President Obama arrives in Kenya on Friday for a five-day trip to Africa – his fourth visit to the continent, but his first to his father’s homeland since winning the White House. It also marks the first time a sitting US President has visited Kenya.

Fortune writes that “a dominant focus of the President and his delegation will be expanding business and enterprise in Africa, as he hosts the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) in Nairobi, bringing along over 200 U.S. investors.”

It could also be the President’s most dangerous foreign trip, with the State Department warning that large-scale events like the summit “could be a target for terrorists.”

CNN‘s Jeff Zeleny recalls covering Obama’s 2006 visit to Kenya as a Senator and writes:

It’s taken nine years for Obama to return to Kenya, a place to which he has ties like no other because of his father. Obama met him only once, at the age of 10, before he died in a car crash in 1982.

Obama was raised by his Kansas-born mother, Ann Dunham, and his grandparents in Hawaii. But it is the bloodline of Barack Obama Sr. that has stirred so many questions about his roots, fueling a “birther” movement that still simmers today.

His advisers once feared it might keep him from being elected — or re-elected — and he eventually marched into the White House briefing room on April 27, 2011, to present his long-form birth certificate to quiet the controversy stirred by Donald Trump and others.

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* WORLD *  A gunman described by police as a 58-year-old “lone white male” opened fire in a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana on Thursday night, killing at least two people and injuring nine others before fatally shooting himself.

The incident comes three years almost to the day after one of the nation’s worst mass-killings, when James Holmes opened fire in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, killing 12 people and wounding 70.

Ironically, on Thursday, President Obama talked in an exclusive interview with the BBC that the biggest frustration of his Presidency has been the failure to enact gun control legislation. The President said it was “distressing” not to have made progress, “even in the face of repeated mass killings.”

“If you look at the number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism, it’s less than 100. If you look at the number that have been killed by gun violence, it’s in the tens of thousands,” he said.

http://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/624434507026964480

Turkey said its warplanes had struck ISIS targets across its border in Syria. The decision to authorize the action came after a Turkish soldier had died when suspected ISIS militants had fired across the border at a military base. US officials also said Turkey had authorized US airstrikes from a Turkish base near the border, although Ankara had not yet confirmed this.

Secretary of State John Kerry defended the Iran nuclear deal in front of a Senate committee. He had something of a rough ride. Republican committee chairman Sen Bob Corker told him “you’ve been fleeced.” (Although I’m not sure I totally understood Corker’s “hotel guest” analogy – is he saying Kerry’s the guest, in which case he got away with something, but it sounds like its his only thing, or is Kerry the hotel, and he’s had something stolen from him? Is the bathrobe made of fleece? Like much of the debate, it sounds like the soundbite was more important than the reasoning.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s domestic approval numbers are at record levels, according to an extensive opinion poll covering all aspects of life in Russia, reported in The Guardian.

Nasa scientists revealed a “world sharing many characteristics to earth” discovered by the Kepler telescope – the BBC reporting that “it may be small and cool enough to host liquid water on their surface – and might therefore be hospitable to life. Nasa’s chief scientist calls it “Earth 2.0”

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* POLITICS * It was always going to be something of a circus.

After being tripped up in a recent TV interview when he was asked how long it had been since he had visited the US-Mexico border, Donald Trump had to admit it had been three years. From that moment it was only a matter of time before he showed up to give full, flamboyant voice to his controversial stance on illegal immigration and the vulnerability of the southern crossing.

He had earlier hinted in an interview with The Hill that he may be open to running as a third-party candidate “if the Republicans aren’t fair.”

The Washington Post reports on how Hispanic broadcasters Univision and Telemundo covered the visit.

During one of the two news conferences Trump held in Texas, [Jose] Diaz-Balart reminded the candidate that 53,000 Hispanics turn 18 each month and that many are offended by his suggestion that Mexicans crossing the border are rapists or criminals.

“No, no, no, we’re talking about illegal immigration and everybody understands that. And you know what? That’s a typical case — wait — that’s a typical case of the press with misinterpretation,” Trump shot back in response. “They take a half a sentence — by the way — they take a half a sentence, then they take a quarter of a sentence. It’s a typical thing. And you’re with Telemundo and Telemundo should be ashamed. And I tell you what — what’s really going to be fun? I’m suing Univision for $500 million and I’m gonna tell ya — we’re going to win a lot of money because of what they’ve done.”

“You’re finished,” Trump told Diaz-Balart.

and finally, or – most probably not:

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* BUSINESS * Online retail giant Amazon is now bigger than Wal-Mart by market capitalization, after its shares surged in after-hours trading on a surprisingly strong earnings report.

As for consumers having disposable income to purchase the things Amazon sells, US jobless claims plunged by 26,000 to 255,000 in the week ended July 18, the fewest since November 1973.

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* MEDIA * One of Europe’s most venerable journalism institutions will soon be in Japanese hands after Nikkei said it would buy the 127-year-old Financial Times from Pearson for about $1.3billion. It is the biggest-ever acquisition by a Japanese media company.

A statement from Pearson, which has owned the distinctively pink paper since 1957 (it’s officially “salmon” colored), signals that the company will now be 100% focused on its core education business.

Reports of the sale of the paper have been pretty frequent in recent years, with the strategic shift to education and particularly since the departure two years ago of former CEO Marjorie Scardino, who once famously said that the title would be sold “over my dead body.”  But as speculation intensified over the past 24 hours, it appeared that the buyer would be German, with media giant Axel Springer widely reported – even by the FT itself – to be in talks with Pearson.

Pearson CEO John Fallon said the media industry had reached an “inflection point, driven by he explosive growth of mobile and social. In this new environment, the best way to ensure the FT’s journalistic and commercial success is for it to be part of a global, digital news company.”

Pearson reports its earnings on Friday.

(disclosure: I was a proud FT employee for almost 20 years)

 

The Wall Street Journal reports that Twitter announced new tools to help event-based ad targeting.

Marketers often buy Twitter ads in an attempt to capitalize on buzz around major cultural and sporting events like the Oscars, the Super Bowl and “Sharknado” movie premieres. Now, the social network wants to make it easier for advertisers to do so.

On Thursday, Twitter announced the availability of new tools designed to help advertisers find events with which to align their brands, create content relevant to those events, and ultimately to buy ad placements targeted to users who might be interested in those events.

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* SPORTS *  Columnist Bill Simmons is set to host a weekly TV show for HBO, the network announced. Richard Sandomir writes at the New York Times:

At HBO, almost anything goes, and for someone who likes to pop off, Simmons could not have found a more welcoming place to say what he pleases about anyone in the sports world. Consider how much [Bill] Maher gets away with on his series, “Real Time,” and you can appreciate the very wide berth Simmons is receiving.

He received plenty of freedom at ESPN, too, but in the end, he learned that he could not harshly criticize Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner, without being suspended for three weeks last year. Further criticism of Goodell this year probably played a part in ESPN’s decision to let him take his talents elsewhere.