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white house — With the recent assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, the conversation around guns and gun policy is heating up — even as President Joe Biden is asking the country to cool down. This is the first assassination attempt on a former or current U.S. president since 1981, when Ronald Reagan was shot “First of all, that is preposterous,” said U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas when asked about rumors that the assassination attempt was an inside job involving the current administration. “It is also dangerous to propagate rumors that are so unequivocally false and provocative,” he said at a Monday news briefing. “As the president so powerfully said to the entire nation, we have to tamp down the rhetoric in this country.” U.S. gun policy may see particular focus in campaigns and debates in the final approach to the 2024 presidential election. Biden, even before the recent shooting, has been a strong advocate for stricter gun policy. Biden served as vice president under President Barack Obama, who tried to tighten gun policy following the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school that killed 26 people, mostly 6- and 7-year-olds, but was unable to pass major gun legislation. After the Sandy Hook shooting, Obama asked Biden to lead a more concrete initiative on gun reform, and Biden met with a range of citizens to seek their thoughts on gun policy. Trump has advocated a less stringent gun policy. His campaign calls for deregulation of firearms, and he has said he will undo some executive actions introduced by Biden. White House reaffirms position At the news briefing with Mayorkas on Monday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre affirmed Biden’s position on gun policy. “The president has been, obviously, a strong advocate on gun control. He has been throughout his career as a senator, as vice president, as now as president,” Jean-Pierre said in answer to a question from VOA. She noted that Congress in 2022 approved the first major gun safety legislation in 30 years. "The president led on that effort and was able to get that done. … The president has signed more than two dozen executive actions [on gun control],” she said. 'Lower the temperature' This week, Biden has also condemned the recent violence, asking the country to minimize its divisiveness. “We have to lower the temperature … there is no place in America for violence. It is important that we are really clear about that,” said Jean-Pierre when asked if Biden plans to tone down his political rhetoric. The message from the White House comes after Biden called Trump a “threat to democracy” on several occasions. Trump has repeatedly said “you will not have a country” if Biden is re-elected. J.D. Vance, Donald Trump’s recently chosen candidate for vice president, blamed Biden’s political rhetoric for the assassination attempt. “Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination,” he posted on X shortly after the incident. In a Monday interview with NBC News, Biden said he regretted saying “it was time to put Trump in the bull’s-eye.” But he defended saying that the former president is a “threat.” “Look, how do you talk about the threat to democracy, which is real, when a president says things like he says?” Biden said in the interview Some analysts doubt that Biden’s call for a calmer climate will bring about big changes to the political landscape. “I think the immediate effect [after the shooting] is going to be that it will escalate violent rhetoric and that people are going to be more vehement and vocal in vilifying their political rivals,” Valentine said. “Unfortunately, I think that’s where we’re at, and that’s what we’re beginning to see already.” Anita Powell contributed to this report from the White House.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

