10,000 pages of records about Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 assassination are released, on Trump’s order

10,000 pages of records about Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 assassination are released, on Trump’s order
Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., speaks to campaign workers, June 5, 1968, as his wife Ethel by his side. (AP/File)
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Updated 19 April 2025
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10,000 pages of records about Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 assassination are released, on Trump’s order

10,000 pages of records about Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 assassination are released, on Trump’s order

WASHINGTON: About 10,000 pages of records related to the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were released Friday, including handwritten notes by the gunman, who said the Democratic presidential candidate “must be disposed of” and acknowledged an obsession with killing him.
Many of the files had been made public previously, while others had not been digitized and sat for decades in federal government storage facilities. Their release continued the disclosure of historical investigation documents ordered by President Donald Trump.
Kennedy was fatally shot on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles moments after giving a speech celebrating his victory in California’s presidential primary. His assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving life in prison.
The files included pictures of handwritten notes by Sirhan.
“RFK must be disposed of like his brother was,” read the writing on the outside of an empty envelope, referring to Kennedy’s older brother, President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. The return address was from the district director of the Internal Revenue Service in Los Angeles.
The National Archives and Records Administration posted 229 files containing the pages to its public website.
The release comes a month after unredacted files related to the assassination of President Kennedy were disclosed. Those documents gave curious readers more details about Cold War-era covert US operations in other nations but did not initially lend credence to long-circulating conspiracy theories about who killed JFK.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of Robert Kennedy, commended the release.
“Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government,” the health secretary said in a statement.
Documents include interviews with assassin’s acquaintances
The files surrounding Robert Kennedy’s assassination also included notes from interviews with people who knew Sirhan from a wide variety of contexts, such as classmates, neighbors and coworkers. While some described him as “a friendly, kind and generous person” others depicted a brooding and “impressionable” young man who felt strongly about his political convictions and briefly believed in mysticism.
According to the files, Sirhan told his garbage collector that he planned to kill Kennedy shortly after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The sanitation worker, a Black man, said he planned to vote for Kennedy because he would help Black people.
“Well, I don’t agree. I am planning on shooting the son of a bitch,” Sirhan replied, the man told investigators.
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of “The Kennedy Half-Century,” said there have always been conspiracies surrounding Robert Kennedy’s assassination. He believes the rollout of documents Friday would be similar to the JFK documents released earlier this year.
He cautioned that a review needs to be done carefully and slowly, “just in case there is a hint in there or there is an anecdote” that could shed more light on the assassination.
“I hope there’s more information,” Sabato said. “I’m doubtful that there is, just as I said when the JFK documents were released.”
Some redactions remained in the documents posted online Friday, including names and dates of birth. Last month, the Trump administration came under criticism over unredacted personal information, including Social Security numbers, during the release of records surrounding President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
Trump, a Republican, has championed in the name of transparency the release of documents related to high-profile assassinations and investigations. But he has also been deeply suspicious for years of the government’s intelligence agencies. His administration’s release of once-hidden files opens the door for more public scrutiny of the operations and conclusions of institutions such as the CIA and the FBI.
Trump signed an executive order in January calling for the release of government documents related to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and King, who were killed within two months of each other.
Lawyers for Kennedy’s killer have said for decades that he is unlikely to reoffend or pose a danger to society, and in 2021, a parole board deemed Sirhan suitable for release. But Gov. Gavin Newsom rejected the decision in 2022, keeping him in state prison. In 2023 , a different panel denied him release, saying he still lacks insight into what caused him to shoot Kennedy.
RFK still stands as a hero to American liberals
Kennedy remains an icon for liberals, who see him as a champion for human rights who also was committed to fighting poverty and racial and economic injustice. They often regard his assassination as the last in a series of major tragedies that put the US and its politics on a darker, more conservative path.
He was a sometimes divisive figure during his lifetime. Some critics thought he came late to opposing the Vietnam War, and he launched his campaign for president in 1968 only after the Democratic primary in New Hampshire exposed President Johnson’s political weakness.
Kennedy’s older brother appointed him US attorney general, and he remained a close aide to him until JFK’s assassination in Dallas. In 1964, he won a US Senate seat from New York and was seen as the heir to the family’s political legacy.


