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In Dallas Remarks, Obama Will Aim to Make Sense of Shootings

Former president George W Bush, his wife, Laura, and vice president Joe Biden will also attend, and the ex-president will deliver brief remarks. After coming back from Dallas, on Wednesday Obama will convene another meeting here at the White House.

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The president cut short his stay in Warsaw for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation summit to return to Washington on Sunday after visiting Spain.

On the shootings by police of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana, Obama called for more activism and reforms.

Describing Dallas shooting suspect Micah Xavier Johnson as a “demented individual”, Obama said he “is no more representative of African Americans than the shooter in Charleston was representative of white Americans, or the shooter in Orlando or San Bernardino were representative of Muslim Americans”.

The prevalence of guns, he said, makes it hard for police.

Four days after the ambush that also left seven officers and two civilians hurt, investigators say the gunman had bigger plans.

Brown said Johnson, a black Army veteran, insisted on speaking with a black negotiator. Five of those officers were killed.

Johnson had practised military-style drills in his garden and trained at a private self-defence school that teaches special tactics, including “shooting on the move”.

Sterling, 37, was fatally shot on July 5 by two Baton Rouge police officers after being tackled to the ground. The attack came at the end of an otherwise peaceful march protesting police shootings.

“I’d like all sides to listen to each other”, Obama said in response to a reporter’s question after he met with Spain’s acting prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, during an abbreviated first visit to Spain as president.

He said violence against police by anyone concerned about fairness in the criminal justice system does “a disservice to the cause”.

He’s also planning to press for hate-crimes protections for law enforcement officers who are attacked.

“I would hope that police organisations are also respectful of the frustrations that people in these communities feel and not just dismiss these protests and these complaints as political correctness”.

The president travelled to Spain after attending a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation summit in Poland, but the shocking series of events in the U.S. last week has dominated most of his public appearances.

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President Barack Obama, seeking to soothe raw emotions after a former USA soldier killed five policemen in Dallas and high-profile police shootings of two black men in Minnesota and Louisiana, has urged Americans not to view the United States as being riven into opposing groups.

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