•  Authorities secure video images of suspect, not yet released.
•  FBI confirms two detained individuals had no involvement.
•  Trump blames radical left, vows sweeping response to killing.

The gunman who shot dead US right-wing youth leader Charlie Kirk in a targeted killing remained at large Thursday but authorities said they have video images of the suspect and have recovered a “high-powered” rifle.

Kirk, a 31-year-old superstar on the Republican right who was credited with helping Donald Trump return to the presidency last year, was shot while addressing a large crowd at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.

The killing — described by the FBI as a “targeted event”— shocked a nation already reeling from political tensions half a year into Trump’s second term.

Authorities acknowledged the gunman remained at large after having escaped into woodland.

“We’re doing everything we can to find him, and we’re not sure how far he has gone yet, but we will do our best,” FBI Special Agent Robert Bohls told a media briefing.

Authorities said they had secured quality images of the killer, who was of university age.

“We do have good video footage of this individual. We are not going to release that at this time,” said Beau Mason, commissioner of the Utah Department of Public Safety.

Bohls said the presumed murder weapon had also been found.

“It is a high powered bolt action rifle. That rifle was recovered in a wooded area where the shooter had fled,” the FBI agent said.

Two people initially detained for questioning were released after officials determined they had no connection to the shooting.

‘Dark moment’

Reflecting the intensely political nature of the incident, it was Trump, rather than law enforcement authorities, who first announced to Americans that Kirk had died from his wound.

Trump then addressed the nation in a video address on social media in which he cited a “dark moment for America.”

Despite no public information about the shooter’s identity or motive, the president went on to suggest that the left wing was responsible — and to pledge a wide-reaching response.

“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world´s worst mass murderers and criminals,” he said.

“This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we´re seeing.”

“My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity,” Trump said.

Shot in neck

Kirk was shot in the neck while speaking to the crowd and collapsed in his chair.

Students at the university described the ensuing panic— and their broader fears as political divisions deepen across the country.

“It makes me feel like I should be very careful about expressing my political ideas,” said Samuel Kimball, a software engineering student, told AFP.

Utah Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican, called the killing a “political assassination.”

Kirk, who supporters have hailed as a “martyr” for conservative ideals, had an outsized influence in US politics.

He co-founded Turning Point USA in 2012 to drive conservative viewpoints among young people, his natural showmanship making him a go-to spokesman on television networks.

Kirk used his enormous audiences on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to build support for anti-immigration policies, outspoken Christianity and gun ownership, and to spread carefully edited clips of his interactions during debates at his many college events.

Three months ago, a Minnesota man shot dead a Democratic lawmaker and her husband in their home, and Trump survived an assassination attempt during his election campaign in July 2024.

Vice President JD Vance was due to travel to Utah to meet Kirk’s family Thursday, a source familiar with the plans said, after he canceled a trip to New York to mark the 9/11 attacks anniversary.

STOCKHOLM: Press freedoms worldwide have declined significantly over the past five years to hit their lowest level in 50 years, a report by a democracy think tank showed Thursday.

Afghanistan, Burkina Faso and Myanmar — already among the poorest performers in press freedoms — posted the biggest falls, the report by the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) said.

The fourth-biggest drop was in South Korea, it added, citing “a spike in defamation cases initiated by the government and its political allies against journalists, and raids on journalists’ residences”.

“The current state of democracy in the world is concerning,” IDEA Secretary General Kevin Casas-Zamora, told AFP.

More than half of countries in the world (54%), registered a drop in one of the five key democracy indicators between 2019 and 2024, the report said.

“The most important finding in our report is the very acute deterioration in press freedom around the world,” Casas-Zamora said.

Between 2019 and 2024, it saw “the biggest drop over the past 50 years”.

“We’ve never seen such an acute deterioration in a key indicator of democratic health,” he said.

Press freedoms declined in 43 countries across all continents, including 15 in Africa and 15 in Europe.

“There’s a toxic brew that is coming together, which involves, on the one hand, heavy-handed interventions on the part of governments,” some of them “legacies of what happened during the pandemic”.

On the other hand, “you have the very negative impact of disinformation, some of which is real disinformation and some of which is used as a pretext by governments to clamp down on press freedoms”.

The think tank is concerned about the consolidation of traditional media worldwide, as well as the “disappearance in many countries of local media which plays a very important role in supporting a democratic debate”, Casas-Zamora said.

The report only covers the period 2019 to 2024 and does not include the first effects of US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January.

But “some of the things that we saw during the election at the end of last year and in the first few months of 2025 are fairly disturbing”, Casas-Zamora said.

