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Islamabad, Pakistan — More heavy rains in Afghanistan have triggered flash floods, raising the death toll to 84 in the country’s north following weeks of devastating torrents that had already left hundreds dead and missing, a Taliban spokesperson said Sunday. The new round of heavy rains and floods hit four districts in Faryab province Saturday night, leaving 66 dead, five injured and eight missing. Another 18 people had died in floods on Friday, said Esmatullah Moradi, spokesperson for the provincial governor in Faryab.  Moradi said that around 1,500 houses were either completely or partially destroyed while hundreds of hectares (acres) of farmlands were washed away and more than 300 animals killed. Afghanistan has been witnessing unusually heavy seasonal rains. In the hard-hit western province of Ghor, 50 people were reported dead from Friday’s floods, according to Abdul Wahid Hamas, spokesperson for the provincial governor. The U.N. food agency said Ghor was the most affected by the floods. Last week, the World Food Program said the exceptionally heavy rains in Afghanistan had killed more than 300 people and destroyed thousands of houses, mostly in the northern province of Baghlan. Survivors have been left with no home, no land, and no source of livelihood, WFP said, adding that most of Baghlan was inaccessible by trucks. The latest disaster came on the heels of devastating floods that killed at least 70 people in April. The waters also destroyed about 2,000 homes, three mosques and four schools in western Farah and Herat, and southern Zabul and Kandahar provinces. 

Paris — Armed robbers who used a motorbike as a battering ram made off with “several million euros'” [dollars'] worth of valuables in a heist of the luxury Paris boutique of self-declared “Jeweler to the Stars" Harry Winston, the French prosecutor’s office overseeing the police probe said.  Having refused Saturday to confirm that Harry Winston was the target, the Paris prosecutor's office did so Sunday, saying the dazzling, by-appointment store on the tony Avenue Montaigne was robbed by a gang of at least three people.  They “forced entry to the jewelry store using a two-wheeler. They stole jewelry from several windows, while one of them kept watch,” carrying a long-barreled firearm, the prosecutor’s office said.  As they sped away, they pointed the firearm “in the direction of police officers, who had to put an end to their pursuit,” it said.  “The damage, currently being assessed, is several million euros,” it said.  Harry Winston didn’t reply to emailed questions from The Associated Press. This is not the first time the luxury store has been robbed. Eight people were convicted in 2015 in connection with a spectacular 2008 holdup in which three cross-dressing gunmen stole about $92 million in loot. 

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.

