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Is the sky really blue? That might seem obvious. But sometimes things are more nuanced and complicated than you think. Here are five strategies to boost your critical thinking skills. Animated by Ana Stefaniak. Made in partnership with The Open University. If you enjoyed this, you might like to watch this video next. Why we see faces in clouds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcM6rqFzuw4 Subscribe to BBC Ideas https://bbc.in/2F6ipav ____________________________ Do you have a curious mind? You’re in the right place. Our aim on BBC Ideas is to feed your curiosity, to open your mind to new perspectives, and to leave you that little bit smarter. So dive in. Let us know what you think. And make sure to subscribe!https://bbc.in/2F6ipav Visit our website to see all of our videos: https://www.bbc.com/ideas And follow BBC Ideas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bbcideas #bbcideas #criticalthinking #trainyourbrain

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Five simple strategies to sharpen your critical thinking

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Is the sky really blue? That might seem obvious. But sometimes things are more nuanced and complicated than you think. Here are five strategies to boost your critical thinking skills.

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Teacher from Viral JK Rowling ‘Critical Thinking’ Video Fired from College

‘there was really no conversation, so they clearly knew what they wanted to do’.

A college instructor from a viral video focused on critical thinking has been fired from his full-time position.

7 days ago I was fired from my school after 4 years of teaching. I recorded this the following day in order to share my perspective - honestly & in good faith - in order to move forward and put this experience behind me. I have no desire to cause complications or bring unwanted… pic.twitter.com/Bf61VC2dD1 — Warren Smith (@WTSmith17) May 13, 2024

Smith, who resides in Massachusetts, did not reveal the name of his former school.

“I don’t want to open up myself to them in any way, after the way they went about this and seeing the lengths they will go to,” Smith told SCNR News. “Perhaps one day, but for now I just want to move on and look forward to never thinking about them again.”

Smith gained notoriety last February when a video of him teaching critical thinking skills to his students went viral.

In the video, Smith was asked to comment on JK Rowling’s work in light of her “bigoted opinions.” From there, Smith skillfully challenged the student’s preconceived notions. The student was then guided through the process of evaluating specific comments from Rowling.

“At the beginning of this conversation, you said, ‘Given the fact that JK Rowling is transphobic, how do you feel about Harry Potter ?’” Smith said at the end of the video. “Now, retroactively looking at that statement, do you think that that was the best way to phrase [the question]?”

“No, I feel like an idiot now,” the student said.

“That’s OK, though, that’s why we do this: to learn how to think,” Smith said.

Critical thinking should be the first thing taught to kids https://t.co/8dhvilUKRc — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 4, 2024

Smith told SCNR that the firing was the result of a missed email.

“In the midst of the whirlwind of that first week immediately following the [JK Rowling] video, a one sentence email was sent out to the school stating, ‘If you would like to upload anything to social media check with your supervising principle,’” Smith said. “Two weeks ago, while filming a podcast in my multimedia class, I had [an] exchange with a new student that was so similar to the initial video I thought it would be worth uploading. He was excited by the exercise, so we got permission from his parents to share it on my YouTube channel . I missed the email with the new stipulation. This was the reason for my firing.”

In today’s video, Smith addressed the individual responsible for firing him seven days prior.

“So when you say, 'We appreciate you not divulging,' I don’t know if that means you’re threatening my severance package, I really hope not,” he said. “But anyways, it was a bummer to lose my computer like that. This could have been done … I understand if you disagree with my voicing opinions on YouTube. … It’s easier to just … get rid of a teacher like that. And I accept that.”

“Sometimes how you do it though is important and I think this could have been done without just taking my computer and losing a book that I’ve been writing for two years, multiple things I’ve been writing for two years, all the data from two years, my digital life, just…” he said, with a snap of the fingers.

Smith said he was careful not to overstep any of the parameters that lawyers at the school laid out for him as he made various podcast appearances.

“I even praised you and thanked you for making that so clear, objectively recognizing what the rules were, there were no rules being broken,” he said, addressing his former employer. “You even said, ‘Congratulations!’”

“The only time I’ve seen you in person this past years was maybe a week after that, [you said], ‘Oh my goodness, it’s our celebrity. What’s on the docket? Any upcoming events, interviews?’ That was a quote and you know it,” Smith continued. “Yesterday, it was like a different person.”

