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Michelle Obama has given the Queen an early birthday surprise by announcing she will accompany the US President when he has lunch with Her Majesty later this week.Mrs Obama has struck up a firm friendship with the Queen during her previous visits to the UK, and famously ignored royal protocol to put her arm around the monarch's shoulders in 2009. Until now, the US Embassy had indicated that President Barack Obama would be on his own for a private lunch with the Queen at Windsor Castle on April 22, the day after she turns 90.But Buckingham Palace has confirmed that...

Mr Obama will go to Saudi Arabia on April 21 to participate in a summit with leaders from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates - hosted by King Salman. Mr Earnest said: "The President will then travel to the United Kingdom, where he will be received by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle for a private lunch.

Pro-gun group Open Carry Texas is planning to openly carry guns at this year's South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas -- and their demonstration on gun rights will coincide with President Barack Obama's keynote address at the event on Friday. Open Carry Texas has been bringing guns to the festival for the last two years, according to the Dallas Morning News. This year, members are planning to hold small info sessions during SXSW to "engage in conversation and education" about gun rights laws in the state and encourage young festivalgoers to "carry in lawful defense of themselves and others,"...

President Barack Obama’s seven-hour visit Friday for a SXSW discussion on civic involvement will be followed by two Democratic fundraisers. Follow along live.

That’s why, next week, I’ll travel to Austin, Texas, to visit South by Southwest. It’s an annual gathering of some of our most creative thinkers, coders, makers, and entrepreneurs from across the country. And while I’m there, I’m going to ask everyone for ideas and technologies that can help update our government and our democracy to be as modern and dynamic as America itself. This has been a goal of mine since before I was President. On my campaign in 2008, we saw how technology could bring people together and help them engage as citizens in their own communities. So...

President Obama is hopefully planning a visit to Cuba and sees longtime co-dictator Raul Castro, who has taken over for ailing brother Fidel, as a pragmatist, not "an ideologue." In a newly released Yahoo interview, Obama said, "I am very much interested in going to Cuba, but I think the conditions have to be right."The president told correspondent Olivier Knox, "My hope is that sometime next year we look at the conditions there and we say, you know what? Now would be a good time to shine a light on progress that's been made, but also maybe to nudge the...

.....Obama will visit Cuba on March 21 and 22.... Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) called it "totally unacceptable for the president of the United States to reward a dictatorial regime with an historic visit when human rights abuses endure and democracy continues to be shunned." "This will mark the first time a U.S. president is visiting a dictatorship in Latin America since Lyndon Johnson's 1968 visit to Nicaragua...Since Castro seized power, nine American Presidents - Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush - did not rush to the island to shake hands with an...

'The President is not welcome here': Roseburg residents angry that Obama is traveling to visit the victims of the UCC shooting **SNIP** 'We haven't even identified bodies, we've still got incident command trying to contain the scene, and he's holding a press conference 3,000 miles away from here, telling — almost implying that he could have single-handedly prevented this if the Congress would have listened to him.' 'I think he admitted it himself. 'His visit here isn't a re-election campaign stop, but it is a campaign stop for an agenda that he and his associates believe is important. "And that...

Barack Obama will not stay at New York’s Waldorf Astoria during the UN general assembly this month after the hotel was bought by a Chinese insurance firm. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama and the US delegation would stay at the nearby New York Palace Hotel. “There are a range of considerations that influence where the president will stay when he’s not at the White House,” Earnest said. “Those considerations include everything from available space to cost and to security.” Earnest would not say whether the Chinese acquisition of the Astoria had raised concerns about possible espionage. Anbang Insurance...

President Obama hiked alone up a gravel path toward Exit Glacier, gazing at a mass of flowing ice as it melted into the plain below. “How’s this?” he marveled as he surveyed the terrain on a cloudless day. “Beats being in the office.” Mr. Obama is in legacy-building mode here in Alaska, where he has come to talk about the rapidly unfolding effects of climate change and the urgent need to address it. He saw the consequences of global warming during his trek to the glacier, which has receded more than a mile over the past 200 years because of...

Obama’s first trip to Kenya since becoming president has highlighted the disappointment that many Africans feel in his presidency. While President Bush earns high praise and achieved a great deal in Africa, particularly with regard to his efforts fighting AIDS, Obama . . . not so much.In his article entitled, “Africa’s Disappointment with Obama,” Edward-Isaac Dovere writes: Beneath the ecstatic welcome President Barack Obama will receive when he arrives in his father’s homeland of Kenya on Friday is a lingering sense of disappointment.More than the first black president, he’s the first African-American U.S. president, and that’s accentuated a frustration among...

President Barack Obama on Saturday lectured Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta about his country's gay rights record. "When you start treating people differently not because of any harm they are doing to anybody, but because they are different, that's the path whereby freedoms begin to erode," Obama said at a joint press conference with the Kenyan leader in Nairobi. "And bad things happen." Under Kenyan law, sexual activity between men is illegal and punishable with a maximum imprisonment of 14 years. Many Kenyan leaders had encouraged Obama not to discuss gay rights on his first trip to the country as President....

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama voiced strong support for gay rights in Africa on Thursday as he began a trip to the continent, bucking calls from some African leaders to keep his views on such controversial issues to himself. Obama, who departed Washington late Thursday for a trip to Kenya and Ethiopia, had faced criticism from rights groups and growing calls to press the issue aggressively while in a region known for a bleak record on human rights. In an interview with the BBC, Obama said he had been "blunt" with African leaders about gay rights in the past...

South Dakotans apparently have good BS detectors. Check out the expressions on their faces.

Taxpayers paid for President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama to fly separately Thursday to Los Angeles, where they appeared on separate TV talk shows on the same day. Mr. Obama flew on Air Force One, which costs about $228,000 per hour of flight time, to appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Thursday night in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Mrs. Obama flew on a different plane Thursday across country to Burbank, California, to tape an appearance on Ellen Degeneres’ show. That show will be broadcast on Monday. White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz told reporters Friday that the president and...

Barack Obama will become the first US president to be chief guest at India's Republic Day parade on Monday, a day after hailing a new era of friendship between the world's biggest democracies. The invitation to the annual celebration of the birth of modern India is one of the biggest honours the country can bestow on a foreign leader and underscores the growing closeness between Obama and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Security will be tight for the parade, a colourful display of India's military might and cultural diversity showcasing everything from tanks and state-of-the-art weaponry to camels and traditional...

As usual in December, President Obama and family and staff and their families and Secret Service and armored motorcade vehicles and the family dogs flew out to Hawaii this past weekend for a couple weeks of golf and dining out. [Snip] That luxury 747 alone costs $182,000 per hour to operate. It´s a nine-hour flight from Washington to one of the farthest reaches of the 50 states -- each way. How about Obama´s other discretionary trips? How much are taxpayers billed for those?

President Obama today is playing golf at the Shadow Creek golf club in North Las Vegas, reputed to be the nicest golf course in Vegas. It’s 55 degrees and mostly sunny. At 44 degrees, it’s a little too cold today in the Washington area for a comfortable round. This is the 47th time he’s played this year and the 204th outing of his presidency.

President Obama was interrupted by hecklers during his speech in Las Vegas on Friday, as he tried to explain why he chose to act on his own to offer amnesty to illegal immigrants.

So I just looked up the Latin Grammys on news...Obamugabe is supposedly going to announce unconstitutional, unlawful amnesty before the show on the spanish language networks. Then, tomorrow, Obamugabe goes to a rally in Las Vegas. Guess where the Latin Grammys are being held tonight?