Washington — After a nearly two year hiatus, Blue Origin flew adventurers to space on Sunday including a former Air Force pilot who was denied the chance to be the United States' first Black astronaut decades ago.    It was the first crewed launch for the enterprise owned and founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos since a rocket mishap in 2022 left rival Virgin Galactic as the sole operator in the fledgling suborbital tourism market.    Six people including the sculptor Ed Dwight, who was on track to become NASA's first ever astronaut of color in the 1960s before being controversially spurned, launched around 09:36 am local time (1436 GMT) from the Launch Site One base in west Texas, a live feed showed.    Dwight — at 90 years, 8 months and 10 days — became the oldest person to ever go to space.    "This is a life-changing experience, everybody needs to do this," he exclaimed after the flight.    Dwight added: "I thought I didn't really need this in my life," reflecting on his omission from the astronaut corps, which was his first experience with failure as a young man. "But I lied," he said with a hearty laugh.    Mission NS-25 is the seventh human flight for Blue Origin, which sees short jaunts on the New Shepard suborbital vehicle as a stepping stone to greater ambitions, including the development of a full-fledged heavy rocket and lunar lander.    To date, the company has flown 31 people aboard New Shepard -- a small, fully reusable rocket system named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space.  The program encountered a setback when a New Shepard rocket caught fire shortly after launch on September 12, 2022, even though the uncrewed capsule ejected safely.    A federal investigation revealed an overheating engine nozzle was at fault. Blue Origin took corrective steps and carried out a successful uncrewed launch in December 2023, paving the way for Sunday's mission.    After liftoff, the sleek and roomy capsule separated from the booster, which produces zero carbon emissions. The rocket performed a precision vertical landing.    As the spaceship soared beyond the Karman Line, the internationally recognized boundary of space 100 kilometers above sea level, passengers had the chance to marvel at the Earth's curvature and unbuckle their seatbelts to float — or somersault — during a few minutes of weightlessness.    The capsule then reentered the atmosphere, deploying its parachutes for a desert landing in a puff of sand. However, one of the three parachutes failed to fully inflate, possibly resulting in a harder landing than expected.    Bezos himself was on the program's first ever crewed flight in 2021. A few months later, Star Trek's William Shatner blurred the lines between science fiction and reality when he became the world's oldest ever astronaut aged 90, decades after he first played a space traveler.    Dwight, who was almost two months older than Shatner at the time of his flight, became only the second nonagenarian to venture beyond Earth.    Astronaut John Glenn remains the oldest to orbit the planet, a feat he achieved in 1998 at the age 77 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery.    Blue Origin's competitor in suborbital space is Virgin Galactic, which deploys a supersonic spaceplane that is dropped from beneath the wings of a massive carrier plane at high altitude.    Virgin Galactic experienced its own two-year safety pause because of an anomaly linked with the 2021 flight that carried its founder British tycoon Richard Branson into space. But the company later hit its stride with half a dozen successful flights in quick succession.    Sunday's mission finally gave Dwight the chance he was denied decades ago.    He was an elite test pilot when he was appointed by President John F Kennedy to join a highly competitive Air Force program known as a pathway for the astronaut corps, but was ultimately not picked.    He left the military in 1966, citing the strain of racial politics, before dedicating his life to telling Black history through sculpture. His art, displayed around the country, includes iconic figures like Martin Luther King Jr, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and more. 

Los Angeles — Sean "Diddy" Combs admitted that he beat his ex-girlfriend Cassie in a hotel hallway in 2016 after CNN released video of the attack, saying in a video apology he was "truly sorry" and his actions were "inexcusable."  "I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I was disgusted then when I did it. I'm disgusted now," the music mogul said in a video statement posted Sunday to Instagram and Facebook.  The video aired by CNN Friday shows Combs, wearing only a white towel, punching and kicking Cassie, an R&B singer who was his protege and longtime girlfriend at the time. The footage also shows Combs shoving and dragging Cassie, and throwing a vase in her direction.  Cassie, whose legal name is Cassandra Ventura, sued Combs in November over what she said was years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse. The suit was settled the next day, but spurred intense scrutiny of Combs, with several more lawsuits filed in the following months, along with a federal criminal sex-trafficking investigation that led authorities to raid Combs' mansions in Los Angeles and Miami.  He denied the allegations in the lawsuits, but neither he nor his representatives had responded to the newly emerged video until Sunday.  "It's so difficult to reflect on the darkest times in your life, but sometimes you got to do that," Diddy says on the video. He adds, "I was disgusted then when I did it. I'm disgusted now. I went and I sought out professional help. I got into going to therapy, going to rehab. I had to ask God for his mercy and grace. I'm so sorry. But I'm committed to be a better man each and every day. I'm not asking for forgiveness. I'm truly sorry."  Combs is looking somber and wearing a T-shirt in the selfie-style apology video, and appears to be on a patio.  The security camera video, dated March 5, 2016, closely resembles the description of an incident at an InterContinental Hotel in the Century City area of Los Angeles described in Ventura' lawsuit.  The suit alleges that Combs paid the hotel $50,000 for the security video immediately after the incident. Neither he or his representatives have addressed that specific allegation. CNN did not say how it obtained the footage. 