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washington — Western media and Chinese official scholars are watching for signs of possible policy or political moves at China's long-delayed Third Plenum, but most have low expectations for any "big moves" regarding economic reform. The top-level closed-door meeting, originally expected to be held late last fall, finally got underway Monday and wraps up Thursday. It comes as China faces a real estate crisis, high youth unemployment, declining corporate and consumer confidence, and surging local government debt. Trade and geopolitical tensions have made these challenges even more difficult. Even Chinese Premier Li Qiang seemed to suggest that the Third Plenum would not bring any "big moves." At the "Summer Davos" in Dalian in June, he said that the Chinese economy, which is recovering from the pandemic, needs to "strengthen its foundation" and that it is not the time to "use drastic measures." A recent Asia Society article ahead of the meeting said, "Xi will continue to prioritize Party control, financial de-risking, technological self-reliance, and investment-heavy industrial policy." But, a former senior Chinese official recently told the group's Center for China Analysis, Xi "could deliver 'positive surprises' ... to tackle issues such as weak productivity, geoeconomic restrictions, a struggling property sector, and the fiscal distress of local governments." Here are a few key things to watch for during the meetings: 'New quality productive forces' "New quality productive forces" is a concept first proposed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping in 2023 that refers to promoting scientific and technological innovation and independence. Observers expect it to be a key topic during this week's meetings. Speaking at the National Science and Technology Conference late last month, Xi reiterated China's goal to become a scientific and technological power by 2035, noting that the field of high technology "is reshaping the global order and development pattern." Earlier in March, Chinese Premier Li Qiang talked about the country unleashing a "new leap forward" highlighting the government's plans to support developing sectors and industries from life sciences to electric vehicles, new materials, commercial spaceflight and quantum technologies. In a recent commentary on the meetings, Yu Jie, senior research fellow on China at Chatham House, wrote, "Beijing has firmly shifted its growth paradigm, from chasing a nominal growth rate into building a resilient economy driven by innovation that can cope with protracted geopolitical repercussions. This gathering will give a final political stamp to do so." Personnel changes Although most observers believe the plenum was delayed from late last year until this week largely because of the economic challenges China has been facing, incidents involving the removal of several high-ranking officials could also have been a factor. That is something Xi might address during this week's meetings. Last July, Beijing replaced Qin Gang as foreign minister and removed Rocket Force Commander Li Yuchao and Political Commissar Xu Zhongbo from their posts, accusing them of corruption. In October, former Defense Minister Li Shangfu was removed from his post. Late last month, shortly before this week's meeting, he was expelled from the party for taking bribes. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection also announced in May that it had launched an investigation into Tang Renjian, China's minister of agriculture and rural affairs. Observers say the plenum is Xi's chance to confirm the removal of these officials from the Central Committee. The Asia Society notes that "Article 42 of the Party Charter says the Central Committee must confirm by a two-thirds majority any decision to discipline a full or alternate member that involves dismissal, probation, or expulsion. The Politburo can make such decisions, but in most cases, they must be retroactively endorsed by the Central Committee." The Asia Society statement continued, "The plenum will almost certainly expel Li Shangfu and could well remove the other four cadres, but the lack of official announcements about Qin, Xu, and Li Yuchao creates a sliver of uncertainty about their fates. It is possible, for example, that Qin is not expelled but put on probation, or that he is not mentioned because his investigation remains ongoing." Observers say it is also worth watching to see if Dong Jun, China's current defense minister, who replaced Li Shangfu at the end of last year, will be promoted to the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China. Article 14 of the Central Committee's Work Regulations states that the plenum is the only meeting that can add new members to the Central Military Commission. Real estate China's property crisis is another big challenge. The outside world will closely watch to see what measures the Chinese government may take to support the real estate industry. The State Council of China held a meeting in June to "listen to reports on the current real estate market situation and the next steps in building a new model for real estate development" and put forward the task of "destocking" the real estate market. This has triggered expectations for new measures and additional financial support from the plenum. Beijing launched a series of measures to save the housing market in May. In addition to lowering mortgage interest rates and down payment ratios, the People's Bank of China announced plans to set up a 300 billion yuan — roughly $41.3 billion in U.S. dollars — "affordable housing refinancing" for local governments and local state-owned enterprises to purchase unsold commercial housing stocks for use as affordable housing.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates — Tehran remains open to resuming negotiations with Washington on restoring their participation in a nuclear agreement, Iran's acting foreign minister told Newsweek magazine in an interview published on Tuesday. Ali Bagheri Kani's remarks come as he prepares to address the United Nations Security Council in New York. The United States under President Donald Trump withdrew from in 2018 from the nuclear accord between Iran and six world powers, which restricted Tehran's nuclear programs. Indirect talks between the U.S. and Tehran to revive the deal have stalled. Iran is still part of the agreement, but it has decreased its commitments because of U.S. sanctions imposed on it. Newsweek reported: "On the foreign policy front, he [Bagheri Kani] said that Tehran remained open to resuming negotiations with Washington toward restoring mutual participation in a nuclear deal." However, Iran also intended to foster its deepening ties with China, Russia and neighboring nations, it quoted him as saying. Iran will also call for greater action against Israel in view of the Gaza war, he said. The Biden administration said last week the United States was not ready to resume nuclear talks with Iran under its new president. Bagheri Kani became the acting foreign minister after foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian died in a helicopter crash along with Iran's president Ebrahim Raisi in May. Iranians then elected Masoud Pezeshkian as president, a moderate who said he will promote a pragmatic foreign policy and ease tensions with the powers involved in the 2015 nuclear pact.

