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• DAKAR, Senegal (AP) -- President Barack Obama is receiving the embrace you might expect for a long-lost son on his return to his father's home continent, even as he has yet to leave a lasting policy legacy for Africa on the scale of his two predecessors.
• Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush passed innovative Africa initiatives while in the White House and passionately continue their development work in the region in their presidential afterlife. Obama's efforts here have not been so ambitious, despite his personal ties to the continent.
• His first major tour of Africa as president is coming just now, in his fifth year, while Bush and Clinton are frequent fliers to Africa. Bush even will be in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, next week at the same time as Obama, although they have no plans to meet. Instead, their wives plan to appear together at a summit on empowering African women organized by the George W. Bush Institute, with the former president in attendance.
• Spirited crowds greeted Obama on his visit to French-speaking Senegal, Africa's westernmost country, with revelers frequently breaking into song and dance at the sight of the first African-American president. However thrilled they were to see him, many said they wish his visits weren't so rare.
• "Two visits in five years, it's not enough," said Faye Mbissine, a 30-year-old nanny who took an early morning bus to come see Obama on Thursday outside the presidential palace. "We hope that he can come more."
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Egypt's security clampdown ahead of expected weekend protests severely disrupts Gaza smuggling
• RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) -- An Egyptian security crackdown has severely disrupted smuggling to the neighboring Gaza Strip, causing a fuel shortage, doubling the price of building materials and shutting down some construction sites in the Hamas-ruled territory.
• Egypt's military clamped down on the lawless Sinai Peninsula, which abuts Gaza, in the run-up to mass protests planned for Sunday by Egyptian opposition ac (Continued on page 32)
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