He added: “And I understand that, had Elon Musk not retweeted that video … this would have happened probably … the last four months ago, when this initially happened.”

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Editorial: trudeau is stoking the fires of division, it's official, craig berube is new head coach of maple leafs, lilley: it shouldn't take a community to walk a jewish kid to school, social media scores an ace with hilarious reactions to scottie scheffler arrest, vezina: the rise of belief constellations and the end of critical thinking.

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Belief constellations explain why a steadily increasing number of people today hold certain political or ideological beliefs very strongly, without knowing why they do.

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VEZINA: The rise of belief constellations and the end of critical thinking Back to video

A belief constellation is a group of beliefs common to a particular social silo or echo chamber of views.

They do not necessarily relate to each other, or require logical consistency.

This is how a belief constellation normally manifests in an individual:

1. The individual joins a particular echo chamber or group because of one or more commonly held beliefs.

2. Because of repeated incidents of confirmation bias, the individual comes to believe that this group is more credible than other sources of information, regardless of the fact these other sources are often more objective because their conclusions are based on critical thinking.

3. Once the group becomes a credible authority to an individual about some beliefs, the individual will, over time, come to assume most or all of its other beliefs are true as well.

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4. Eventually, the individual comes to hold a large number of beliefs, typically political and ideological, without understanding them.

Technology has exponentially expanded this phenomenon compared to the past and it has grown as the use of the internet and social media have grown.

Today, just because someone is not on X (Twitter) doesn’t mean they are not on 4chan, Reddit, the comments section of YouTube, or live-streamer chats on Twitch, Kick or Rumble.

While this phenomenon can affect anyone, it is particularly common among children who are less equipped than adults to resist it, because they haven’t had as much time to develop critical thinking skills.

One of the best examples of this phenomenon is the ideological divide that exists in the United States today.

While similar belief constellations and echo chambers exist in Canada, they are more pronounced south of the border.

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Participation in these echo chambers makes it more likely that if an individual accepts one or two of its beliefs, they will eventually accept most or all of them, without question.

The fact we are social animals makes it particularly difficult to resist this.

Here are some examples of the constellation of beliefs that today dominate the echo chambers of the far right and the far left.

For the far right:

A belief in free speech absolutism, meaning that hate speech is viewed as protected speech and any form of censorship is rejected.

White privilege isn’t real and any reference to it is racist.

What happened during the Holocaust is exaggerated, accompanied by a belief in a wide variety of anti-Jewish conspiracies.

Vaccines are dangerous and evil, especially for COVID-19, and contain nanotechnology that transmits confidential information about the individual to the government.

The 2020 U.S. election was rigged and Donald Trump is the real president, not Joe Biden.

Global warming/climate change doesn’t exist, the science is corrupt and the reality is that the climate is always changing due to natural factors.

Genders are immutable and to believe otherwise is a form of mental illness.

Those who label the views held by the right wing echo chamber as anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic, bigoted or based on stereotypes are in fact brainwashed and don’t understand “the truth”.

In the far left’s echo chamber of beliefs:

An individual’s emotional safety takes priority over freedom of speech and those with “wrong opinions” are not protected by free speech.

Expressing wrong opinions should, in many cases, result in punishment.

Capitalism, colonialism and systemic racism are the root problems in today’s society and are relevant to the discussion of any societal issue.

Almost any action by the “oppressed” against their “oppressors” is justified, regardless of the method being used.

If the world does not rapidly convert to wind/solar power and electric cars, climate change will make most of the Earth uninhabitable within 100 years. A subtext of this belief is that having children is pointless because humanity is most likely doomed.

Biological sex as a binary does not exist, sex and gender are fluid and such terms as “male” and “female” are antiquated and should be abandoned.

— Vezina is the CEO of Prepared Canada Corp, teaches Disaster and Emergency Management at York University and is the author of Continuity 101. He can be reached at  [email protected] .

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

This article is part of the research topic.