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran's hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi has long been seen as a protégé to Iran's supreme leader and a potential successor for his position within the country's Shiite theocracy. News of his helicopter making what state media described as a "hard landing" on Sunday immediately brought new attention to the leader, who already faces sanctions from the U.S. and other nations over his involvement in the mass execution of prisoners in 1988.  Raisi, 63, previously ran Iran's judiciary. He ran unsuccessfully for president in 2017 against Hassan Rouhani, the relatively moderate cleric who as president reached Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.  In 2021, Raisi ran again in an election that saw all of his potentially prominent opponents barred for running under Iran's vetting system. He swept nearly 62% of the 28.9 million votes, the lowest turnout by percentage in the Islamic Republic's history. Millions stayed home and others voided ballots.  Raisi was defiant when asked at a news conference after his election about the 1988 executions, which saw sham retrials of political prisoners, militants and others that would become known as "death commissions" at the end of the bloody Iran-Iraq war.  After Iran's then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini accepted a U.N.-brokered cease-fire, members of the Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, heavily armed by Saddam Hussein, stormed across the Iranian border from Iraq in a surprise attack. Iran blunted their assault.  The trials began around that time, with defendants asked to identify themselves. Those who responded "mujahedeen" were sent to their deaths, while others were questioned about their willingness to "clear minefields for the army of the Islamic Republic," according to a 1990 Amnesty International report. International rights groups estimate that as many as 5,000 people were executed. Raisi served on the commissions.  The U.S. Treasury in 2019 sanctioned Raisi "for his administrative oversight over the executions of individuals who were juveniles at the time of their crime and the torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment of prisoners in Iran, including amputations." It also mentioned his involvement in the 1988 executions.  Iran ultimately is run by its 85-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But as president, Raisi supported the country's enrichment of uranium up to near-weapons-grade levels, as well as it hampering international inspectors as part of its confrontation with the West.  Raisi also supported attacking Israel in a massive assault in April that saw over 300 drones and missiles fired at the country in response for a suspected Israeli attack that killed Iranian generals at the country's embassy compound in Damascus, Syria — itself a widening of a yearslong shadow war between the two countries.  He also supported the country's security services as they cracked down on all dissent, including in the aftermath of the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini and the nationwide protests that followed.  The monthslong security crackdown killed more than 500 people and saw over 22,000 detained. In March, a United Nations investigative panel found that Iran was responsible for the "physical violence" that led to Amini's death after her arrest for not wearing a hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities.

VIENNA — A court in the Russian city of St. Petersburg has ordered the seizing of assets of Germany’s Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank in the country, the Russia state news agency Tass says. The order is in response to a lawsuit over the planned construction of a liquefied natural gas terminal in the Baltic Sea. The banks were among the guarantors in the contract for building a gas processing plant by a multinational construction firm, Renaissance Heavy Industries, and German company Linde. But the project was cancelled after Western sanctions, with the banks withdrawing their guarantees. The cancellation came at the request of RusChemAlliance, a subsidiary of Russian gas giant Gazprom and the operator of the project, German news agency dpa reported. RusChemAlliance paid advances to Linde for the building of the plant. The company is claiming about 238.61 million euros ($260 million) against Deutsche Bank and 94.92 million euros ($103 million) against Commerzbank, according to dpa. In a statement, Deutsche Bank said that it has made a provision for approximately 260 million euros ($283 million) under an indemnification agreement. It also said that it would need to assess the immediate operational impact in Russia and see how the claim will be viewed by the Russian courts. Western nations have imposed a wide range of sanctions against Russia over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago.

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.

