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Former US President Donald Trump was shot during a campaign rally. The bullet hit his ear and then he was whisked off stage. While the Secret Service killed the assailant, the former President’s staff quickly issued a statement that he was “fine.” The assassination attempt was immediately condemned by US President Joe Biden. What did people see at the rally? What’s been the international reaction to the assassination attempt? And what impact will this have on US politics ahead of the 2024 presidential election?

KATHMANDU, Nepal — The leader of the Nepal's largest communist party, Khadga Prasad Oli, was named the Himalayan nation's new prime minister on Sunday following the collapse of a previous coalition government.    A statement issued by the president's office said Oli will take his oath of office on Monday.    Oli will be leading a coalition government made up of his Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) and the Nepali Congress party, the two largest parties in Nepal.    It is his fourth time as Nepal's prime minister.    The last government headed by Pushpa Kamal Dahal collapsed on Friday after Oli's party, which had been a part of the coalition, withdrew its support to join the new partnership.    Oli would have to seek vote of confidence in parliament to continue in office within a month. The two parties in the new alliance have more than half the members in parliament required to prove their majority.    Oli, 72, was born in a village in east Nepal and has been involved in politics since he was young. He has a kidney illness and has had kidney transplant surgeries. He has made regular trips abroad for medical treatment. 

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Kigali — A small landlocked African nation playing in the big league: with military might, image branding and political influence, Rwanda under President Paul Kagame has become a major strategic player with tentacles spread far and wide.    De facto leader since the 1994 genocide and running for a fourth term as president in elections Monday, the iron-fisted Kagame has established a sphere of influence far outweighing Rwanda's size to develop the country and entrench his own power base.    Unlike many other African nations, "Rwanda is pursuing a real foreign policy strategy", says Paul-Simon Handy, East Africa director at the Institute for Security Studies.   This strategy is similar to "smart power", says Handy, combining hard power — the use of military and economic means for influence — and soft power.   Murky role  The Rwanda Defense Force (RDF) is one of the pillars of this policy, though its role is contradictory.   The Democratic Republic of Congo has for years accused its neighbor of fomenting instability in the east and supporting armed groups, including the Tutsi-led M23, deploying troops and allegedly seeking to plunder its mineral wealth.      A recent U.N. experts report said 3,000-4,000 Rwandan soldiers are fighting alongside M23 rebels and that Kigali had "de facto control" of the group's operations.    Questioned repeatedly on the issue, Kagame has not explicitly denied the presence of Rwandan forces in DRC, instead pointing to the "persecution" of the Tutsi minority and the risk of instability on Rwanda's border.    "By nature, Rwanda's security posture has always been defensive, not offensive. We only act when trouble is brought on us," he said this month.   Its murky role in the DRC has however cost Kigali some financial support from the West, which since 2012-2013 has cut development aid and investment.    'Africa's policeman'  At the same time, Kagame has established his army as the "policeman of Africa."    Since 2024, the RDF has taken part in numerous UN peacekeeping missions. With 5,894 men deployed as of March 31, Rwanda is the fourth largest contributor, with forces in South Sudan and the Central African Republic.   "By participating in and leading peacekeeping and unilateral military missions, Rwanda has significantly enhanced its global image and strategic relevance beyond its historical association with the 1994 genocide," said Federico Donelli, assistant professor of international relations at the University of Trieste.    It also reaps a financial windfall. The UN pays contributors $1,428 per soldier per month, meaning Kigali receives more than $100 million a year.    The RDF has also been deployed under bilateral deals with, for example, CAR and Mozambique.   These military commitments are often accompanied by economic agreements, offering development opportunities for Rwanda, which does not have its own natural resources or industrial base, and is reliant on international funding.    In CAR, Rwandans enjoy privileged investment access to sectors such as mining, agriculture and construction, often led by Crystal Ventures, an investment firm owned by Kagame's ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).    Diplomatic lever   These deals also represent a valuable diplomatic lever to ward off sanction threats over the DRC or its dismal human rights record.    "Rwanda has never hidden its threat to withdraw from peacekeeping operations if it were to be sanctioned," said Handy.    "It has proven its effectiveness: DRC efforts to have Rwanda sanctioned for its support for the M23 were unsuccessful."   Donelli said Kagame has an ability to read global dynamics.    "He knows that Western actors are increasingly reluctant to get involved in African crises," he added.   "In an increasingly chaotic regional context, he is using Rwanda's role as a reliable partner in crises to reduce Western criticism and divert attention from domestic issues such as the lack of democratic development, centralization of power and human rights concerns."   'Smart power'  Kagame is accused of authoritarian rule, muzzling the media and political opposition, while according to the World Bank almost half the population lives on less than $2.15 a day.   But he has sought to burnish Rwanda's image abroad — selling itself as an African flagship for new technology, a hub for conferences and major sporting events, and a leading ecotourism destination.   Sponsorship deals have seen "Visit Rwanda" emblazoned on the shirts of European football teams Arsenal, PSG and Bayern Munich.   Rwanda has also boosted its presence in global organizations.    In 2009, it became a member of the Commonwealth and hosted its 2022 summit, while a former minister is head the International Organisation of La Francophonie (French-speaking union), another serves as deputy chair of the African Union Commission.     Handy says Rwanda's "smart power" was illustrated by the controversial deal to take in asylum seekers deported from Britain.   "The interest was essentially financial but it was also the projection of an image of a peaceful country where it would be good for refugees to live."   Widely condemned by rights groups and blocked by UK courts, the scheme has now been scrapped by Britain's new government — but Rwanda insists it is not obliged to return the 240 million pound ($311 million) payment already sent by London. 

