In the wake of a hotly-contested second-term win, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has moved to further consolidate power, most recently by locking up political opposition leaders on trumped-up charges of terrorism.

Erdogan, following his second-term win in what many Turkey observers suggest was a fixed election, has had primary opposition politician Eren Erdem arrested on charges related to terrorism, according to state-run media.

Jailed on Friday ahead of an upcoming September trial, and only days after losing his seat in parliament in the June 24 elections, Erdem - a Republican People's Party (CHP) official - is said to have been charged with providing assistance to those that Erdogan claims are responsible for the failed 2016 coup against the increasingly authoritarian Turkish strongman.

After returning from a tour of some of the war zones in the Middle East - which ended with the Free Iran Gathering 2018 in Paris - I am struck by the realization that America really did have a Manchurian Candidate in The White House for eight years. If you look at the evidence, there really is no other conclusion. The calamitous consequences of the Obama presidency will be felt for the foreseeable future.

In the short year and a half that President Trump has been in office, he has put in place policy that has mitigated the damage that President Obama inflicted on our national security and on our allies. The speed with which Trump has been able to turn things around points to the diabolical depths the Obama administration went to in order to undermine our national strength and way of life. All Trump had to do was stop doing things that hurt America; America could then take care of itself. The results are plain as day. However, it will take decades for the Obama damage to be completely undone. The deviousness of the Obama sedition runs deep.

Think about it for a moment. If you wanted peace in the Middle East, why would you throw away the trillions of dollars spent, as well as the lives of thousands of American souls, by irresponsibly pulling out ALL American troops from Iraq? No matter your thoughts on starting the war, pulling out was an irresponsible thing to do. We still have troops in Germany, Korea and Japan, for God's sake. Why? For stability, that's why. As Colin Powell said, we broke it, now we own it. It was a given that instability would follow the force withdrawal. When you combine this act with the reality that Obama never really did try to defeat the Islamic State, what conclusion can you come up with? Trump defeated them in a few months. The conclusion is obvious: Obama really didn't want to destroy them.

Two people were arrested in Belgium for plotting a bomb attack at a conference in Paris, prosecutors announced. The couple allegedly carried 500 grams of explosives reportedly similar to the type used in other major attacks.

The suspects, who have Belgian citizenship and are of Iranian origin, were identified as Amir S., born 1980, and his wife Nasimeh N., born 1984. They were snatched by police in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre municipality in Brussels suburbs on Saturday.

During searches police say they found some 500 grams of TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide) explosives and a detonation device in their car. The notoriously-unstable TATP, sometimes known as the 'Mother of Satan', has been used in a number of terrorist attacks, including the November 2015 Paris attacks and the May 2017 Manchester Arena bombing.

The couple, who are residents of the town of Wilrijk - 356 km from the Belgian capital, has already been charged with "attempted terrorist attack and preparation of a terrorist act," the prosecutor added. The alleged target was a meeting of an Iranian opposition group scheduled in Paris June 30. The event was attended by some 25,000 people.

A number of people, who had allegedly made contact with the two suspects, were also detained in other EU states, according to Belgium prosecutors. A diplomatic worker at Iran's embassy in Vienna was detained in Germany, while three other people were snatched by French police. Two of them were released after interrogation, while one man remained in police custody.

Tehran has condemned "all violence" and expressed readiness to cooperate in uncovering the "sinister false flag ploy," with Foreign Minister Javad Zarif taking to Twitter and raising questions over the timing of the arrests.

French President Emmanuel Macron replaced his ambassador to Hungary, who - only days before the official announcement - supported Viktor Orban.

On June 18, France ambassador in Budapest, Éric Fournier send a diplomatic memo to the French ministry of foreign affairs, and it was leaked by Mediapart on Friday. According to Fournier, France should change its opinion of Viktor Orban, because he's not a populist and definitely not an extremist.

He wrote that the so-called "populist" measures of the government are just media fabrications, which are fueled by the "Hungarophobia" of the press. He called Hungary the modern political world's Real Madrid, because Viktor Orban has won the elections three times in a row. According to the diplomat, the "rise of anti-Semitism in Hungary" is fiction, and it only distracts from the "anti-Semitism of Muslims in Germany and France". He stressed that the anti-Soros campaign is not anti-Semitic, and Orban's migration policy is a model.

The FBI has announced that they arrested an individual that was allegedly helping plan a terrorist attack in downtown Cleveland on the 4th of July.