NIAMEY — Niger and the United States have reached an agreement on the withdrawal of American troops from the West African country, a process that has already begun and will be finished by Sept. 15, they said in a joint statement.  Niger's ruling junta last month told the U.S. to withdraw its nearly 1,000 military personnel from the country. Until a coup last year Niger had been a key partner in Washington's fight against insurgents in the Sahel region of Africa, who have killed thousands of people and displaced millions more.  The agreement between Niger's defense ministry and the U.S. Department of Defense, reached after a five-day commission, guarantees the protection of U.S. troops until their withdrawal and establishes procedures to ease the entry and exit of American personnel during the withdrawal process.   "The Ministry of Defense of Niger and the U.S. Department of Defense recall the common sacrifices of the Nigerien and American forces in the fight against terrorism and welcome the mutual efforts made in building up the Nigerien armed forces," they said in a joint statement.   "The withdrawal of American forces from Niger in no way affects the pursuit of relations between the United States and Niger in the area of development. Also, Niger and the United States are committed to an ongoing diplomatic dialogue to define the future of their bilateral relations."  Niger's decision to ask for the removal of U.S. troops came after a meeting in Niamey in mid-March, when senior U.S. officials raised concerns about issues such as the expected arrival of Russian forces and reports of Iran seeking raw materials in the country, including uranium.  Russian military personnel have since entered an air base in Niger that is hosting U.S. troops.   

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.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi suffered a "hard landing" on Sunday, Iranian state media reported, without immediately elaborating. Raisi was traveling in Iran's East Azerbaijan province. State TV said the incident happened near Jolfa, a city on the border with the nation of Azerbaijan, some 600 kilometers (375 miles) northwest of the Iranian capital, Tehran. Traveling with Raisi were Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, the governor of Iran's East Azerbaijan province and other officials, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. One local government official used the word "crash" to describe the incident, but he acknowledged to an Iranian newspaper that he had yet to reach the site himself. Neither IRNA nor state TV offered any information on Raisi's condition. Rescuers were attempting to reach the site, state TV said, but had been hampered by poor weather conditions. There had been heavy rain and fog reported with some wind. IRNA called the area a "forest." Raisi had been in Azerbaijan early Sunday to inaugurate a dam with Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev. The dam is the third one that the two nations built on the Aras River. The visit came despite chilly relations between the two nations, including over a gun attack on Azerbaijan's Embassy in Tehran in 2023, and Azerbaijan's diplomatic relations with Israel, which Iran's Shiite theocracy views as its main enemy in the region. Iran flies a variety of helicopters in the country, but international sanctions make it difficult to obtain parts for them. Its military air fleet also largely dates back to before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Raisi, 63, is a hard-liner who formerly led the country's judiciary. He is viewed as a protégé of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and some analysts have suggested he could replace the 85-year-old leader after his death or resignation from the role. Raisi won Iran's 2021 presidential election, a vote that saw the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic's history. Raisi is sanctioned by the U.S. in part over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 at the end of the bloody Iran-Iraq war. Under Raisi, Iran now enriches uranium at nearly weapons-grade levels and hampers international inspections. Iran has armed Russia in its war on Ukraine, as well as launched a massive drone-and-missile attack on Israel amid its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It also has continued arming proxy groups in the Mideast, like Yemen's Houthi rebels and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

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.