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Paris — France celebrated military victories of the past at its annual Bastille Day parade Sunday, while its present political future appeared far from clear. President Emmanuel Macron inspected French and allied units which took part in France's World War II liberation 80 years ago. And Paris welcomed the Olympic flame to the city, less than two weeks before it hosts the Summer Games. But behind the pomp — itself in a reduced format while Olympic preparations blocked the traditional Champs Elysees route — France's tense search for a government appeared to be at a stalemate. All eyes were on the host, Macron, who last year cut a more impressive figure, hosting rising superpower India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi as they watched France's military might roll down the Champs Elysees. There was no international star guest this year, and there were no armored vehicles as a reduced number of troops marched down the less majestic Avenue Foch. This month's snap elections, called by Macron to clarify France's direction after the far right sent shockwaves through the political establishment by coming first in EU polls, left the country without a parliamentary majority. Government in limbo Prime Minister Gabriel Attal is hanging on as caretaker head of government but the centrist has reportedly fallen out with Macron and is now focusing on his own future, taking charge of his reduced party in parliament. Other figures are mobilizing with an eye on the 2027 presidential race, but there is little sign of a majority emerging from parliament, split between three camps. With government in limbo and Macron barred by the constitution from calling fresh elections for at least 12 months, far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen is eyeing the 2027 campaign with relish. Meanwhile, a rapidly cobbled-together left-wing alliance, the New Popular Front (NFP), now has the most MPs but no outright majority and no clear candidate for PM. Firebrand hardliner Jean-Luc Melenchon and his France Unbowed (LFI) party have alienated many even on the left and would be rejected by the center and right. But LFI represents a large chunk of the NFP and, along with some greens and communists, had been touting Huguette Bello, the 73-year-old former communist and president of the regional council on Reunion in the Indian Ocean, as premier. But on Sunday she declined the role, saying that there was no consensus behind her candidacy, notably because of opposition from the center-left Socialist Party, and that she wanted the NFP to agree to another name quickly. The European Union's second largest economy, a nuclear-armed G7 power and permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, is thus rudderless, a troubling situation for markets and France's allies alike. Against this backdrop, the reduced and rerouted parade risked becoming a new symbol of drift, even with the addition of the arrival in Paris of the Olympic Torch, ahead of the July 26 to August 11 Games. Olympic relay No tanks took part, and only 4,000 foot soldiers marched, down from 6,500 last year. The military fly-past saw 45 airplanes and 22 helicopters soar over Paris. Regiments honored on the parade included those from France's allies and former French colonies that took part in the country's 1944 World War II liberation. The parade's final section turned to the upcoming games. Colonel Thibault Vallette of the elite Cadre Noir de Saumur cavalry school and 2016 equestrian gold medalist at the Rio Games rode the torch down the route before relay runners were to carry it around the capital.

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.

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.