Building the Future of Education Together: Innovation, Complexity, Sustainability, Interdisciplinary Research and Open Science

Developing the Skills for Complex Thinking Research: A Case Study Using Social Robotics to Produce Scientific Papers Provisionally Accepted

• 1 Institute for the Future of Education, Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM), Mexico
• 2 University of Cienfuegos, Cuba

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

The development of university students' skills to successfully produce scientific documents has been a recurring topic of study in academia. This paper analyzes the implementation of a training experience using a digital environment mediated by video content materials starring humanoid robots. The research aimed to scale complex thinking and its subcompetencies as a hinge to strengthen basic academic research skills. Students from Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico committed to preparing a scientific document as part of their professional training participated. A pretest to know their initial level of perception, a posttest to evaluate if there was a change, and a scientific document the students delivered at the end of the training experience comprised the methodology to demonstrate the improvement of their skills. The results indicated students' perceived improvement in the sub-competencies of systemic, creative, scientific, and innovative thinking; however, their perceptions did not align with that of the tutor who reviewed the delivered scientific product. The conclusion was that although the training experience helped strengthen the students' skills, variables that are determinants for a student to develop the knowledge necessary to prepare scientific documents and their derived products remain to be analyzed.

Keywords: higher education, research skills, Educational innovation, complex thinking, scientific thinking, Critical Thinking, Innovative thinking, social robotics

Received: 16 Oct 2023; Accepted: 17 May 2024.

Copyright: © 2024 Lopez-Caudana, George-Reyes and Avello-Martínez. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Dr. Edgar O. Lopez-Caudana, Institute for the Future of Education, Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM), Monterrey, Mexico

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The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter

Teacher Who Went Viral For Teaching Critical Thinking Gets Fired

Warren smith used socratic method to break down jk rowling debate.

Warren Smith went viral (after a retweet from Elon Musk) at the beginning of the year when he posted a discussion with a pupil about the Harry Potter author, JK Rowling.

The pupil asked Mr. Smith whether he still liked Rowling’s work despite her “bigoted opinions”.

For those who have not been following the JK Rowling saga, the author is very vocal about sex and gender issues. Rowling believes that trans activism is having a significant impact on feminism and is worried about the number of young women wishing to transition. As a result she has been abused online, cancelled and turned on by former friends and colleagues (including actors she made famous, such as Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson).

I admire Rowling for standing up for what she believes in and for championing free speech. She is fortunate to be rich enough to be able to do so but, even so, most people in her position would not and do not raise their heads above the parapet.

Mr. Smith’s viral video used the Socratic Method to guide his pupil to think critically about the author. It was a masterclass in asking and answering questions to try to establish the truth.

“We’re going to treat this as a thought experiment. I’m not going to say what is right or wrong or which way to think. The whole point is to learn how to think not what to think.”

A week ago, Mr. Smith was fired from the same school in which the viral video took place. He had been teaching there for four yours. Whilst we don’t know the exact reason he lost his job, in a recent update, he suggests it was because of the backlash to his videos.

He is clearly shaken up in his video describing what happened to him. The school seems to have given him little warning and confiscated his laptop containing books he is writing and cryptocurrency codes - a painful lesson showing the importance of data backups.

If Warren was fired purely based on his opinions and way of teaching, this is a disgrace. So long as he didn’t violate any terms of his contract or bring the school into disrepute, then going against the herd and thinking critically should be encouraged. In fact, it should be the norm.

From everything we know, it seems that this is another cancellation due to different opinions causing some hurty feelings. Critical thinking has lost to critical theory, where groupthink is unfortunately prospering.

Good luck to Mr. Smith but as he seems like an intelligent and eloquent man, I’m sure he’ll find another job relatively soon.

The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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Michael Cohen's testimony against Donald Trump delivered for prosecution, if jury believes him

Cohen testified that trump knew he was paying to silence a porn actress to influence the 2016 election, but the former president and his allies contend the convicted liar can't be trusted..

• Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer, said he discussed with Trump personally getting reimbursed $130,000 he paid porn actress Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about a sexual encounter.
• Cohen testified Trump knew the payoff would influence the 2016 election by preventing another salacious story before the polls closed.

Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen delivered testimony crucial to the prosecution's case that Trump falsified business records to cover up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. According to Cohen , Trump knew about the $130,000 payment, directed it to benefit his 2016 campaign, and was deliberately reimbursing Cohen when he subsequently paid him $35,000 per month and recorded it as a legal expense.

