From the Crikey grapevine, the latest tips and rumours …

Frankston woes continue. The Victorian state seat of Frankston, currently the fiefdom of suspended independent Geoff Shaw, continues to fascinate. With the seat up for grabs at November’s Victorian election, Labor’s preselected candidate for Frankston, Helen Constas, recently resigned suddenly after allegations of workplace bullying were splashed across the papers.

So where did the leak come from? We’ve heard a rumour it was from a source within Labor — possibly a member of Constas’ own faction. Draw your own conclusions as to why someone would do that to an ALP comrade … and can we expect to hear more of this case, possibly in the courts? One to watch.

Selling lemons. Sounds like a certain Australian fruit and veggie company has fallen foul of the law in Thailand …

“[Name withheld] were caught by Royal Thai Customs Crime Suppression and Investigations Bureau for under-invoicing and transfer pricing and ASIC, DFAT and AFP did not provide assistance as the offences occurred in Thailand. It seems that it’s okay to break the law and benefit from the proceeds as long as it’s done overseas.”

We’ll keep looking into that one. This exporter is experiencing the rough end of the pineapple.

Friendly neighbourhood childcare centre. A tipster alerted us to very odd goings-on at the Seaford RSL in suburban Melbourne. The images are certainly those of a pub, but the captions seem a bit … off …

The captions have been fixed now to reflect the good times that can be had at the RSL. We’ve asked Seaford RSL why they were temporarily a childcare centre, and we’ll get back to you with their response.

Watch those credit cards. Last week we passed on a tip that thousands of people had old charges on their credit cards reprocessed (ie charged again), due to a banking glitch, apparently at First Data International. We’ve since heard back from First Data (a company that works with banks to facilitate credit and debit card payments), who told us:

“On 21 June, First Data experienced a minor processing issue which resulted in 7900 transactions being inadvertently recharged to consumers’ cards. First Data rectified the issue immediately with all payments reversed on 25 June.”

So sounds like if you were affected, you should have got your money back. Maybe worth checking those bank statements anyway?

Hold off on those tweets. And this is why you should go easy live-tweeting World Cup matches …

For those Crikey readers who are not soccer nuts like Ms Tips, some people thought Greece was poised to win this morning’s knock-out game with Costa Rica, which went to penalties. But Costa Rica, the surprise performer in this year’s tournament, ended up winning. Oops. And that’s Craig Foster, lead commentator with SBS, calling the verdict the wrong way. Calm down, Fos!

But we take our hats off to all these tweeters for paying attention to a tournament which is aired in such truly terrible hours here in Australia. Cue Wimbledon and the Tour de France (sigh).

Free Peter Greste. Almost 100 media companies and human rights groups — including Crikey — have signed a joint letter calling for the immediate release of Australian journalist Peter Greste and two colleagues, in prison in Egypt. The letter is addressed to Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi and will be hand-delivered to the Egyptian consulate in Sydney at 1pm today.

Here’s an excerpt from the letter (read it in full here):

“The verdict of the court, despite the lack of evidence and bizarre court proceedings over more than a dozen hearings, is an appalling attack on press freedom and carries an implicit threat to all media working in Egypt. The court proceedings have been farcical from the outset and there has not been a shred of evidence presented by the prosecution that in any way implicates the journalists in the charges of defaming Egypt and having ties to the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood. Contrary to the charges the three journalists have behaved ethically and responsibly while reporting on a complex, rapidly changing political environment in Egypt.”

Crikey looked at the evidence presented against Greste for this story. We hope readers support us lending our voice to the push to free Greste and his colleagues.

*Heard anything that might interest Crikey? Send your tips to boss@crikey.com.au or use our guaranteed anonymous form