NEW YORK — The nearly complete fossilized remains of a 161-million-year-old stegosaurus discovered in Colorado in 2022 will be auctioned by Sotheby's in New York next week, auction house officials said. The dinosaur that Sotheby's calls Apex stands 3.3 meters tall and measures 8.2 meters nose to tail, according to Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby's global head of science and popular culture. The stegosaurus, with its distinctive pointy dorsal plates, is one of the world's most recognizable dinosaurs. Apex, which Hatton called "a coloring book dinosaur," was discovered in May 2022 on private land near the town of Dinosaur, Colorado. The excavation was completed in October 2023, Sotheby's said. Though experts believe stegosauruses used their fearsome tail spikes to fight, this specimen shows no signs of combat, Sotheby's said. The fossil does show evidence of arthritis, suggesting that Apex lived to an advanced age. Hatton said Apex was found "with the tail curled up underneath the body, which is a common death pose for animals." The dinosaur will be auctioned on July 17 as part of Sotheby's "Geek Week" series. Sotheby's is estimating that it will sell for $4 million to $6 million, but that's just an educated guess. "This is an incredibly rare animal," Hatton said. "A stegosaurus of this caliber has never sold at auction before, so we will find out what it is actually worth."

PARIS — At least 25 cases of a dangerous new strain of mpox spreading through the Democratic Republic of Congo have been detected in the eastern city of Goma, mostly in camps housing people fleeing a surrounding conflict, health authorities said Wednesday. Congo has seen 20,000 cases and more than 1,000 deaths from mpox, mainly among children, since the start of 2023. Over 11,000 cases, including 443 deaths, have been reported so far this year. Authorities recently approved the use of vaccines to tackle the upsurge, but none are currently available outside of clinical trials in the country. The head of the national response team against the mpox epidemic, Cris Kacita, said in an interview that most of the new reported cases were in displaced people camps. He said cases were infected with a new strain of the virus that is spreading in South Kivu province. Goma is the capital and largest city of the neighboring North Kivu province. The World Health Organization (WHO) and scientists raised the alarm last month about the mpox situation in Congo, including the spread of a new strain of mpox spreading in South Kivu. Mpox has been endemic in Congo for decades but a new variant of the clade I of the virus emerged last year. It is a viral infection that spreads through close contact, causing flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions. Most cases are mild, but it can kill. A different, less severe form of mpox - clade IIb - spread globally in 2022, largely through sexual contact among men who have sex with men. This prompted the WHO to declare a public health emergency that has now ended, although there are still cases and the agency has said mpox remains a public health threat. "The national biomedical research institute in Goma has sequenced the virus and this proves that the virus has been circulating for a long time in the city of Goma," Kacita said. "The risk here is the promiscuity in the camps and the speed with which the epidemic is spreading," he warned. Hundreds of thousands of people who fled conflict in Congo's insurgent-hit east are staying in overcrowded camps in and around Goma. The number of displaced has increased since a rebel group known as the M23 launched a major offensive in 2022, prompting national and regional military responses that have struggled to stem the militia's advance. 

WASHINGTON — Astronomers have scrutinized a cluster of stars that is the apparent remnant core of a relatively small galaxy that was swallowed by the sprawling Milky Way 8 to 10 billion years ago. What lurks at the center of this cluster has them excited. The researchers said Wednesday the unusual motion of seven stars in this cluster provides compelling evidence for the presence of an elusive mid-sized black hole at its heart. These are bigger than the class of ordinary black holes formed in the implosion of a single star but smaller than the behemoths residing at the nucleus of most galaxies. The cluster, called Omega Centauri, contains about 10 million stars. The black hole within it is at least 8,200 times as massive as our sun, the researchers said. The supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A* at the center of the Milky Way possesses 4 million times the mass of the sun. And that is dwarfed by supermassive black holes billions of times the mass of the sun in other galaxies. "There has been a long debate whether intermediate-mass black holes exist in general, and specifically in Omega Centauri, and our detection might help to resolve that debate," said astronomer Maximilian Häberle of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature. This black hole is located about 17,700 light-years from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 9.5 trillion kilometers. The Milky Way's only larger-known black hole is Sagittarius A*, located about 26,700 light-years from Earth. Black holes are extraordinarily dense objects with gravity so strong not even light can escape, making it difficult to spot them. This one was detected based on how its gravitational pull influences the velocity of seven fast-moving stars in its vicinity, documented in two decades of Hubble Space Telescope observations. The researchers believe the smaller galaxy, which had been perhaps 10% the Milky Way's size, harbored a black hole that, if left undisturbed, would have become supermassive as it fed off gas and other nearby material drawn by its gravitational pull. But the galactic merger, which occurred when the Milky Way was about a quarter or third its current age, left the black hole frozen in time. "In this merger process, the galaxy lost all of its gas, and hence the growth of its central black hole got interrupted, leaving it in an intermediate-mass state," Max Planck Institute for Astronomy astronomer and study co-author Nadine Neumayer said. The merger stripped away most of the smaller galaxy's stars, leaving just the central batch -- now the Omega Centauri star cluster. "Intermediate-mass black holes have been suspected in the centers of low-mass galaxies or also in the center of certain star clusters. However, they have been very challenging to detect. Due to their lower mass with respect to supermassive black holes, their region of influence is small," Häberle said. Other candidates for mid-sized black holes have been identified in previous research. Black holes that are the mass of a single star form when large stars explode at the end of their life cycle and the core collapses in on itself. "The most likely scenario for the formation of the intermediate-mass black hole at the center of Omega Centauri is the collision and merging of very massive stars very early on during the formation of the star cluster. These stars get very close to each other, collide and form even more massive stars that evolve to black holes fairly rapidly. The intermediate-mass black hole can grow via the merger of several of these black holes," Neumayer said. These mid-sized black holes may be the key to understanding the formation of the supermassive ones. "Intermediate-mass black holes are likely very common, especially in the early evolution of the universe," Neumayer said. "They are thought to be the seeds for supermassive black holes."

