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UBUD, Indonesia (AFP) - Barack Obama has kicked off a 10-day family holiday in Indonesia that will take in Bali and Jakarta, the city where he spent part of his childhood, officials said on Saturday (June 24). The casually dressed former president arrived in the resort island of Bali with his wife Michelle and their two daughters, a local military commander said. "They arrived late last night and went straight to the hotel in Ubud," a local military commander, I Gede Widiyana, told AFP. Obama woke up early and did some exercise in the lush green riverside resort, Widiyana said,...

More than 120 people were buried by a landslide that caused huge rocks and a mass of earth to come crashing into their homes in a mountain village in southwestern China early Saturday, officials said. The landslide, which came from a mountain, engulfed a cluster of 62 homes and a hotel in the village of Xinmo in Mao County at about 6 a.m., the Sichuan provincial government said. Officials said 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) of road were buried in the disaster. “It’s the biggest landslide to hit this area since the Wenchuan earthquake

Former United States president Barack Obama arrived in Bali on Friday evening for a family vacation. His Gulfstream G-V N50JE aircraft landed at I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali at 6.52 p.m. local time, or a bit late from its initial schedule of 5.55 p.m. Wearing a blue T-shirt, blue jeans and white sneakers, Obama was seen relaxed and smiling when he embarked from the plane, witnesses reported. Meanwhile, former First Lady Michelle Obama, who wore a white T-shirt and blue jeans walked by his side. Obama's daughters, Malia and Sasha, also joined the vacation. Journalists did not...

I am so over TV news’ obsession with the big “gets.” Maybe Megyn Kelly should be, too. In her first few weeks anchoring NBC’s Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News host has made headlines for drawing Russian president Vladimir Putin to the interview chair and for attempting, at least, to introduce conspiracy peddler Alex Jones to a wider audience. With an average of just 3.5 million viewers, the news magazine edition featuring the segment on Jones came in behind reruns of CBS’s 60 Minutes and ABC’s America’s Funniest Home Videos, and was down slightly from the 3.6...

President Trump’s Justice Department is exploring new ways to take down so-called “sanctuary cities” via legal methods, according to a new report. The Wall Street Journal reports that the DOJ is developing legal strategies to cancel out sanctuary cities across the country. The goal for DOJ would be to effectively force cities to comply with federal officials, according to the report. A senior DOJ attorney told the newspaper that the department is pursuing several different options. One option would see Justice officials argue that local police departments refusing to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement illegally pre-empts federal law. Another...

(CNN)President Donald Trump said "we're going to have to see" when asked about the future of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is reportedly investigating whether Trump attempted to obstruct justice. "Well, he is very very good friends with (former FBI Director James) Comey, which is very bothersome," the President said in a Fox News clip that aired Thursday. "We're going to have to see." Trump fired Comey over dissatisfaction with how the FBI head was handling the investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein later appointed Mueller, a former FBI director, as special counsel...

Saudi security forces foiled a terror plot targeting the Grand Mosque in the Muslim holy city of Mecca after a suspect blew himself up after a gunfight. Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry said security forces exchanged gunfire with one of the suspects who blew himself up inside a home he was hiding in yesterday. Five people, including a woman, were arrested in security operations in Mecca, the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya news website said, citing the security spokesman of the Saudi Interior Ministry, Mansour al-Turki.Full Title...............................Attack on Grand Mosque in Mecca is foiled as suspect blows himself up after a gunfight with Saudi...

According to author and music historian Ralph Denyer in 1982's The Guitar Handbook, Eric Clapton's 1975 solo album There's One in Every Crowd, until his record company worried that not everyone would get the joke, was originally going to be titled "The Best Guitarist in the World...There's One in Every Crowd." And sometimes there's a lot of them, when it comes to the crowd that gathers every May at the annual Dallas International Guitar Festival. As co-founder Jimmy Wallace explained to me in our 2015 podcast interview, the Dallas International Guitar Festival pioneered the modern concept of the weekend guitar...

Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon put the brakes on a sweeping plan to overhaul the health care market in California Friday, calling the bill “woefully incomplete.”

