Politics
Conservative influencer Charlie Kirk shot dead, manhunt on for suspect underway
- Manhunt launched for sniper suspected of firing from rooftop.
- Kirk co-founded largest conservative youth organisation in US.
- President Donald Trump orders US flags flown at half-staff.
US conservative activist Charlie Kirk, an influential ally of President Donald Trump, was fatally shot on Wednesday while speaking at a Utah university, sparking a manhunt for a lone sniper who the governor said had carried out a political assassination.
Authorities said they still had no suspect in custody as of Wednesday night, some eight hours after the midday shooting at Utah Valley University campus in Orem, Utah, during an event attended by 3,000 people.
The lone perpetrator suspected of firing the single gunshot that killed Kirk, 31, apparently from a distant rooftop sniper’s nest on campus, remained “at large,” said Beau Mason, commissioner of the Utah Department of Public Safety, at a news conference four hours later.
State police issued a statement on Wednesday night saying that two men had been detained and one was interrogated by law enforcement, but both were subsequently released.
“There are no current ties to the shooting with either of these individuals,” the statement said. “There is an ongoing investigation and manhunt for the shooter.”
In a video message taped in the Oval Office and posted to Trump’s Truth Social online platform, the president vowed that his administration would track down the suspect.
“My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organisations that fund it and support it,” Trump said.
Cellphone video clips of the killing posted online showed Kirk addressing a large outdoor crowd on the campus, about 40 miles (64km) south of Salt Lake City, around 12:20pm MT (1820 GMT), when a gunshot rang out. Kirk moved his hand toward his neck as he fell off his chair, sending onlookers running.
In another clip, blood could be seen gushing from Kirk’s neck immediately after the shot.
Jeff Long, chief of the university police department, said he had six officers working the event and coordinated with the head of Kirk’s private security team, which was also on site.
Trump ordered all government US flags flown at half-staff until Sunday in Kirk’s honor.
The killing was the latest in a series of attacks on US political figures, including two assassination attempts on Trump last year, that have underscored a sharp rise in political violence.
“This is a dark day for our state, it’s a tragic day for our nation,” Utah’s Republican Governor Spencer Cox said at the press conference. “I want to be very clear that this is a political assassination.”
With the suspect still at large, there was no clear evidence of motive for the act of violence.
Trump, who routinely describes political rivals, judges and others who stand in his way as “radical left lunatics” and warns that they pose an existential threat to the nation, decried violent political rhetoric.
“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” Trump said in the video.
“This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”
On Capitol Hill in Washington, an attempt to observe a moment of silence for Kirk on the floor of the US House of Representatives degenerated into shouting and finger-pointing.
Kirk’s appearance on Wednesday was the first in a planned 15-event “American Comeback Tour” at universities around the country. He often used such events, which typically drew large crowds of students, to invite attendees to debate him live.
Asked about shootings, then shot
Seconds before he was shot, the married father of two young children was being questioned by an audience member about gun violence, according to multiple videos of the event posted online.
“Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America in the last 10 years?” Kirk was asked.
He responded, “Counting or not counting gang violence?” He was shot moments later.
Kirk and the group he co-founded, Turning Point USA, the largest conservative youth organisation in the country, played a key role in driving young voter support for Trump in November.
After winning his second presidential term, Trump credited Kirk for mobilising younger voters and voters of color in support of his campaign.
“You had Turning Point’s grassroots armies,” Trump said at a rally in Phoenix in December. “It’s not my victory, it’s your victory.”
Kirk had 5.3 million followers on X and hosted a popular podcast and radio program, “The Charlie Kirk Show.” He had also recently appeared as a guest co-host on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.”
He was part of an ecosystem of pro-Trump conservative influencers – including Jack Posobiec, Laura Loomer, Candace Owens and others – who helped to amplify the president’s agenda. Kirk frequently attacked mainstream media and engaged in culture-war issues around race, gender and immigration, often in a provocative style.
At the White House, staff members, many of them young and admirers of Kirk, were ashen-faced as news of the shooting spread.
Political violence on the rise
Republican and Democratic politicians alike expressed dismay over the shooting.
Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement: “Political violence of any kind and against any individual is unacceptable and completely incompatible with American values. We pray for his family during this tragedy.”
The US is undergoing its most sustained period of political violence since the 1970s. Reuters has documented more than 300 cases of politically motivated violent acts since supporters of Trump attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
In July 2024, Republican Trump was grazed by a gunman’s bullet during a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania. A second assassination attempt two months later was foiled by federal agents, with opening arguments in that suspect’s trial set to begin on Thursday.
