Latest Trump shooting incident a reminder of past assassination attempts against US leaders

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Updated 16 September 2024
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Latest Trump shooting incident a reminder of past assassination attempts against US leaders

  • Four US presidents were assassinated while in office
  • Four presidents were wounded but survived assassination attempts, while in office or afterwards

WASHINGTON: The FBI is investigating what it said was another assassination attempt on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
The incident occurred Sunday at the Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach in Florida where Trump, the former president, was golfing.
Law enforcement officials said Secret Service saw a man with a rifle in the bushes and shot at the suspected assassin.
The suspect fled the bushes and was later apprehended on a highway, according to law enforcement.
Previous attempt on Trump
In July, Trump was shot by a gunman during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania in what the FBI said was an attempted assassination. The former president was wounded in the ear.
The Congressional Research Service says direct assaults against presidents, presidents-elect, and candidates have occurred on at least 15 separate occasions, with five resulting in death.
Below is a list of other previous attempts on the lives of American leaders, successful or not.

Assassinations
Four US presidents were assassinated while in office.
Abraham Lincoln: Killed in 1865 by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington.
James Garfield: Shot in 1881 in Washington at a train station and died of his wounds two and a half months later.
William McKinley: Assassinated in 1901 by an anarchist in Buffalo, New York.
John F. Kennedy: Assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963 in Dallas, Texas, as the president rode in a motorcade.

Leaders who survived assassination attempts
Four presidents were wounded but survived assassination attempts, while in office or afterwards.
Donald Trump: Trump had just started a campaign speech in Pennsylvania on July 13 when shots rang out. Trump was shot in the ear. He was rushed by security officials to a black SUV.
Ronald Reagan: He was shot in 1981 outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington. Reagan was wounded when one of the bullets ricocheted off a limousine and struck him under the left armpit.

Gerald Ford: Survived two attempts on his life in less than three weeks in 1975 without being hurt.
Theodore Roosevelt: He was shot in the chest in 1912 while campaigning for election in Milwaukee, but insisted on delivering his speech to supporters before being taken to a hospital.
Assassination attempts on other US leaders
Robert F. Kennedy: A US presidential candidate, and a US senator, Kennedy was assassinated in 1968 by a gunman in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
Alabama Governor George C. Wallace: A candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, he was shot in 1972 and became paralyzed from the waist down. (Reporting by Kanishka Singh and Mike Stone in Washington; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Lincoln Feast and Leslie Adler)


Greek, Turkish foreign ministers to meet on Nov. 8, sources say

Updated 17 sec ago
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Greek, Turkish foreign ministers to meet on Nov. 8, sources say

ATHENS: Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis will meet his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan in Athens on Nov. 8 to discuss bilateral issues including the demarcation of an exclusive economic zone, diplomatic sources said on Tuesday.
Greece and Turkiye, NATO allies but historic foes, have been at odds for decades over matters ranging from airspace to maritime jurisdiction in the eastern Mediterranean, energy resources and ethnically split Cyprus.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said last week he believed relations with Greece were improving and that the Gerapetritis-Fidan meeting was aimed at finding solutions to issues such as maritime zones and airspace.
The foreign ministers have been tasked with exploring whether conditions were favorable to initiate talks on the demarcation of the continental shelf and economic zone, Gerapetritis said last month.
An agreement on where their maritime zones begin and end is important for determining rights over possible gas reserves and power infrastructure schemes.
A high-level cooperation council, at which the countries will assess progress, is expected to take place in Ankara in January.
Separately, the leaders of estranged Greek and Turkish Cypriots were expected to meet informally with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in New York on Tuesday.
Cyprus was split decades ago in a Turkish invasion after a brief Greek-inspired coup, and preceded by years of sporadic violence between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. Reunification talks collapsed in mid-2017 and have been at a stalemate since.


Kenya court to rule on bid to stop deputy president’s ouster

Updated 7 min 21 sec ago
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Kenya court to rule on bid to stop deputy president’s ouster

  • In a historic move last week, the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, voted overwhelmingly to impeach Gachagua on 11 charges including corruption

NAIROBI: A Kenyan court is due to rule Tuesday on a last-ditch case seeking to stop a Senate debate and vote on the impeachment of Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua.
In a historic move last week, the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, voted overwhelmingly to impeach Gachagua on 11 charges including corruption.
The 59-year-old has denied all allegations and will continue to serve in his role until the Senate decides whether to approve his removal.
Gachagua filed the court challenge to stop the upper house’s proceedings set for Wednesday and Thursday, arguing that his impeachment had been unfair and fast-tracked.
High Court judge Enock Chacha Mwita will rule on the case at 2:30 p.m. (1130 GMT).
It is one of more than two dozen court cases that have been filed against the impeachment, the first of its kind against a deputy president since the possibility was introduced in Kenya’s revised 2010 constitution.
On Monday, the Chief Justice Martha Koome empanelled a three-judge bench to hear and determine a case consolidating six of the petitions.
Gachagua, a powerful businessman from Kenya’s biggest tribe, the Kikuyu, weathered previous corruption scandals to become deputy leader as President William Ruto’s running mate in a closely fought election in August 2022.
But in recent weeks, he has complained of being sidelined by the president and had been accused of supporting youth-led anti-government protests that broke out in June.
Gachagua, who is accused of threatening a judge among his impeachment charges, on Sunday said he pinned his hopes on the judiciary.
“I am a believer in the independence of the judiciary. I am certain that the courts will exercise judicial authority and protect and uphold the constitution and the will of the people,” he told a church service in central Kenya.
Ruto has not commented publicly on the impeachment.
The ouster will require the support of at least two-thirds of senators to pass.