A brand new PEW Research Center survey last week shows that gun ownership by households is up to 42 percent — an increase of 5 percentage points in the past four years. Yet, few mainstream media outlets announced the increase. In fact, the media goes out of its way to find polls claiming that Americans are turning away from guns. In my book, "War on Guns" the impression, the impression given by the media is that gun owners are a small, fringe group. Maybe they are hoping that this will have an impact on policy. As General Social Survey director...

Blair Gladwin, owner of the California based Gladwin Guns and Ammo, filed three class action lawsuits last week against online payment processors PayPal, Stripe, and Square for singling out him and other firearms businesses. The payment companies required Gladwin and the other owners to reveal the nature of their dealings — after which the payment companies refused to work with them. Gladwin claims this type of discrimination is a violation of California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act Sections 51, 52(a) and 52(c), a law that protects federally-licensed gun stores from such refusals of business transactions. The class action lawsuits, according to...

A mysterious circular rock formation on the surface of Mars has been captured by one of NASA's Orbiters. The formation was photographed by the Curiosity Rover this week and has excited alien hunters who invited speculation over how it came to be online. They suggested that the rocks were 'arranged', laid out by another form of life, or that it was part of a larger, buried structure which has never before been seen.

On Thursday evening, CNN investigative reporter Thomas Frank published a potentially explosive report involving an investigation of a Russian investment fund with potential ties to several associates of President Donald Trump. But by Friday night, the story was removed from CNN’s website and all links were scrubbed from the network’s social media accounts.

Sen. Grassley (R-IA) Slams Chuck Schumer For Lying About Trump Investigation - click to view video

The Washington Post had a lengthy piece about the Obama White HouseÂ’s behind-the-scenes activities to combat the Russian meddling during the 2016 election. First, they knew about the meddling far in advance. Second, they seem to have fallen into the same decision-making process they exhibited over Syria: paralysis by analysis. There was always the fear that it would look too political. That actually mentioning the meddling might force Russian President Vladimir Putin to do something more damaging in response. Putin reportedly ordered an interference campaign, according to a highly confident assessment by our intelligence community (via WaPo):Early last August, an...

Parliament has been hit by a cyber attack that has left MPs unable to access their emails if not in Westminster. MPs were alerted to the hack on Friday night and have reported problems getting into their email accounts on Saturday. The attack comes just days after reports that passwords of ministers were being flogged online after hacking groups managed to gain access. The parliamentary authorities are working with the National Cyber Security Centre to protect the network and ascertain the scale of the damage.

If Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo has anything to say about it, his officers will shine at the head of the city's Pride Parade. The department's new "Pride Car" is ready to go. It's gassed up. Rainbow decals gleam from every side, saluting Houston's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Acevedo plans to be front and center Saturday and he's strongly encouraged his top leadership to join him in the march. "By actually participating ... we send a very powerful message that we're an inclusive department," he said, "where every segment of society is welcome, is respected, and will be...

For the debut of his MSNBC show this morning, Hugh Hewitt scored the first news network interview with CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Debunking an assertion made by some, Pompeo said he couldn’t “imagine a statement that is anymore false” than the notion that Trump isn’t interested in intel. Pompeo stated that he personally meets with Trump for 35-40 minutes virtually every day, that Trump is an “avid consumer” of intel, and asks great questions. View the video here.

On June 19, Iran Launched 7 medium-range ballistic missiles targeting ISIS in Syria. The same day a US Navy Super Hornet shot down a Syrian Su-22. On June 20, a USAF F-15E blasted Iranian Shahed-129 armed drone out of the sky. The drone was shot down as it advanced toward the coalition-backed rebel outpost of At Tanf, near the southern Syrian border. In addition, Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, in a speech, harshly attacked the US and posted hostile tweets. “That US arms a terrorist group is what causes instability. Who created #ISIS? The US!... That the US joined the anti-ISIS...

Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has announced that he intends to force all priests in the Swedish church to marry same-sex couples even if they disagree with gay marriage. The Swedish Prime Minister made his view clear in a recent interview saying, “no priest in the Swedish Church can refuse to marry same-sex couples.” Mr Lofven argued that it did not matter what the view of the individual priests was and even supports a motion to only allow priests who agree with same-sex marriage the opportunity to be ordained SVT reports.