Leid Stories – Benjamin Netanyahu Trolls Africa for Big-Money Deals and Old ‘Friendships’; Obama, Biden Hit the Road (at Taxpayer Expense) for Hillary – 07.05.16

Starting with Uganda—where, 40 years ago, his older brother Yonatan was killed in an Israeli Defense Forces-led commando raid on the airport at Entebbe to free hostages being held by pro-Palestinian hijackers–Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday began a foray into East Africa that also will include scheduled trips to Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia and include summit meetings with leaders from South Sudan, Tanzania and Zambia.

Netanyahu said that his trip to the region, the first in 30 years by an Israeli prime minister, is meant to indicate a renewed interest in forging bilateral economic and strategic ties with old friends. But new fears and suspicions abound in the African world about Israel’s ramped-up foreign-policy push on the continent. Abayomi Azikiwe, editor in chief of Pan-African Newswire, discusses Netanyahu’s historic visit to East Africa.

Both President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are hitting the road this week as pitchmen for Hillary Clinton. Obama makes his debut today at a rally in Charlotte, N.C.; Biden goes a-stumping Friday in Scranton, Pa., his hometown.

Leid Stories explains says that it isn’t so much a testament of Clinton’s clout and firepower that the Top Two are campaigning for her, but yet another indication of her political vulnerability as a distrusted candidate who will be the party’s nominee later this month.

Leid Stories – 03.07.16

Untied Tongue: Trump Speaks American Ugly With A French Accent

Democrats Troll Flint: Misery Serves As A Political Backdrop

Donald Trump, the frontrunner among Republican candidates in the 2016 presidential race, has an admirer in Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the far-right, trenchantly racist National Front party in France. Gilbert Mercier, editor in chief of News Junkie Post, draws parallels between the ascendancy and growing appeal of Trump and that of LePen.

At the urging of Hillary Clinton, Sunday night’s CNN-hosted Democratic “debate” with fellow contender Bernie Sanders was held in the beleaguered city of Flint, Michigan, which remains mired in a public-health disaster as the city concedes responsibility for exposing tens of thousands of residents to lead poisoning and bacterial infections from its water system. Abayomi Azikiwe, a Detroit organizer for the Workers World Party and editor in chief of the Pan-African Newswire, says Flint served as a convenient political backdrop, but substantive issues affecting its residents went missing.