Russian strike kills one, wounds 16 in south Ukraine

Updated 47 min 13 sec ago
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Russian strike kills one, wounds 16 in south Ukraine

KYIV: A Russian missile strike overnight killed a woman and wounded 16 people in Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, where Moscow has ramped up aerial attacks, authorities said Tuesday.
Images distributed by first responders showed several buildings engulfed in flames and firefighters working to extinguish the blaze.
“Last night the enemy attacked Mykolaiv. A woman was killed,” emergency services said, adding that 16 people were injured.
Mykolaiv had an estimated pre-war population of just under half a million people and was subjected to heavy bombardment when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Ukrainian forces pushed back Russian troops from the region in the autumn of 2022.
However Russian forces have continued to strike the riverside town near the Black Sea coast and over recent weeks stepped up fatal aerial attacks on the nearby port city of Odesa, damaging civilian vessels and port facilities.
The Ukrainian air force meanwhile said it had downed 12 out of 17 Iranian-designed attack drones launched by Russia at Ukraine overnight, including over the Mykolaiv region.


Indian foreign minister to visit arch-rival Pakistan

Updated 15 October 2024
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Indian foreign minister to visit arch-rival Pakistan

  • Subrahmanyam Jaishankar will travel to Islamabad for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit
  • Both sides have said no bilateral talks are planned, and Jaishankar’s visit would strictly follow the summit schedule

NEW DELHI: India’s foreign minister flies to Pakistan for a summit on Tuesday, the first visit by New Delhi’s top envoy to its arch-rival neighbor in nearly a decade.
Subrahmanyam Jaishankar will travel to Islamabad for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit to “represent India at the meeting,” the foreign ministry said Tuesday.
Both sides have said no bilateral talks are planned, and Jaishankar’s visit would strictly follow the SCO schedule.
The two nuclear-armed nations are bitter adversaries, having fought multiple wars since being carved out of the subcontinent’s partition in 1947 following British colonial rule.
The SCO comprises China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus — with 16 more countries affiliated as observers or “dialogue partners.”
The SCO is sometimes touted as an alternative to the Western-dominated NATO military alliance.
“India remains actively engaged in the SCO format,” India’s foreign ministry said.
While the SCO has a mandate to discuss security, the Islamabad summit is due to focus on trade, humanitarian and cultural issues.
The last time an Indian foreign minister visited Pakistan was in 2015 when Sushma Swaraj attended a conference on Afghanistan.
The same year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a surprise visit to Lahore to meet his then-counterpart Nawaz Sharif, sparking hopes of a thaw in relations with Pakistan.
But relations plummeted in 2019 when Modi’s government revoked the limited autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir — which led Pakistan to suspend bilateral trade and downgrade diplomatic ties with New Delhi.
The Himalayan region, home to a long-running and deadly insurgency against Indian rule, is divided between the two countries and claimed by both in full.
Pakistan’s former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was in India’s Goa in 2023 — also a rare visit — for an SCO meeting where he and Jaishankar were involved in a verbal spat.
The two did not hold a one-on-one meeting.


US, Philippines launch war games a day after China’s Taiwan drills

Updated 15 October 2024
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US, Philippines launch war games a day after China’s Taiwan drills

  • The US and Philippines are fielding just over a thousand participants each
  • A smaller number of Australian, British, Japanese and South Korean forces are also taking part

MANILA: Thousands of US and Filipino marines launched 10 days of joint exercises in the northern and western Philippines on Tuesday, a day after China held huge drills around Taiwan.
The annual Kamandag, or Venom, exercises are focused on defending the north coast of the Philippine’s main island of Luzon, which lies about 800 kilometers from self-ruled Taiwan.
Beijing considers Taiwan part of its territory and has vowed it will never rule out using force to take it, calling Monday’s drills a “stern warning” to “separatist” forces on the island.
The joint US-Filipino exercises come amid a series of escalating confrontations between China and the Philippines over reefs and waters in the South China Sea, which Beijing claims almost in its entirety.
Philippine Marine Corps commandant Maj. Gen. Arturo Rojas stressed at Tuesday’s opening ceremony in Manila that Kamandag was long planned and had “nothing to do with whatever is happening in the region.”
The drills’ primary focus will be live-fire exercises along Luzon’s north coast, while other activities will be conducted on tiny Philippine islands between Luzon and Taiwan.
“It’s a coastal defense doctrine. The doctrine says that a would-be aggressor might be directed toward our territory,” Filipino exercise director Brig.-General Vicente Blanco told reporters.
“We are not exercising to join the fight (over Taiwan),” he added.
US Marines representative Col. Stuart Glenn said the exercises were aimed at helping the United States and its allies respond to “any crisis or contingencies.”
The western Philippine island of Palawan, facing the disputed South China Sea, will also host part of the drills.
The US and Philippines are fielding just over a thousand participants each, while smaller numbers of Australian, British, Japanese and South Korean forces are also taking part.
An amphibious landing and training on how to defend against chemical and biological warfare were also among the activities planned, according to a press kit.
As the war games began Tuesday, the Philippine government announced that one of its civilian patrol vessels had sustained minor damage on October 11 when it was “deliberately sideswiped” by a “Chinese Maritime Militia” vessel.
The Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources said the collision, which dented the front right section of the BRP Datu Cabaylo, took place about 9.3 kilometers (5.8 miles) from Thitu, a Philippine-garrisoned island in the Spratly group.
The crew were unhurt and later sailed the vessel to Thitu and completed their routine maritime patrol mission, the statement said.
Beijing has for years sought to expand its presence in contested areas of the sea, brushing aside an international ruling that its claim to most of the waterway has no legal basis.
China has deployed military and coast guard vessels in recent months in a bid to eject the Philippines from a trio of other strategically important reefs and islands in the South China Sea.