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ISLAMABAD — Heavy rains in eastern Afghanistan have killed at least 40 people and injured nearly 350 others, Taliban officials said Tuesday. Among the dead in Monday's storm were five members of the same family when the roof of their house collapsed in Surkh Rod district, according to provincial spokesperson Sediqullah Quraishi. Four other family members were injured. Sharafat Zaman Amar, a spokesperson for the Public Health Ministry, said the 347 injured people had been brought for treatment to the regional hospital in Nangarhar from Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province, and nearby districts. About 400 houses and 60 electricity poles were destroyed across Nangarhar, Quraishi said. Power was cut in many areas and there were limited communications in Jalalabad city, he said. The damage was still being assessed. Abdul Wali, 43, said much of the damage occurred within an hour. "The winds were so strong that they blew everything into the air. That was followed by heavy rain," he said. His 4-year-old daughter had minor injuries, he said. Aid organizations rushed supplies and mobile teams. International Rescue Committee Afghanistan Director Salma ben Aissa said her group was conducting assessments and providing emergency health services. "The continuation of climate-induced disasters in Afghanistan ought to be cause for grave concern: Decades of conflict and economic crisis has meant that the country has faced setback after setback as it tries to find its feet. The sad reality is that without a massive increase in support from donors and the international community, many more will lose their lives," she said in a statement. In May, exceptionally heavy rains killed more than 300 people and destroyed thousands of houses, mostly in the northern province of Baghlan, according to the World Food Program. Separately, the official Taliban news agency Bakhtar reported that at least 17 people were killed and 34 others injured when a bus overturned Tuesday morning on the main highway linking Kabul and Balkh in northern Baghlan province. The cause of the accident wasn't immediately clear, but poor road conditions and careless driving are often blamed for such incidents in the country.

Israelis are closely watching the U.S. elections, seeing the results as crucial in deciding the outcome of the war in Gaza and its aftermath. Linda Gradstein reports for VOA from Jerusalem. Camera: Ricki Rosen

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Abuja, Nigeria — Nigeria plans to resume local refining of crude oil in early August, national petroleum authorities announced Monday. The resumption would end years of idleness at Nigeria’s state-owned refineries, and analysts say that if successfully implemented, it would lower fuel prices. The Nigerian National Petroleum Company made the announcement while addressing an emergency session at the National Assembly. Lawmakers called the session to interrogate central bank authorities, the national economic management team and the NNPC about the country's economic standing. The chief executive officer of the NNPC, Mele Kyari, said one of the two Port Harcourt refineries in the oil-rich Niger Delta region will begin operations in about two weeks. He said the other one will come into operation by the end of the year and allow Nigeria to begin exporting refined oil. "We're very optimistic that by December this country will be a net exporter,” he said, “that is [in] combination of production coming from us and the Dangote refinery and other smaller producing companies." The Dangote refinery is a privately owned facility being built near Lagos. Nigeria's minister of state of petroleum resources, Heineken Lokpobiri, voiced optimism about the impact of the revived refineries. "The easiest way for Nigeria to come out of its economic problems is through the oil and gas sector,” Lokpobiri said. “As a sector, we have a clear plan to gradually ramp up production. Right now, we have a clear plan to see how we can get 2 million barrels and more." This is not the first time officials have announced the resumption of domestic oil refining. They made similar announcements in December and March. On Monday, authorities said unforeseen technical difficulties hampered previous resumption dates. All four government-owned refineries, which can process about 450,000 barrels of crude per day, have been moribund for years, forcing the country to rely on imports to meet its petroleum needs, estimated at 66 million liters (17.4 million gallons) per day. Oil industry analyst Faith Nwadishi voiced doubts the refineries will operate again. "I'm just keeping my fingers crossed and trying to be very optimistic about this because it will go a long way in reducing the hardship and perhaps also reduce the pump price ... especially,” Nwadishi said. “But being somebody who's in the sector, I become a little bit skeptical. We have an allocation of about 445,000 [barrels per day] for domestic consumption, which, if properly refined, we'll have about 70 million liters. That covers our daily consumption." The Nigerian oil industry has been hampered in recent years by theft and corruption. On Monday, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative said about 140,000 barrels of crude oil were lost to theft every day between 2009 and 2018.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

The European Union’s top diplomat condemned violence that affected Palestinian civilians on July 13 two hours before posting about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

The U.S. Department of Justice provided detailed evidence linking Russian intelligence to a bot farm. The FBI identified phone numbers, IP addresses, and emails of the FSB and the state-owned media RT (Russia Today) operatives behind the Kremlin disinformation botnet.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