Bratislava — Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico's life is no longer in danger following an assassination attempt, Deputy Prime Minister Robert Kalinak said on Sunday. A lone gunman, who appeared in court Saturday, shot Fico four times and he was at one stage said to be fighting for his life. "He has emerged from the immediate threat to his life, but his condition remains serious and he requires intensive care," Kalinak, Fico's closest political ally, told reporters. The Slovak premier was shot as he was greeting supporters after a government meeting in the central town of Handlova. He underwent a five-hour operation on Wednesday and another on Friday at a hospital in the central city of Banska Bystrica. "We can consider his condition stable with a positive prognosis," Kalinak said outside the hospital, adding, "We all feel a bit more relaxed now." Kalinak added that Fico would stay at Banska Bystrica for the moment. The suspected gunman, identified by Slovak media as 71-year-old poet Juraj Cintula, has been charged with premeditated attempted murder and was ordered held in custody at a hearing on Saturday. Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok said that if one of the shots "went just a few centimeters higher, it would have hit the prime minister's liver". The attempted assassination has highlighted acute political divisions in the country where 59-year-old Fico took office in October after his centrist populist Smer party won a general election. He is serving his fourth term as prime minister after campaigning on proposals for peace between Russia and Slovakia's neighbor Ukraine, and to halt military aid to Kyiv, which his government has done. Fico leads a coalition comprising his Smer party, the centrist HLAS and the small nationalist SNS party. Kalinak said the government would carry on without Fico "according to the program he has outlined". Slovakia was already sharply divided over politics since the 2018 murder of journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee. Kuciak pointed at links between Italian mafia and Fico's then government, and his murder sparked nationwide protests that resulted in Fico's resignation in 2018. The divisions deepened further with the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Following the attack on Fico, outgoing President Zuzana Caputova and her successor Peter Pellegrini, a Fico ally who takes over in June, tried to quell the tensions. Following a proposal by Caputova and Pellegrini, several parties have suspended campaigning for European Parliament elections scheduled for June. But some politicians have been quick to blame the Fico attack on their opponents or media. SNS chairman Andrej Danko blamed the media just after the shooting, and Kalinak took on the opposition and media in an emotional speech on the Smer website on Friday. Pellegrini said Sunday that a meeting of parliamentary party leaders he was planning to host on Tuesday to help ease tensions would probably not happen. "The past few days and some press conferences have shown us that some politicians are simply not capable of fundamental self-reflection even after such a huge tragedy," said Pellegrini. "It has turned out that the time is not ripe for a round table with the representatives of all parliamentary parties yet," he added. In a debate on the TA3 news channel, Danko said it was "false to say that a meeting on Tuesday would reconcile society". Police have meanwhile charged several people who had approved of the attack on Fico on social media.

London — The host of a news conference about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's extradition fight wryly welcomed journalists last week to the “millionth” press briefing on his court case. Deborah Bonetti, director of the Foreign Press Association, was only half joking. Assange’s legal saga has dragged on for well over a decade but it could come to an end in the U.K. as soon as Monday.  Assange faces a hearing in London's High Court that could end with him being sent to the U.S. to face espionage charges, or provide him another chance to appeal his extradition. The outcome will depend on how much weight judges give to reassurances U.S. officials have provided that Assange's rights won't be trampled if he goes on trial. Here's a look at the case: What Assange is charged with Assange, 52, an Australian computer expert, has been indicted in the U.S. on 18 charges over Wikileaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of classified documents in 2010. Prosecutors say he conspired with U.S. army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a Pentagon computer and release secret diplomatic cables and military files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He faces 17 counts of espionage and one charge of computer misuse. If convicted, his lawyers say he could receive a prison term of up to 175 years, though American authorities have said any sentence is likely to be much lower. Assange and his supporters argue he acted as a journalist to expose U.S. military wrongdoing and is protected under press freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Among the files published by WikiLeaks was video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists. “Julian has been indicted for receiving, possessing and communicating information to the public of evidence of war crimes committed by the U.S. government,” his wife, Stella Assange, said. “Reporting a crime is never a crime.” U.S. lawyers say Assange is guilty of trying to hack the Pentagon computer and that WikiLeaks’ publications created a “grave and imminent risk” to U.S. intelligence sources in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Why the case has dragged on so long While the U.S. criminal case against Assange was only unsealed in 2019, his freedom has been restricted for a dozen years. Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012 and was granted political asylum after courts in England ruled he should be extradited to Sweden as part of a rape investigation in the Scandinavian country. He was arrested by British police after Ecuador’s government withdrew his asylum status in 2019 and then jailed for skipping bail when he first took shelter inside the embassy. Although Sweden eventually dropped its sex crimes investigation because so much time had elapsed, Assange has remained in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison while the extradition battle with the U.S. continues. His wife said his mental and physical health have deteriorated behind bars. “He’s fighting to survive and that’s a daily battle,” she said. A judge in London initially blocked Assange’s transfer to the U.S. in 2021 on the grounds he was likely to kill himself if held in harsh American prison conditions. But subsequent courts cleared the way for the move after U.S. authorities provided assurances he wouldn’t experience the severe treatment that his lawyers said would put his physical and mental health at risk. The British government authorized Assange's extradition in 2022. What the latest hearing is about Assange's lawyers raised nine grounds for appeal at a hearing in February, including the allegation that his prosecution is political.   The court accepted three of his arguments, issuing a provisional ruling in March that said Assange could take his case to the Court of Appeal unless the U.S. guaranteed he would not face the death penalty if extradited and would have the same free speech protections as a U.S. citizen. The U.S. provided those reassurances three weeks later, though his supporters are skeptical. Stella Assange said the “so-called assurances” were made up of “weasel words.” WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said the judges had asked if Assange could rely on First Amendment protections. “It should be an easy yes or no question,” Hrafnsson said. “The answer was, ‘He can seek to rely on First Amendment protections.’ That is a ‘no.’ So the only rational decision on Monday is for the judges to come out and say, ‘This is not good enough.’ Anything else is a judicial scandal.” The possible outcome If Assange prevails, it would set the stage for an appeal process likely to further drag out the case. If an appeal is rejected, his legal team plans to ask the European Court of Human Rights to intervene. But his supporters fear Assange could possibly be transferred before the court in Strasbourg, France, could halt his removal. “Julian is just one decision away from being extradited,” his wife said. Assange, who hopes to be in court Monday, has been encouraged by the work others have done in the political fight to free him, his wife said. If he loses in court, he still may have another shot at freedom. President Joe Biden said last month that he was considering a request from Australia to drop the case and let Assange return to his home country. Officials have no other details but Stella Assange said it was “a good sign” and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the comment was encouraging.