The man, 48-year-old Demetrius Pitts, also known as Abdur Raheem Rahfeeq, was arrested on Sunday, and faces charges of providing a foreign terrorist group with financial support. If convicted, he could face 20 years behind bars.

Pitts, who is a US citizen, came to the FBI's attention in 2017 after he made "disturbing" Facebook posts in support of Al-Qaeda, and calling on his fellow Muslims to train with weapons and explosives. An agent was assigned to monitor Pitts.

Speaking to the undercover agent, Pitts allegedly pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda. He reportedly talked to the undercover agent about his hatred for the US military and his desire to "chop off hands and heads" of military families.

The United States could get a new round of retaliatory tariffs worth as much as $300 billion, if it moves ahead with new duties on European cars, the EU has warned.

In a written statement to the US Department of Commerce Brussels reportedly warned that imposing tariffs on European cars "will be harmful first and foremost for the US economy."

According to the 11-page document, "an additional import tariff of 25 percent, applied to automobiles and automotive parts, would in first instance have a negative impact on US GDP in the order of $13-14 billion, and the current account balance of the US would be not affected positively."

US President Donald Trump recently threatened to hit imports of European cars with a 20 percent tariff if Brussels doesn't remove levies and other trade barriers on US goods.

Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters has accused her party's leaders of protecting their own power, after they denounce her calls for harassing Trump officials.

The California congresswoman, dubbed #MadMaxine by some Trump supporters, blasted establishment Democrats for calling for calm. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi both called for civility and debate instead of violent confrontation.

"Leadership like Chuck Schumer will do anything that they think is necessary to protect their leadership," said Waters, speaking to MSNBC's 'AM Joy' on Sunday. "What I have to do is not focus on them. I've got to keep the focus on the children," she added, referring to the Trump administration's 'zero tolerance' immigration policy that saw almost 2,000 children of illegal immigrants separated from their parents and held in detention centers recently.

President Trump's national security adviser, John R. Bolton, who is often described as a war hawk and known for his support of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and his advocacy of the bombing of North Korea, Iran and Syria, seems to have given up on his "Assad must go" rhetoric, at least temporarily.

Speaking to CBS News on Sunday about the prospects for the upcoming Putin-Trump summit in Helsinki on July 16, Bolton suggested that Syria was one area where Russia and the US "might make progress together."

"We'll see what happens when the two of them get together. There are possibilities for doing a larger negotiation on helping to get Iranian forces out of Syria and back into Iran, which would be a significant step forward - to have an agreement with Russia if that's possible," Bolton said.

The next Astana format meeting that will involve three Syrian ceasefire guarantor nations (Iran, Russia and Turkey) will be held in Sochi on July 30-31, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin told reporters on Friday.

"It will be held in the last two days of July, that has essentially been agreed, and in the format that we used before, that is, the three guarantor countries, the observer states and the Syrian parties," he said. "I believe the work in the Astana format is a big achievement, and we would like to push ahead with these efforts."

According to Vershinin, an important result of the Astana process is the setting up of the working group on exchanging detainees and bodies of those killed. "This is hard work, but so far the only efforts, which help establish trust between the parties to the conflict," he stressed. "This group held its regular meeting in Ankara recently, and it will continue to work in the future, including, I hope, on the sidelines of the Astana format meeting in Sochi on July 30-31."

Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton criticized calls for civility from conservatives as Trump officials face public harassment over the administration's immigration policies.

In an interview published on Friday in the British newspaper The Guardian, Clinton accused the right of "bothsideism," arguing it is hypocritical for Trump officials to be treated civilly in public while the government separates children from their purported parents who illegally crossed through the U.S.-Mexico border.

"Oh, give me a break," Clinton snapped when asked about calls for civility. "Give me a break! What is more uncivil and cruel than taking children away? It should be met with resolve and strength. And if some of that comes across as a little uncivil, well, children's lives are at stake; their futures are at stake. That is that ridiculous concept of bothsideism."


"'Well, you know, somebody made an insulting, profane remark about President Trump, and he separated 2,300 children from their families, that's both sides, and we should stop being uncivil - oh and, by the way, he should stop separating children.' Give me a break, really," an angry Clinton continued. "I mean, this is a crisis of his making that will damage kids for no good reason at all, and I think everybody should be focused on that until the children are reunited."

Clinton's remarks follow a string of incidents involving the public harassment of top Trump administration officials.