THE NEW SILK ROAD: China May Soon Establish Naval Base in U.S. Ally Pakistan.

“Ally” seems a little much.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: New Satellite Imaging To Better Forecast Locust Plagues.

ANDREW MCCARTHY: A Tweet Is Just a Tweet – It Tells Us Nothing about Whether Trump Is Under Investigation.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Using Texts as Lures, Government Spyware Targets Mexican Journalists and Their Families.

Human rights advocates and journalists tell The New York Times that Mexican officials are using malware called “Pegasus” designed to track terrorists to instead follow the movements and surveil the communications of reporters:

“Mexican security agencies wouldn’t ask for a court order, because they know they wouldn’t get one,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a former analyst at the Center for Investigation and National Security, Mexico’s intelligence agency and one of the government agencies that use the Pegasus spyware. “I mean, how could a judge authorize surveillance of someone dedicated to the protection of human rights?”

Better to ask forgiveness than permission, I suppose. The unanswered question: If any of these journalists worked for US news organizations, and US-based computer systems were targeted, isn’t this as much or more of an “act of war” as what Julian Assange’s people (and allegedly the Russians) did to Clinton’s homebrew server? Or is the “hacking of our democracy” just an excuse to get Trump’s head on a stick?

Humblebrag: I worked with Bloomberg reporter Vernon Silver five years ago, exposing the use of a similar malware called “Finfisher” employed by Bahrain and Egypt to make dissidents “disappear.”

AT AMAZON, savings galore in Industrial and Scientific.

Plus, deals on Mowers and Outdoor Power Tools.

ICYMI, IT’S GLENN’S USA TODAY COLUMN: We need a Robert Mueller resignation or a second special counsel.

CHANGE IT BACK: Cuban Foreign Minister Hits Out at Trump for Hardening U.S. Stance.

NOTHINGBURGER: Jones Short on Straight Answers in Kelly Interview.

For all the hype, it was distinctly unremarked-upon last night on social media.

HILLARY CLINTON POLITICIZES WONDER WOMAN, SAYING SHE RELATES TO ‘STRONG WOMAN SAVING WORLD FROM DISASTER:’

“Now I haven’t seen Wonder Woman yet, but I’m going to, in part because it’s directed by the fabulous Patty Jenkins.

“But something tells me that a movie about a strong, powerful woman fighting to save the world from a massive international disaster is right up my alley.”

A source at Warner Brothers, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Heat Street: “It’s great that Hillary Clinton will see the movie but her remarks aren’t particularly helpful and our publicity team certainly won’t be spreading them about.

“Wonder Woman doesn’t need Hillary Clinton’s endorsement—it will make $250 million by the end of this week. We’re anxious to keep  politics out of Wonder Woman any way we can.

Translation: STFU Hillary – everyone at Time-Warner-CNN-HBO will vote for you if you run again, but in the meantime, we really don’t want the hyper-politicized debacle that sank Columbia’s Lady Ghostbusters last year. Please.

PEAK OIL: Rosneft Discovers Oil in Laptev Sea.

Russian oil major Rosneft has discovered oil in the Laptev Sea after drilling its northernmost exploratory well on the Eastern Arctic shelf.

The Tsentralno-Olginskaya-1 well was the first well drilled in the Laptev Sea and is located in the Khatanga license area which has water depths of up to 32 meters (105 feet). The company was awarded the license in November 2015 and began drilling in April this year.

The Khatanga field’s resource potential is yet to be confirmed, but seismic studies indicate 114 promising oil and gas-bearing structures, and preliminary estimates are that the sea may have a resource potential of 9.5 billion tons of oil equivalent.

Is there anywhere not awash in the stuff?

AMAZON EATS WHOLE FOODS: Why M&A Strategy (And Your Retail Experience) Just Changed Forever.

Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods is truly in a class of its own. None of the conventional reasons can explain the acquisition. For one, Amazon won’t be consolidating the grocery sector. By the end of 2016, Walmart commanded the lion’s share with 14.45% in the food and grocery market. Whole Foods had a paltry 1.21%, while Amazon’s share was negligible at 0.19%. The product categories between Amazon and Whole Foods are also so distant that it’s hard to imagine a viable “one-stop shopping” strategy. It’s unlikely that quinoa lovers would pick up an e-reader or set of Wi-Fi speakers while shopping at Whole Foods. And Whole Foods itself is definitely not going to disrupt Amazon.