Hungarian opposition leader Magyar walks to Romania, courting ethnic Hungarians

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Hungarian opposition leader Magyar walks to Romania, courting ethnic Hungarians

Hungarian opposition leader Magyar walks to Romania, courting ethnic Hungarians
BUDAPEST: Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar walked across the border to Romania on Saturday after a week-long journey, in a attempt to win support of the ethnic Hungarians in Romania and appeal to conservative voters in the run-up to the 2026 elections.
Magyar’s center-right Tisza party emerged last year to mount the most serious challenge to nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban since he rose to power in 2010.
Most opinion polls now put Tisza ahead of Orban’s Fidesz party with the next parliamentary elections due in early 2026. No date has been set yet.
Carrying Hungary’s national flag, Magyar walked across the border on Saturday morning with a group of supporters.
“We are not going (to Romania) to escalate tensions or to cause any harm to our Hungarian brothers and sisters living there. We are going there to express our solidarity,” Magyar said on May 14 when he set out on foot in hiking gear.
On his way to the border, Magyar stopped in small towns to talk to rural voters, who have traditionally supported conservative Orban.
Orban’s government provides financial support to ethnic Hungarian communities in Romania and in 2014 granted the right to vote to Hungarians living abroad. In the last election in 2022 94 percent of these voters supported Fidesz.
The latest poll by the Publicus think tank, published on Friday, showed Tisza with 43 percent support among decided voters in Hungary while Fidesz had 36 percent.
Magyar announced his march on May 12 after Orban flagged he could cooperate with Romanian hard-right presidential candidate George Simion ahead of the May 18 election there.
The RMDSZ party representing ethnic Hungarians in Romania, said Simion’s win would pose a threat to minorities’ rights and urged its voters to support centrist Nicusor Dan who ended up winning the vote.

'Seventh heaven': Tears and laughter as Ukrainian POWs return

'Seventh heaven': Tears and laughter as Ukrainian POWs return
Updated 31 min 9 sec ago
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'Seventh heaven': Tears and laughter as Ukrainian POWs return

'Seventh heaven': Tears and laughter as Ukrainian POWs return
  • A number of Ukrainian detainees are released following a prisoner exchange agreement between Ukraine and Russia in Türkiye last week.
  • Former detainees recount stories of mistreatment and torture in Russian captivity.

CHERNIGIV: Waxy and emaciated, Konstantin Steblev spoke to his mother for the first time in three years after being released as part of the biggest ever prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine.
“Hello mum, how are you?,” the 31-year-old soldier said, moments after stepping back onto Ukrainian soil on Friday.
“I love you. Don’t be sad. It wasn’t my fault. I promised I would come back safe and sound,” he said, smiling but with watery eyes.
Steblev, who was captured at the start of Russia’s invasion, was one of 390 military and civilian prisoners released in exchange for 390 sent back to Russia.
More swaps are expected on Saturday and Sunday to bring the total to 1,000 for 1,000 as agreed in talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul last week.
Steblev arrived with the other former captives by coach at a local hospital where hundreds of relatives were waiting, shouting, crying and singing “Congratulations!“
During the journey back to Ukraine, Steblev told AFP he experienced “indescribable” emotions.
“It’s simply crazy. Crazy feelings,” he said.


During his years of captivity, Steblev said he managed to keep going thanks to his wife.
“She knows I am strong and that I am not going to give up just like that,” he said, adding that now he just wants to be with his family.
“It’s my absolute priority,” he said.
After that, he said it would be up to his wife to decide on the next steps.
“She will tell me and will show me how to act in future,” he said.
Thin, tired and looking slightly lost, the freshly released prisoners filed into a local hospital for medical checks.
But Olena and Oleksandr stayed outside, locked in a tight embrace despite the cameras pointed at them.
They said they had not seen each other in 22 months since Oleksandr was captured by Russia.
“I am in seventh heaven,” the 45-year-old said in his wife’s arms.
He said his dream now was to “eat... eat and spend time with my family.”


As the buses arrived at the hospital, relatives of soldiers who are still in prison ran toward the freed men to show them images of their loved ones and ask if they had seen them during their captivity.
Some women walked away crying when they failed to get any news.
Some know that their relatives are jailed but others have no news at all and desperately hope for any scrap of information.
Moments after being reunited with her husband Andriy after three years apart, Elia, 33, embraced the tearful mother of a soldier who had no news about her son.
When she saw her husband, Elia said her “heart was beating out of my chest” and she cried with joy.
“I have been waiting so long for this,” she said.
Several former prisoners of war interviewed by AFP in the past have spoken of harsh conditions and torture in Russian prisons.
Elia is now thinking about the future and about having a child with her husband.
But she said she knew that the path to rehabilitation would be a long one for him.
“He has an empty stare but I know they did not break him. The guys with him told me he was very strong,” she said.


