The Northern Ireland Investment Summit is supposed to be the moment when the Windsor Framework and the return of Stormont are celebrated together before the eyes of the world.
Hosted by the government and featuring the efforts of US special envoy Joe Kennedy III, it is scheduled for September 12 and 13. That means it will now almost certainly take place in the absence of devolution, rendering the exercise an international embarrassment.
The DUP says nothing has happened on the legal assurance it wants over Northern Ireland's place in the union. Westminster will not return from its summer recess until September 4, rising again two weeks later for the month-long conference season.
So the government has nine days, including one weekend, to pass contentious constitutional legislation from scratch, alongside all the other parliamentary business it must squeeze into a fortnight between now and mid-October. Or more correctly it has eight days, as it will take at least one to nominate an executive – assuming any legislation is acceptable to both the DUP and Sinn Féin.
As so often with a walk in the hills, we are approaching one summit only to see another.
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Read more:Newton Emerson: Windsor Framework parcel farce makes a return to Stormont harder to deliver for DUP
Read more:Newton Emerson: DUP secrecy on Framework proposals suggests discussions are serious
Read more: Tom Collins: Delusional Donaldson just keeps on digging
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The Irish government is to publish a draft of the All-Island Strategic Rail Review, commissioned by northern and southern ministers in 2021. Early leaks indicate this will propose rail links to all three of Northern Ireland's airports and a new line between Portadown and Derry.
While the airport links might eventually happen it is vanishingly unlikely the new line will be built, even within the review's maximum 30-year timescale. Promising a new line may merely prove a distraction from upgrading the existing line, which would achieve nearly all the same goals for a fraction of the cost.
The immediate significance of the story is that Dublin has given up waiting for Stormont to return and sign off the review's official publication. Southern ministers will have been thinking on the 18-month timescale to the next Irish general election.
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Alliance, the SDLP and Sinn Féin believe it is a backward step for the PSNI to withdraw from Belfast's Pride parade. Most unionist representatives who have expressed an opinion believe it is the right decision, made inevitable after Pride disinvited Ulster Rugby due to a transgender dispute.
However, there is a third view, summed up by Belfast Green councillor Anthony Flynn: "The PSNI should never have been involved in Pride parades in the first place, Pride always has been and remains a political protest."
This seems so obviously correct it is not even contentious. The fact the TUV agrees might be considered a culture war truce, or perhaps a prisoner exchange.
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In accordance with summer tradition, complaints about Eleventh Night bonfires have been superseded by complaints about 'Up the RA' chanting at the West Belfast Festival.
The whataboutery is more appropriate than complainers may often realise. Under the DUP-Sinn Féin carve-up of bonfire diversion funding at Belfast City Council, money for bonfires is matched by money for the festival. Offensive behaviour at one covers offensive behaviour at the other. This is an engineered equilibrium, unlikely to change while the ratepayer cash keeps flowing.
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How much is too much for Casement Park? Its latest projected cost is £168 million, double the initial estimate. That does not include the £36m already earmarked for rebuilding Irish league grounds – the sub-regional stadia programme that is the DUP's quid pro quo for funding Casement beyond its original deal. So when the cost doubles, it triples.
Casement is part of the UK and Ireland's 2028 Euros bid. In May, secretary of state Chris Heaton-Harris said "once we win the bid, we'll sit down round a table and the money will get sorted out". This may have sent an unwise signal of a blank cheque.
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Immigration minister Robert Jenrick has reaffirmed that cross-border tourists to Northern Ireland will not be exempt from the UK's new electronic visa waiver. However, he added there will be no checks or enforcement at the border, nor has anyone ever mentioned internal enforcement such as spot-checks at visitor attractions.
Tour companies will try to comply with this but many independent travellers will take a risk, or forget, or cross the border by accident. Eventually, somehow, a person in authority will be confronted by an undeniable violation.
What happens then? If the culprit is let go, it concedes to a free-for-all. If they are prosecuted, the resulting scandal will cause significant political and economic damage. What the government cannot admit, although it would clear up all confusion, is that the waiver is a new sea border and will be checked when travelling from Northern Ireland to Britain.
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The Sunday Life reports Just Stop Oil is planning "slow marches" in Northern Ireland this summer so that student members home for the holidays "can practice for large-scale demonstrations in London".
We could really do without another addition to the marching season, especially from a group that likes to spray-paint buildings orange. Could protestors not make themselves useful by reclaiming pavements, bus lanes and pedestrian areas from Belfast's misbehaving motorists?
