EXCLUSIVE CLUB: NATO leaders issued a joint statement saying Ukraine will be invited to join while remaining vague on how and when that might happen. The alliance leaders meeting in Lithuania struggled with language to describe a timeline and conditions for what everyone agrees will be Ukraine’s eventual membership. 

  This backs up President Joe Biden’s comments this past weekend that Ukraine is “not ready” to be a part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization which pledges mutual defense for all its members. The NATO statement said there would be regular reviews of Ukraine’s progress toward meeting NATO standards on democracy and military integration.

  Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky praised NATO for its decision while refraining from criticizing the organization for not allowing Ukraine in immediately.

ECON 101: Inflation is easing but recession is lurking.  

  Numbers to be released today are expected to show that inflation is still coming down. The Consumer Price Index rose just over 3 percent in the year through June, according to economists, dramatically lower than the roughly 9 percent peak last summer.

  At the same time, the so-called “yield curve,” an index that tracks government bonds, suggests a softening economy that will require propping up with lower interest rates.

THE WAR ROOM: A Russian submarine captain who was on a Ukrainian blacklist of suspected war criminals was ambushed and killed while on his morning run. Stanislav Rzhitsky, 42, was shot four times in the back and chest Monday in a park in the southern city of Krasnodar, Russian authorities confirmed.

  Rzhitsky had shared his route on a workout app and investigators believe the hit man intentionally got him in a spot not covered by security cameras. On Tuesday, the word “Liquidated” in red letters was superimposed on Rzhitsky’s photo on the blacklist site.

ORANGE ALERT: In characteristic fashion, Donald Trump and his lawyers claim they will present“unprecedented” pre-trial arguments that will require US District Judge Aileen Cannon to consider legal questions that have likely never previously been before a court.

  Lawyers for Trump and his co-defendant Walt Nauta also say it will not be possible to seat an impartial jury while the presidential campaign is underway, even though the target date is December before the first presidential primary.

  “This extraordinary case presents a serious challenge to both the fact and perception of our American democracy,” Trump’s and Nauta’s legal teams wrote in the joint filing. “The Court now presides over a prosecution advanced by the administration of a sitting President against his chief political rival, himself a leading candidate for the Presidency of the United States.”

  One thing Trump plans to argue is whether the classified documents he’s accused of illegally possessing and mishandling were actually classified.

  Trump once claimed he could declassify documents “just by thinking about it.”

100-YARD PENALTY: Northwestern University football coach Pat Fitzgerald has been fired as the result of an investigation into the hazing of players. A statement from the university said it had no evidence that Fitzgerald knew about the hazing, but should have.

  The university’s student newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, published an article detailing a former player’s experience with the hazing practice known as “running” used to punish players, primarily freshman, for mistakes made in games and practice. 

  The paper reported that two players confirmed that the target would be restrained by a group of 8-10 upperclassmen dressed in “Purge-like” masks, who would then begin “dry-humping” the victim in a dark locker room. 

  The player told The Daily  that there was a signal of clapping hands over a player’s head, indicating that he was due for “running,” and that Coach Fitzgerald was sometimes seen giving that signal.

THE AGE OF MAN: Like the Triassic, Cenozoic, and Mesozoic ages, scientists have dubbed the age of mankind’s dominance of Earth the Anthropocene, derived from the Greek terms for “human” and “new.”

  They say this period began sometime between 1950 and 1954 with the worldwide impact of burning fossil fuels, detonating nuclear weapons, and dumping fertilizers, chemicals, and plastics on land and in waterways. Scientists compare this to the impact of the meteorite that crashed into Earth 66 million years ago, killing off dinosaurs and starting the Cenozoic Era, the age of mammals. 

THE OBIT PAGE: Milan Kundera, the author of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” who wrote about the absurdity of life in communist Czechoslovakia, has died at age 94.

  Kundera came to literary note about the time of the Prague Spring, the hopeful 1968 protest movement that attempted to throw off communist rule. The movement was crushed by Russian tanks and Kundera’s first novel, “The Joke,” was banned.

  His most popular novel, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” features Tomas, a surgeon who criticizes the Communist leadership and is reduced to being a window washer.  The married Tomas throws off his cares by being a philandering husband, creating a “lightness of being.”

THE SPIN RACK: Iowa Republican-dominated legislature last night passed a bill banning most abortions in the state after six weeks. The legislation was passed in a one-day special session called by Gov. Kim Reynolds for the “sole purpose” of enacting new restrictions on abortion. It includes exceptions for rape, incest, and some medical conditions. — Manson family member Leslie Van Houten, who took part in the “Helter Skelter” cult murders in 1969, has been released from prison on parole at age 73. — Seventeen homes in the Southern California neighborhood Rolling Hills estates have had to be abandoned because of a slow-moving landslide causing the houses to crack and crumble. 

BELOW THE FOLD: After first refusing to qualify white nationalists as racists, just “Americans,” Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville woke up and reversed himself, denouncing white nationalists as what they say they are, racists. Evidently Tuberville had to be told that people who avow that they are racists are actually racists. 

-30-