilities and in dangerous proximity to the heart of the city.

Virtual Politics: Vice President Joe Biden says’ he’ll skip the Democratic Party’s Milwaukee convention and accept his party’s nomination for president from Delaware. Donald Trump told Fox News he’s considering accepting the Republican nomination from the White House, what may be a first-ever use of  the White House for as a purely political background.

  Trump said the law forbidding political activity on government property doesn’t pertain to the President.

  The FiveThirtyEight blog reports that with the election three months away, Biden is now up by 8 percentage points in the national polling average, and he has an advantage of 5 points or more in key battleground states like Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

  In Arizona, Trump said there’s going to be so much chaos in the November voting that “You’ll never know who the winner is, but the winner is going to be me.”

Short Count: As President Trump continues to claim there’s an enormous threat posed to American democracy by mail ballots in the November election, earlier this week he ordered the Census Bureau to end its count of the country’s population a month early. That gives the Census Bureau six weeks to finish counting about 40 percent of households, many of them the most difficult to reach.

  This latest comes on top of the President’s order to skip counting undocumented immigrants.

  The census by law is supposed to count everyone in the country, legally present or not. The count is used to draw congressional districts and apportion federal money to the states and localities. Counting fewer people, particularly in crowded Democratic districts, gives a political advantage to Republicans. 

Viral News: Facebook and Twitter for the first time yesterday took down a post by President Trump on the grounds that it violated the company’s policy against distributing misleading information about the coronavirus.

  Trump had posted a clip from a Fox News interview in which he said children are “almost immune” to the coronavirus. Trump said, “If you look at children, children are almost — and I would almost say definitely — but almost immune from this disease.” While most children don’t seem to get as sick as adults, they do get the virus and some have died.

  Facebook said in a statement that, “This video includes false claims.” 

  CNN’s Brian Stelter points out that, “The action means that — on this issue — the two tech giants have enforced higher standards on their platforms than the Murdoch family has enforced on Fox News.” 

  The day after school resumed in two suburban Atlanta school districts, a second grader tested positive for the coronavirus, forcing the child’s teacher and classmates to be sent home to quarantine for two weeks. 

  Despite pressure from the Trump administration, the Chicago Public Schools, the third largest system in the country, abandoned plans to have some students return to classrooms and announced a fully remote learning plan for the fall.

  With coronavirus deaths spiking again, another 1,429 Americans died of the virus in the past 24 hours. The total is now 158,268.

The Bulletin Board: The former Atlanta police officer, charged with shooting an unarmed black man in that back as he ran away in a Wendy’s parking lot, has sued the city’s mayor and interim police chief over his firing. Lawyers say in the complaint that former officer Garrett Rolfe “has become a public spectacle and object of ridicule.” — Iowa’s Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed an executive order restoring voting rights to tens of thousands of convicted felons who have completed their sentences. Murderers would have to make a special appeal for restoration of rights. — Hit by pandemic losses and planning moves to more streaming services, NBCUniversal is laying off as much as 10 percent of its 35,000 employees. 

The Obit Page: Pete Hamill, the street smart New York tabloid reporter and columnist who rose to influence amidst the clack of typewriters and the shout of “Copy!,” has died in his home borough of Brooklyn at age 85.

  In addition to his columns, Hamill essays and at least 20 books.

  It seems he had every job in print and covered every major story. Hamill became the top editor of both The New York Post and The Daily News.

He was only a few feet away when Sen. Bobby Kennedy was assassinated and helped tackle the killer. He covered Vietnam, Nicaragua, Lebanon and Northern Ireland. 

  Hamill’s basic beat was New York, which he wrote about in prose used as a blunt instrument to pound sense into the city.  He wrote about murders, strikes, the World Series, championship fights, and politics before retiring for the rest of the evening to the Lion’s Head bar in Greenwich Village, where he’d have more than one.

  He once wrote that, “I think if you had to choose between running a tabloid and being president of the United States, of course you’d run the tabloid, especially in New York.”

-30-