In April, an arsonist broke into Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s residence and set it on fire while the family was inside.
Earlier this year, a gunman posing as a police officer in Minnesota murdered Democratic state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband and shot Democratic Senator John Hoffman and his wife. And in Boulder, Colorado, a man used a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to attack a solidarity event for Israeli hostages, killing one woman and injuring at least six more.
In 2022, a man broke into Democratic then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home and bludgeoned her husband with a hammer, leaving him with skull fractures and other injuries. In 2020, a group of right-wing militia members plotted unsuccessfully to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat.
- At least 25 confirmed dead in Haiti, 19 in Jamaica.
- Forecaster estimates up to $52 billion in damages.
- Melissa among strongest-ever storms at landfall.
PORT-AU-PRINCE/KINGSTON/HAVANA: Hurricane Melissa’s confirmed death toll climbed to 44 on Thursday, according to official reports, after wreaking destruction across much of the northern Caribbean and picking up speed as it headed toward Bermuda.
Jamaica’s information minister told Reuters at least 19 deaths had been confirmed, but authorities were continuing search and rescue efforts. The storm left hundreds of thousands without power, ripped roofs of buildings and scattered fields with rubble.
Jamaica’s military has called on reserve personnel to report for duty to help with relief and rescue operations.
Melissa made landfall in southwestern Jamaica on Tuesday as a powerful Category 5 hurricane, the Caribbean nation’s strongest-ever storm to directly hit its shores, and the first major hurricane to do so since 1988.
Windspeeds were well above the minimum level for the strongest hurricane classification. Forecasters at AccuWeather said it tied in second place for strongest-ever Atlantic hurricane on record in terms of windspeed when in struck land.
The forecaster estimated $48 billion to $52 billion in damage and economic loss across the western Caribbean.
Authorities in Haiti, which was not directly hit but nevertheless suffered days of torrential rains from the slow-moving storm, reported at least 25 deaths, mostly in the southern town of Petit-Goave when a river burst its banks.
A river also caved in and carried off part of a national highway, local newspaper Le Nouvelliste reported. The road, which had been weakened by last year’s Hurricane Beryl, connected to the nearby city of Jacmel.
Melissa also hit eastern Cuba, where some 735,000 evacuated, but as of Thursday, no deaths were reported there, despite extensive damage to homes and crops.
At 8pm (0000 GMT), Melissa was a Category 1 storm 409 km (254 miles) south-west of the North Atlantic British island territory, where hurricane conditions were expected by nightfall even as Melissa’s eye skirts north-west.
Melissa was packing maximum sustained winds of 105 mph (169 kph).
Residents in Bermuda however remained calm as the storm was expected to give the island a relatively wide berth. Authorities said they would close its causeway Thursday night and shut schools and ferries on Friday “out of an abundance of caution.”
In the Bahamas, which Melissa cut through Wednesday night, authorities lifted storm warnings but did not give the “all clear”. An official said authorities expected to decide by Saturday whether it was safe for the hundreds of people who evacuated off affected islands to return to their homes.
Wading barefoot through mud
The front page of Thursday’s Jamaica Observer newspaper read: “DEVASTATION.”
Densely populated Kingston was spared the worst damage. Its main airport was set to reopen on Thursday, as was the capital’s port. Relief flights and aid had begun to flow into Jamaica’s airports, authorities said.
But across the country, more than 130 roads remained blocked by trees, debris and electric lines, authorities said, forcing the military to clear roadways on foot into isolated areas, with ambulances following close behind.
Satellite imagery showed swaths of trees and homes devastated in the hardest-hit areas of Jamaica, sparse remaining greenery defoliated and most structures destroyed.
In a neighbourhood of the island’s Montego Bay, 77-year-old Alfred Hines waded barefoot through thick mud and debris as he described his narrow escape from the rising floodwaters.
“At one stage, I see the water at my waist and (after) about 10 minutes time, I see it around my neck here and I make my escape,” he told Reuters on Wednesday.
“I just want to forget it and things come back to normal.”
In western parts of the island, people crowded by supermarkets and gas stations to fill up on supplies.
“Montego Bay hasn’t got any petrol. Most of the petrol stations are down,” British tourist Chevelle Fitzgerald told Reuters, adding it took her at least six hours to cross the 174 km (108 miles) to Jamaica’s capital.