"He approved it," Cohen told jurors, speaking about Trump.

But Trump and his allies have repeatedly argued Cohen is unreliable because he has been convicted and imprisoned for lying to Congress and to the Internal Revenue Service. Trump lawyer Todd Blanche said Cohen submitted invoices that described “payment to the retainer agreement for legal services rendered," rather than a payment to Daniels .

"None of this was a crime," Blanche said.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide the campaign purpose of his reimbursements to Cohen.

Prep for the polls: See who is running for president and compare where they stand on key issues in our Voter Guide

Cohen provided details to support his testimony, and even a recording of him discussing a different hush money payment with Trump.

Jurors will have to decide whether they believe Trump’s or Cohen’s version of events − and who they believe will be key to how the verdict they reach.

Here are the key takeaways from Cohen's testimony:

'He approved it': Cohen on Trump approving payment to Stormy Daniels

Prosecutors are trying to prove Trump falsified business records to hide his reimbursements to Cohen because Daniels' claim of a sexual encounter could have hurt his chances in the 2016 election.

“Cohen was not being paid for legal services,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said in his opening statement. “The defendant was paying him back for an illegal payment to Stormy Daniels on the eve of the election. The defendant falsified those business records because he wanted to conceal his and others' criminal conduct.”

Cohen testified that he created a shell company called Essential Consultants to pay $130,000 to porn actress Stormy Daniels to keep silent about her claim of a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 while he was married. Cohen described complex arrangements to avoid having Trump’s name on any documentation of the payment.

Cohen testified that he discussed with Trump and Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer for the Trump Organization, about how to arrange his reimbursement for a total of $420,000, including the payment to Daniels, taxes and other fees. The discussion is a key element of the case because prosecutors need to show not only that the records were false but that Trump had an intent to defraud.

In Trump's presence, Weisselberg said during the meeting that $35,000 would be repaid monthly as a retainer for legal services, Cohen testified. A  legal retainer  is an agreement with a lawyer about compensation that reserves a lawyer or pays for future services.

Weisselberg is not expected to testify because he is jailed for perjury for lying during Trump’s New York civil fraud trial.

Cohen also provided a recording of Trump on Sept. 6, 2016 , discussing a $150,000 payment to silence former Playboy model Karen McDougal , who also claimed a sexual relationship with Trump. The National Enquirer’s parent company paid McDougal to kill her story and sought reimbursement from the Trump Organization. Cohen described to Trump, who already knew the figure was $150,000, how the payment would be financed,

'A disaster for the campaign': Trump's description, according to Cohen

Cohen testified that Trump pursued the nondisclosure agreement to avoid negative publicity before the pending election.

"Women are gonna hate me," Cohen recalled Trump saying of a potential story about Daniels . "Guys may think it's cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign."

Cohen said Trump was concerned about the election rather than about his wife finding out about the accusation.

"He wasn't thinking about Melania," Cohen said. "This was all about the campaign."

The payment to Daniels came after the Washington Post released a recording in October 2016 of Trump talking about grabbing women by their genitals. Cohen said he was feeling pressure to silence Daniels to avoid her giving her story to the Daily Mail.

"Just do it," Cohen said Trump told him.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, testified that she sought the payment before the election because she was skeptical Trump would pay after he had either won or lost.

Trump instructed Cohen to try to delay paying Daniels until after the election because if he won, the story would have “no relevance” and “if I lose, I wouldn’t care,” Cohen testified.

Cohen critical of Trump and his lawyers

Under cross-examination, Cohen confirmed he has been harshly critical of Trump before and during the trial.

Cohen told Blanche he said Trump belongs in a "cage, like an animal."

Cohen also acknowledged that he has been making podcasts − six days a week − that often criticize Trump. Blanche asked Cohen to confirm he went on TikTok and  called Blanche a "crying little s---," which he did.

Asked if he said on TikTok he would like to see Trump convicted, Cohen said that sounded right.

"I would like to see accountability. It's not for me – it's for the jury and this court," Cohen added.

Trump contends payments were 'legal expenses to Cohen, not Daniels

Trump has argued his payments to Cohen were for a legal retainer and that he didn’t know Cohen was paying Daniels.