JERUSALEM — Israel's national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem on Monday that will preserve, restore and store its more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage. Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, serves as both a museum and a research institution. It welcomes nearly a million visitors each year, leads the country's annual Holocaust memorial day and hosts nearly all foreign dignitaries visiting Israel. "Before we opened this building, it was very difficult to exhibit our treasures that were kept in our vaults. They were kind of secret," said Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan. "Now there's a state-of-the-art installation (that) will help us to exhibit them." The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, located at the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem, will also provide organization and storage for the museum's 225 million pages of documents and half a million photographs. Dayan said the materials will now be kept in a facility that preserves them in optimal temperatures and conditions. "Yad Vashem has the largest collections in the world of materials related to the Holocaust," Dayan said. "We will make sure that these treasures are kept for eternity." The new facility includes advanced, high-tech labs for conservation, enabling experts to revisit some of the museum's trickier items, such as a film canister that a family who fled Austria in 1939 brought with them. It was donated to the museum but arrived in an advanced state of decay. "The film arrived in the worst state it could. It smelled really bad," said Reut Ilan-Shafik, a photography conservator at Yad Vashem. Over the years, the film had congealed into a solid piece of plastic, making it impossible to be scanned. Using organic solvents, conservators were able to restore some of the film's flexibility, allowing them to carefully unravel pieces of it. Using a microscope, Ilan-Shafik was able to see a few frames in their entirety, including one showing a couple kissing on a bench in a park and other snapshots of Europe before World War II. "It is unbelievable to know that the images of the film that we otherwise thought lost to time" have been recovered, said Orit Feldberg, granddaughter of Hans and Klara Lebel, the couple featured in the photo. Feldberg's mother donated the film canister, one of the few things the Lebels were able to take with them when they fled Austria. "These photographs not only tell their unique story but also keep their memory vibrantly alive," Feldberg said. Conservation of items from the Holocaust is an expensive, painstaking process that has taken on greater importance as the number of survivors dwindles. Last month, the Auschwitz Memorial announced it had finished a half-million-dollar project to conserve 3,000 of the 8,000 pairs of children's shoes that are on display at the Nazi concentration camp in Poland.