“The highway was closed. You had some blockage on the road and trees falling down,” she said.
Over 70% of electrical customers in Jamaica remained without power as of Thursday morning, said Energy Minister Daryl Vaz, with power lines felled across the island’s roadways.
Many schools remained without power or water, officials in the capital Kingston said.
Immediate humanitarian aid
Scientists say hurricanes are intensifying faster with greater frequency as a result of warming ocean waters caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Many Caribbean leaders have called on wealthy, heavy-polluting nations to provide reparations in the form of aid or debt relief.
Despite the U.N. setting up a fund for developing nations to quickly access reliable financing for more extreme weather events in 2023, donations have not met targets.
U.S. forecaster AccuWeather said Melissa was the third most-intense hurricane observed in the Caribbean, as well as its slowest-moving, compounding damages for affected areas.
U.S. search and rescue teams were headed for Jamaica on Thursday to assist in recovery efforts, Jamaican authorities said. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. was prepared to offer “immediate humanitarian aid” to the people of Cuba, a long-time U.S. foe.
Authorities in Cuba – which Melissa struck in the night as a Category 3 storm – said they were “awaiting clarification on how and in what way they are willing to assist.”
At least 241 Cuban communities remained isolated and without communications on Wednesday following the storm’s passage across Santiago province, according to preliminary media reports, affecting as many as 140,000 residents.
Residents of Santiago, Cuba’s second-largest city, began returning to repair their homes. Authorities had evacuated 735,000 people to shelters outside the hurricane’s cone and relocated tourists in northern cays to inland hotels.
- India says exemption will boost regional trade connectivity.
- Indian refiners are now cutting Russian oil imports.
- Jaiswal says India continuing talks with Trump admin on trade deal.
The US has granted India a six-month sanctions waiver to operatethe Iranian port of Chabahar, India said on Thursday, boosting New Delhi’s effort to enhance trade with Afghanistan and Central Asian countries bypassing its rival Pakistan.
India signed a 10-year contract with Iran last year to develop and operate the port and this month stepped up its ties with Taliban-run Afghanistan by reopening its embassy in Kabul that was shut after the Islamist group seized power in 2021 following the withdrawal of US-led NATO forces.
The port on Iran’s southeastern Gulf of Oman coast was initially planned with a rail link to Afghanistan for building the landlocked country’s economy through trade and reducing Kabul’s dependence on the Pakistani port of Karachi.
The waiver move followed word by US President Donald Trump this week that he wanted to reach a trade deal with India – signalling a thaw in relations that soured to their lowest point in decades after he doubled tariffs on Indian imports to 50% as punishment for Indian purchases of Russian oil.
Indian refiners are now cutting Russian oil imports following Washington’s imposition last week of sanctions on Moscow’s top two crude exporters, Rosneft and Lukoil.
“I can confirm that we have been granted an exemption for a six-month period,” Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told a weekly news briefing, referring to the port.
He also said India was continuing talks with the Trump administration on a bilateral trade deal.
Washington had last month revoked the sanctions waiver for Chabahar, initially granted in 2018, as part of its effort to put “maximum pressure” on Iran to counter what it called the Islamic Republic’s destabilising activities in support of its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.
An Indian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the US sanctions waiver had taken effect on Wednesday. The US embassy in New Delhi did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A double-digit combination set the social media sphere ablaze among teens in 2025, leaving parents and teachers befuddled — and now it has officially been crowned Dictionary.com’s “Word of the Year”: 67.
But even the organisation that unveiled the winning word — pronounced “six-seven” and never “sixty-seven” — admitted it was not exactly sure about its meaning.
“You might be feeling a familiar vexation at the sight of these two formerly innocuous numerals,” Dictionary.com said, addressing parents as it announced the winner this week.
Members of Gen Alpha, it added, might be “smirking at the thought of adults once again struggling to make sense of your notoriously slippery slang.”
Dictionary.com said the origin of the word might be traced to “Doot Doot (6 7),” a song by the US rapper Skrilla.
Use of the word went viral in schools and on social media this year. It can be taken to mean a variety of things, with context, tone and absurdity all playing a role in determining its definition in the moment.
“67” beat out some stiff competition from other words that were short-listed for “Word of the Year.” These included “broligarchy,” “Gen Z stare,” and an entry from the world of emoticons — the dynamite emoji.
Its use exploded online with news of the engagement between pop superstar Taylor Swift and American football star Travis Kelce, as it was used as shorthand to refer to the “TNT” couple.
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