Pope takes message of dialogue, unity to the Curia

Pope takes message of dialogue, unity to the Curia
Updated 51 min 54 sec ago
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Pope takes message of dialogue, unity to the Curia

Pope takes message of dialogue, unity to the Curia
  • Pope Leo XIV promotes dialogue and building bridges to the Roman Curia in his first meeting with the Church's governing body.
  • Pope Leo XIV urges people to welcome “with open arms, everyone who needs our charity, our presence, dialogue and love.”

VATICAN: Pope Leo XIV took his message of building bridges and promoting dialogue to the Roman Curia on Saturday, in his first audience with members of the Catholic Church’s governing body.
The late Pope Francis had sometimes difficult relations with the Curia and Vatican officials, accusing them early in his papacy of “spiritual Alzheimer’s” and a lust for power.
The new pontiff, the first from the United States, said Saturday that his inaugural meeting was an opportunity to say thanks for all their work.
“Popes come and go, the Curia remains,” Leo told the audience of officials, staff and their families in the Vatican’s vast Paul VI hall.
He repeated his first words from St. Peter’s Basilica when he became pope on May 8, where he urged people to “build bridges” and to welcome “with open arms, everyone who needs our charity, our presence, dialogue and love.”
“If we must all cooperate in the great cause of unity and love, let us try to do so first of all with our behavior in everyday situations, starting from the work environment,” the pope said.
“Everyone can be a builder of unity with their attitudes toward colleagues, overcoming inevitable misunderstandings with patience and humility, putting themselves in the shoes of others, avoiding prejudices, and also with a good dose of humor, as Pope Francis taught us.”
From decentralising power and increasing transparency to providing greater roles for lay people and women, Francis implemented several reforms of the Roman Curia.
But his criticism left a lasting impression among many officials, and he also drew accusations of being too authoritarian in his governance, regularly bypassing the administrative bodies of the Holy See.
In 2024, the Vatican — where trade unions are not recognized — also saw an unprecedented strike by around 50 employees of the Vatican Museums over their working conditions.
The pope spent two decades working in Peru but for the past two years was head of the Vatican department responsible for appointing bishops worldwide.


US ‘deeply concerned’ over activists’ treatment in Tanzania

US ‘deeply concerned’ over activists’ treatment in Tanzania
Updated 24 May 2025
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US ‘deeply concerned’ over activists’ treatment in Tanzania

US ‘deeply concerned’ over activists’ treatment in Tanzania
  • Prominent East African activists are facing detention and torture following government crackdown on dissent in Uganda and Tanzania.
  • The United States voiced its concern over the mistreatment of several activists and called for an investigation into human rights abuses.

NAIROBI: The United States expressed concern Saturday over the “mistreatment” of two east African activists in Tanzania, days after they were detained and reportedly tortured.
Prominent campaigners Boniface Mwangi of Kenya and Agather Atuhaire of Uganda traveled to Tanzania this week in solidarity with detained opposition leader Tundu Lissu ahead of his court hearing on charges of treason, which carries a potential death penalty.
But they themselves were detained before being deported and then found abandoned near the Tanzanian border.
Mwangi and rights groups allege that both were tortured while held “incommunicado” for days.
The US Bureau of African Affairs said on X it was “deeply concerned by reports of the mistreatment” of Atuhaire and Mwangi while in Tanzania.
“We call for an immediate and full investigation into the allegations of human rights abuses,” it said, urging “all countries in the region to hold to account those responsible for violating human rights, including torture.”
Atuhaire received in 2023 the EU Human Rights Defender Award for her work in Uganda and was honored last year with the International Women of Courage Award by former US First Lady Jill Biden.
Mwangi is a longtime critic of the Kenyan government, frequently denouncing instances of alleged injustice and rights abuses.
Human rights groups say Tanzania and neighboring Uganda have accelerated crackdowns on opponents and dissidents as they prepare for presidential elections in the next seven months.
But Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan has slammed what she called interference in the country’s affairs and had urged security services “not to allow ill-mannered individuals from other countries to cross the line here.”


India’s monsoon rains arrive eight days early, says weather bureau

India’s monsoon rains arrive eight days early, says weather bureau
Updated 24 May 2025
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India’s monsoon rains arrive eight days early, says weather bureau

India’s monsoon rains arrive eight days early, says weather bureau
  • Summer rains, critical for economic growth in Asia’s third-largest economy, usually begin to lash Kerala around June 1

MUMBAI: Monsoon rains hit the coast of India’s southernmost state of Kerala on Saturday, eight days earlier than usual, the weather office said, offering respite from a grueling heat wave while boosting prospects for bumper harvests.

Summer rains, critical for economic growth in Asia’s third-largest economy, usually begin to lash Kerala around June 1 before spreading nationwide by mid-July, allowing farmers to plant crops such as rice, corn, cotton, soybeans and sugarcane.