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.

KINSHASA — Congo's army says it has “foiled a coup” early Sunday morning and arrested the perpetrators, including several foreigners, following a shootout between armed men in military uniform and a top politician’s guards that left three people dead in the capital, Kinshasa.   The attempted coup d’état was “nipped in the bud by Congolese defense and security forces [and] the situation is under control,” Congolese army spokesperson Brigadier General Sylvain Ekenge said at a media briefing. He did not give further details.    Clashes were reported between men in military uniform and guards of a local politician at the politician’s house on Tshatshi Boulevard, about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the presidential palace and where some embassies are also located.    This came amid a crisis gripping President Felix Tshisekedi's ruling party over an election for the parliament's leadership which was supposed to be held Saturday but was postponed.    The armed men attacked the Kinshasa residence of Vital Kamerhe, a federal legislator and a candidate for speaker of the National Assembly of Congo, but were stopped by his guards, Michel Moto Muhima, his spokesperson said on the X social media platform.    “The Honorable Vital Kamerhe and his family are safe and sound. Their security has been reinforced,” he wrote.    Local media identified the men as Congolese soldiers. It wasn't clear if the men in military uniform were trying to arrest the politician.    Two police officers and one of the attackers were killed in the shootout that started around 4:30 a.m. at the house on Tshatshi Boulevard, according to Muhima.    Footage, seemingly from the area, showed military trucks and heavily armed men parading deserted streets in the neighborhood.    On Friday, President Felix Tshisekedi met with parliamentarians and leaders of the Sacred Union of the Nation ruling coalition in an attempt to resolve the crisis amid his party which dominates the national assembly.    He said he would not “hesitate to dissolve the National Assembly and send everyone to new elections if these bad practices persist.”    Tshisekedi was reelected as president in December in a chaotic vote amid calls for a revote from the opposition over what they said was a lack of transparency, following past trends of disputed elections in the central African country.    The United States Embassy in Congo issued a security alert, urging caution after "reports of gunfire.”