“Since what happens in the US has this ability to go global, this does not bode well for democracy globally,” he added.

• Trump again annoyed at Netanyahu, but rupture unlikely.
• Analysts see Trump’s support for Israel despite disagreements.
• Israel kept Washington in dark about Qatar strikes, officials say.

WASHINGTON: Less than four months ago, President Donald Trump met with the leader of Qatar, praising his opulent palace and signing a sweeping defence agreement with the Gulf monarchy, a key ally that hosts the biggest US base in the Middle East.

Israel’s surprise attack on Tuesday against Hamas leaders in Doha has jolted that relationship, angering Trump and drawing fierce condemnation from Doha and Western allies.

Ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and targeting the political offices of the Palestinian group, the strikes killed a Qatari security agent and five others, but failed to kill the Hamas leaders. Trump said he was “very unhappy about every aspect” of the Israeli operation.

But for all the indignation, the strikes are unlikely to change the president’s fundamental approach toward Israel, analysts and US officials say. If anything, the bombings underlined the cold calculus beneath the Trump-Netanyahu relationship.

Israel has shown it is not afraid to act against US interests. The administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not formally warn Washington of its impending bombing campaign on Tuesday, US officials said.

That lack of warning recalled Israel’s September 2024 attack on Hezbollah, when Israel wounded thousands of the group’s members with booby-trapped pagers, without informing then-President Joe Biden.

Trump, for his part, has occasionally expressed displeasure with Netanyahu. But his administration has strongly supported Israel’s campaign to weaken Hamas and allowed it to largely take the lead on key issues such as Iran’s nuclear program.

“On this one, I think Trump is annoyed by Netanyahu’s tactics,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and veteran US peace negotiator.

But, Miller added, “(Trump’s) instinct is that he agrees with Netanyahu’s notion that Hamas cannot just be hollowed out as a military organisation. It needs to be fundamentally weakened.”

Asked for comment, the White House referred Reuters to remarks by Trump on Truth Social on Tuesday night, during which he said the bombings did not advance US or Israeli interests.

“However,” Trump wrote, “eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal.”

The Israeli Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

No rupture likely

Some analysts declined to rule out the possibility that Netanyahu may yet exhaust Trump’s patience if he springs more surprises on Washington.

 In practice, that could mean a withdrawal of political cover for Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza, which has provoked outrage among European and Arab nations as famine conditions spread.

Israel’s military campaign in the Palestinian enclave was triggered by a Hamas-led rampage in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“As his Arab friends complain to him about what Israel is doing — and they are doing so now — he may say to them give me a credible plan for the day after in Gaza and with an alternative to Hamas running it and I will tell Bibi you have done enough,” said Dennis Ross, a former Middle East negotiator for Democratic and Republican administrations.

Israel’s strike in Doha will likely dampen Trump’s hopes for more Gulf states joining the Abraham Accords, a landmark agreement brokered by his first administration in which several Arab countries forged diplomatic ties with Israel.

Still, a rupture between the two men seems unlikely, argued Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the United States, saying that Trump appreciates strength and transactions that end wars.

“If Netanyahu can continue to appeal to those two sides of this president then he will be okay. I’m not concerned about the relationship,” said Oren.

Hot and cold

The Trump-Netanyahu partnership has seen ups and downs, administration officials acknowledge.

“It’s been hot and cold since the campaign,” said one senior White House official.

In May, Trump travelled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates during his first major foreign trip, skipping Israel, which many analysts viewed as a snub. The Republican president returned to office in January promising to reinvigorate relations with Netanyahu that had deteriorated under his Democratic predecessor.

During that trip, Trump agreed to lift sanctions on the new Syrian government at the behest of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. That move alarmed Israeli officials who question the motives of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda commander.

But just a month later, the Trump-Netanyahu alliance seemed back on track. After Israel launched an air war on Iran in June, Trump — who campaigned on ending foreign conflicts — surprised even some of his own political allies by sending B-2 bombers to partially destroy Iran’s key nuclear facilities.

If that created goodwill within the Netanyahu administration, it did not benefit Trump’s foreign policy interests, at least in the short term.

Days later, Trump profanely chastised Iran and Israel for breaking a US-brokered ceasefire. In July, the US appeared to criticise an Israeli strike in Damascus, which destroyed part of Syria’s defence ministry. And on Tuesday, Israel notified the US shortly before the Qatar strike, but there was no coordination with or approval from Washington, two US officials said.

“The US can seek to cajole and push Israel to take decisions,” said Jonathan Panikoff, a former deputy US national intelligence officer on the Middle East. “But Netanyahu will continue to act in a manner that it views as in the best interests of Israel alone.”