As this past weekend’s attempted assassination loomed large at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Donald Trump chose Ohio senator J.D. Vance, a one-time critic of Trump’s, to be his running mate. A look at what the foreign policy of a Trump Vance administration might look like. An update from Kyiv, including a look at Ukrainian reaction to J.D. Vance, who consistently criticized aiding Ukraine. Plus, the latest from Rwanda and Kenya.

geneva — A report by the United Nations human rights office Tuesday accuses the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) of widespread forced labor, which in some instances “may constitute a crime against humanity of enslavement” under international criminal law. “The testimonies in this report give a shocking and distressing insight into the suffering inflicted through forced labor upon people, both in its scale and in the levels of violence and inhuman treatment,” Volker Türk, U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement to coincide with the release of the report. “These people are forced to work in intolerable conditions, often in dangerous sectors,” he said. “They are placed under constant surveillance, regularly beaten, while women are exposed to continuing risks of sexual violence.” The report is based on various sources, including 183 interviews conducted between 2015 and 2023 with victims and witnesses of forced labor who managed to escape and now live abroad. “The strength of this report is that it is based on a large amount of first-hand information,” James Heenan, representative of the U.N. human rights office in Seoul, told journalists in Geneva, noting that North Korean officials “are fully aware of our concerns.” According to the report, people in North Korea are controlled and exploited through an extensive and multi-layered system of forced labor that “provides a source of free labor for the state and acts as a means for the state to control, monitor and indoctrinate the population.” The report identifies six forms of forced labor, which are “institutionalized” through the country’s prisons system, schools, compulsory state-allocated employment, military conscription, “Shock Brigade deployments” and a system of overseas labor. “Perhaps the most concerning is the forced labor extracted from people in detention,” Heenan said. “These detainees are systematically compelled to work under the threat of punishment or physical violence under inhumane conditions, with little food or health care and disproportionate work quotas.” Given the almost total control over the civilian population of detainees, the widespread extraction of forced labor in North Korean prisons may “in some instances reach degrees of effective ownership over individuals which is an element of crimes of inhumanity and of enslavement,” he said. The report finds that the state assigns every North Korean to a workplace after completing school or military service. It says military conscripts, who must serve 10 or more years, are “routinely forced to work in agriculture or construction,” which is described as “hard and dangerous, without adequate health and safety measures.” A former nurse who worked in the surgery department of a military hospital during her compulsory service told U.N. investigators that “most soldiers who came to the clinic were malnourished and came down with tuberculosis, since they were physically weak and tired.” Another state-organized system of forced labor mobilizations comes in the form of so-called “Shock Brigades” — state-organized groups of citizens forced to carry out “arduous manual labor,” often in construction and agriculture. “These people are very often sent very far away from their homes to complete projects under state supervision. It can go on for months. It can go on even for years during which workers are obliged to live on site, with little or no remuneration,” Heenan said. “The conditions described in the Shock Brigade are indeed shocking,” he said. “Little concerns for health, for safety. Scarce food, scarce shelter, and punishment for failure to meet quotas.” The report says citizens who are sent to work overseas and earn foreign currency for the government “lose up to 90 percent of their wages to the state.” It says they also lose all freedom of movement. “They are kept under constant surveillance, their passports are confiscated, and they live under appalling conditions, with almost no time off.” Heenan said there also is a very worrying, appalling situation of child labor in the country, with “children as young as 10 being drafted into forced labor.” Authors of the report say children are “requested to volunteer extensive periods of their day” to work on farms and in mines, collect wood in the forests, repair railroads and participate in many other initiatives, “which interfere with their rights to education, health, rest and leisure.” The U.N. human rights report calls on the North Korean government to “abolish the use of forced labor and end any forms of slavery.” It urges the international community to investigate and prosecute those suspected of committing international crimes and calls on the Security Council to refer the situation to the International Criminal Court. Heenan said North Korean authorities “did not comment” on the report, which was sent to them. However, he added that human rights colleagues in Geneva and other parts of the U.N. system regularly engage with the government. “We do talk to the DPRK.” “We monitor, we report, but we also engage, and we hope that that engagement will improve some of these issues,” he said. In his statement, High Commissioner Türk noted that “Decent work, free choice, freedom from violence, and just and favorable conditions of work … must be respected and fulfilled.” He said, “Economic prosperity should serve people, not be the reason for their enslavement.”

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