Still, with Whole Foods under its belt, Amazon could take its retail experimentation to a whole new level. Famous for the “test and learn” approach, CEO Jeff Bezos has been opening physical bookstores and cashier-less convenience stores. Upon visiting any of Amazon’s bookstores, one would discover the unusual tweaks everywhere; each book is positioned with its cover exposed, rather than showing the spine, as is customary in a traditional store. Small black cards are placed below each book with customer review data pulled from Amazon’s website.

“We love that mixture between creativity and data, and understanding our customers and continually trying to learn how we can make a better store for them,” Jennifer Cast, VP of Amazon Books, told Geekwire. But these physical stores are not merely distribution channels; there are only a few of them. They are research laboratories.

I’ve joked that “synergy” is the word CEOs use to rationalize a merger with no real business case or whose numbers just don’t add up, so it will be interesting to see what Bezos is actually up to with Whole Foods and whether he can make it work.

SPENGLER: China leapfrogs US in critical strategic technology.

ELECTRONIC WARFARE: The Army Can Now Stop Enemy Tanks In Their Tracks Without Firing A Shot.

This is an important step forward in an area where the Army is believed to have fallen behind near-peer rivals like China and Russia.

AT AMAZON, Summer Deals in Sports & Outdoors.

FALSE BLACK POWER: The gripping name of a new book. The NY Post publishes an excerpt.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was followed by large increases in black elected officials. In the Deep South, black officeholders grew from 100 in 1964 to 4,300 in 1978. By the early 1980s, major US cities with large black populations, such as Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Washington and Philadelphia, had elected black mayors. Between 1970 and 2010, the number of black elected officials nationwide increased from fewer than 1,500 to more than 10,000.

Yet the socioeconomic progress that was supposed to follow in the wake of these political gains never materialized. During an era of growing black political influence, blacks as a group progressed at a slower rate than whites, and the black poor actually lost ground.

Read the whole thing.

VIDEO: Unhinged Leftists Endorse Violence Against Republicans.

MICHAEL WALSH: Put me down with my PJ colleague Andrew Klavan regarding the Shakespeare in the Park incident the other day.

HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN? The Fitzgerald, The U.S. Navy, and Collisions at Sea.

It is difficult to understand how something like this could happen, given the size of the vessels, the well-understood rules that govern the movement of ships, the expanse of the ocean, the technology available to avoid collisions, and the (relatively) slow speed at which ships move. As this tragedy unfolded in near-real time, on Friday night (Eastern time), I participated in a robust exchange on Twitter, trying to offer what little I could to concerned people trying to make sense of the news. Concern for the crew dominated the discussion, but there were many well-intentioned “how does something like this happen?” tweets. It would be premature and irresponsible to comment on the specifics of this collision, because I know nothing of them. What we have are photographs of two ships which give us some idea of the alignment of the vessels at impact, but which tell us little about their relative positions when the error chain began. There will be investigations and they will affix responsibility — such is the way of admiralty law and the practice of the U.S. Navy. Blame and responsibility have no place in this essay.

From 2004 to 2006 I commanded USS Bulkeley (DDG 84), a ship very much like the Fitzgerald, and during the rest of my 21-year Navy career I spent a good bit of time at sea. I have never been involved in a collision, but I have been in very tight situations which, had my ship or the other not properly responded, could have resulted in one. During my career, on the rare occasions in which Navy ships were involved in collisions, voluminous lessons learned were promulgated. We studied these incidents and incorporated them into our training. In virtually every instance, decisions made by fallible human beings were contributing factors.

Enlightening stuff for landlubbers.

WINNING: Trump Admin. Begins to Dismantle Obama Campus Rape Tribunals.

YOU WILL BE MADE TO CARE: East Lansing Bans Apple Farmer From Market For Being A Faithful Catholic.

YES: I never knew how important Father’s Day was until I lost my own dad.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. From Nancy Pelosi to George Takei, the Left’s Reaction to Scalise Shooting Has Been Insane.

BREAKING: Paris Terror Attack Targets Police on the Champs-Elysees, Suspect is Yet Another ‘Known Wolf’

But you’d guessed that already, hadn’t you?

DON’T BE EVIL: Google moves on extremist YouTube content.

I don’t trust Google to properly define “extremist.”