TODAY'S TALKING POINTS 07-27-15

TODAY'S TALKING POINTS More details emerged on the movie theater shooting in Louisiana. As authorities work to determine the motive of John Russell Houser, details of his life are emerging that paint him as a conservative extremist who had exhibited “erratic behavior” before. And while we talk about his motives, let’s not forget the two women that he killed. Hours before the Louisiana shooting, President Barack Obama confessed that a lack of gun safety laws was the biggest frustration of his presidency. Presidential hopeful Rick Perry countered Obama’s ideas on gun control in an interview with CNN on Sunday, saying that gun tragedies are the result of failures to enforce existing gun laws. Perry also claimed the recent shooting shows why gun-free zones are actually “a bad idea.” It’s estimated that there have been a dozen mass shootings between the 2012 Aurora, Colorado, theater massacre and the Lafayette, Louisiana, theater shooting last week, yet no gun control bills have been passed. Donald Trump is the top dog in the Republican candidate field. A CNN poll showed that Trump is backed by 18% of Republicans, but he’s losing steam against other GOP favorites in Florida, and may be in hot water with some veterans who never gave him the OK to use their names on his Veterans for Trump website. But despite public gaffes and negative media coverage, Trump’s antics seem to be paying off. Turkey and the U.S. agreed to work together to fight the Islamic State group. Their strategy involves driving the terrorist group out of a stretch spanning more than 60 miles in Syria along the Turkish border. The agreement comes several days after Turkey bombed the Islamic State group in Syria for the first time. Hillary Clinton agreed to testify about Benghazi. While Clinton said Saturdaythat she would talk about the hot-button issue in October before a House committee, officials said the 2016 candidate was “still negotiating conditions” of her testimony. Bobbi Kristina Brown died at 22. Brown was found unresponsive in her bathtub three years after her mother, Whitney Houston, accidentally drowned in a bathtub. She had been in a coma for nearly seven months when she died.

IN ONE PHOTO President Barack Obama returned to his father’s homeland this weekend, becoming the first American president to visit Kenya. These 18 powerful photos show the vast ground he covered on his historic trip, where he even made time to teach Africa a lesson on LGBT rights.