ANKARA — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar Assad have recently signaled that they are interested in restoring diplomatic ties that have been ruptured for more than a decade. Erdogan has said that he hopes to arrange a meeting with Assad soon for the first time since the countries broke off relations in 2011 as mass anti-government protests and a brutal crackdown by security forces in Syria spiraled into a still-ongoing civil war. Speaking at a NATO summit in Washington on Thursday, Erdogan said he had called on Assad two weeks ago to either come to Turkey for the meeting or to hold it in a third country, and that he had assigned Turkey's foreign minister to follow up. Turkey backed Syrian insurgent groups seeking to overthrow Assad and still maintains forces in the opposition-held northwest, a sore point for Damascus. This is not the first time that there have been attempts to normalize relations between the two countries, but previous attempts failed to gain traction. Here's a look at what might happen this time around: What happened at their last talks Russia, which is one of the strongest backers of Assad's government but also has close ties with Turkey, has been pushing for a return to diplomatic relations. In December 2022, the Turkish, Syrian and Russian defense ministers held talks in Moscow, the first ministerial level meeting between rivals Turkey and Syria since 2011. Russia also brokered meetings between Syrian and Turkish officials last year. However, the talks fizzled, and Syrian officials publicly continued to blast Turkey's presence in northwest Syria. Assad said in an interview with Sky News Arabia last August that the objective of Erdogan's overtures was "to legitimize the Turkish occupation in Syria." What's different now Russia appears to once again be promoting the talks, but this time around, Iraq — which shares a border with both Turkey and Syria — has also offered to mediate, as it previously did between regional arch-rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran. Aron Lund, a fellow with the Century International think tank, said Iraq may have taken the initiative as a way to deflect pressure from Turkey to crack down on the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, a Kurdish separatist group that has waged an insurgency against Turkey since the 1980s and has bases in northern Iraq. By pushing rapprochement with Syria, Baghdad may be trying to "create some form of positive engagement with the Turks, kick the can down the road, and deflect the threat of an intervention," Lund said. The geopolitical situation in the region has also changed with the war in Gaza and fears of a wider regional conflict. Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, an analyst on Turkey and director of the German Marshall Fund in Ankara, said that both countries may be feeling insecure and seeking new alliances in the face of the war's potential regional ripple effects. What Turkey and Syria want From Erdogan's side, Unluhisarcikli said, the attempt to engage is likely driven in part by the increasing anti-Syrian sentiment in Turkey. Erdogan is likely hoping for a deal that could pave the way for the return of many of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees living in his country. From the Syrian side, a return to relations with Turkey would be another step toward ending Assad's political isolation in the region after more than a decade as a pariah due to his government's brutal crackdown on protesters in 2011 and alleged war crimes afterward. And despite their differences over Turkey's presence in northwest Syria, Damascus and Ankara both have an interest in curtailing the autonomy of Kurdish groups in northeast Syria. Turkey may be concerned that the security situation in northeast Syria could deteriorate in the event that the U.S. withdraws troops it currently has stationed there as part of a coalition against the Islamic State militant group, Unluhisarcikli said. That could require Turkey to "cooperate or at least coordinate with Syria, to manage the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal," he said. Joseph Daher, a Swiss-Syrian researcher and visiting professor at the European University Institute in Florence, said the two governments likely hope for modest "economic gains" in a rapprochement. While trade never completely stopped, it currently goes through intermediaries, he said, while restoring diplomatic relations would allow official commerce to resume and make trade more fluid. The prospects for an agreement Analysts agreed that the talks are unlikely to bring about the full Turkish withdrawal from northwest Syria that Damascus has called for or any other major shift in conditions on the ground in the near term. Although the two countries' interests "actually overlap to a large degree," Lund said, "there are also major disagreements" and "a lot of bad blood and bitterness" that could impede even "lower-level dealmaking." Both Erdogan and Assad may also want to wait for the outcome of U.S. elections, which could determine the future American footprint in the region, before making a major deal, he said. In the long run, Lund said, "The logic of the situation dictates Turkish-Syrian collaboration in some form. ... They're neighbors. They're stuck with each other and the current stalemate does them no good." Unluhisarcikli agreed that a "grand bargain" is unlikely to come out of the present talks, but the increased dialogue could lead to "some confidence building measures," he said. Daher said the most probable outcome of the talks is some "security agreements" between the two sides, but not a full Turkish withdrawal from Syria in the short term, particularly since the Syrian government army is too weak to control northwest Syria by itself. "On its own, it's not able to take back the whole of the northwest — it needs to deal with Turkey," he said. How people in Turkey and Syria view a potential agreement In Turkey and in government-controlled Syria, many view the prospects of a rapprochement positively. In northwest Syria, on the other hand, protests have broken out against the prospect of a normalization of relations between Ankara — which had previously positioned itself as a protector of the Syrian opposition — and Damascus. Kurds in Syria have also viewed the potential rapprochement with apprehension. The Kurdish-led authority in northeast Syria said in a statement that the prospective reconciliation would be a "conspiracy against the Syrian people" and a "clear legitimization of the Turkish occupation" of previously Kurdish-majority areas that were seized by Turkish-backed forces. 

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