“I paid a lawyer a certain amount of money. We marked it down as a legal expense,” Trump told reporters Tuesday before entering the courtroom. “I didn’t mark it down as a construction of a wall, construction of a building. I didn’t mark it down as electricity cost. I took a legal expense – I didn’t do it, a bookkeeper did it, she did it exactly right – took a legal expense and called it a legal expense. This is the whole case.”

Cohen looking for 'revenge': House Speaker Johnson

Cohen served time in federal prison for lying to Congress, tax evasion and for a campaign-finance violation for his role in the hush money payment.

Trump and his allies repeatedly attacked Cohen as a convicted liar, disbarred for his crimes, although Judge Juan Merchan ordered Trump not to comment on witnesses during the trial.

“This is a man who is clearly on a mission for personal revenge and who is widely known as a witness who has trouble with the truth,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters Tuesday outside the courthouse. “He has a history of perjury and is well known for it. No one should believe a word he says today.”

Cohen acknowledged on Tuesday that he filed false invoices to claim the $35,000 payments from the Trump Organization.

Another Trump surrogate, Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., told reporters Tuesday that Cohen invoiced legal expenses and the Trump Organization paid them.

“Where is the crime? There is no crime,” Donalds said.

How Ncuti Gatwa Is Bringing Doctor Who Into a New Era

Ncuti gatwa, united kingdom.

W hen Ncuti Gatwa got the call that would change his life, he was walking into a London barbershop. The Rwandan-born Scottish actor froze as his agent shared the news: he had just been cast as the lead in the beloved British sci-fi series ­ Doctor Who. This wasn’t just another job—it was something that would cement his place in British cultural history. He told his agent he’d call back. “I hung up and didn’t think about it for a week,” he recalls when we meet two years later on a cool spring day in East London. “I was like: I’ve got laundry to do, I’ve got the gym to go to, I can’t think about this life-changing thing you’ve just thrown at me.”

Doctor Who, which has been running on and off since 1963, is something of a national treasure in the U.K. Some of Britain’s most celebrated actors have played the Doctor, a time-traveling alien who explores the universe in a spaceship known as the TARDIS, which resembles an old British blue police box. The Doctor defeats evil creatures and rights wrongs across time and space—and can “regenerate” when fatally injured, allowing a new actor to step into the role. Though taking on such an iconic part was a no-brainer for Gatwa, now 31, it was also overwhelming. He describes himself as “an anxious, anxious mess” while filming: “My first day walking on set, I saw the TARDIS and it just hit me. This is the British TV program. I cannot fail.”

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Slovakia's prime minister expected to survive after shooting

By Elise Hammond, Maureen Chowdhury, Adrienne Vogt and Tori B. Powell, CNN

Slovakian deputy prime minister believes Fico will survive the assassination attempt

From CNN’s Zahid Mahmood

Slovakian Deputy Prime Minister Tomáš Taraba said he believes Prime Minister Robert Fico will survive Wednesday's assassination attempt and is “not in a life-threatening situation at this moment.”

“Fortunately, as far as I know, the operation went well and I guess in the end he will survive,” Taraba said in an interview with the BBC’s Newshour program.

Taraba said the prime minister “was heavily injured" with one bullet entering his stomach and another hitting the joints.

"Immediately he was transported to the hospital and then to the operation,” he said.

Video appears to show the moment Slovakia’s prime minister was shot

From CNN’s Eve Brennan

A video circulating on social media appears to show the moment Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot in the town of Handlova on Wednesday.

The footage appears to show Fico, surrounded by a team of at least four security guards in dark suits, walking toward a crowd of people standing behind metal barriers. 

A man in the crowd behind the barriers is seen lunging toward Fico with what appears to be a gun, which he is pointing at the prime minister.

Five shots are heard in the video. People in the crowd don't appear to know what is happening.

Fico falls to the ground and the man with the weapon is apprehended and pushed to the ground by the men in dark suits. Other men are seen running in Fico's direction.

Robert Kaliňák, Slovakia's minister of defense, said that Fico "suffered multiple injuries," but did not provide any details when reporters asked if the prime minister was shot in the stomach.

Analysis: Prime Minister Robert Fico is a divisive politician in a divided country

From CNN's Ivana Kottasova

Slovaks have been deeply divided over the country's direction and position in the world since Prime Minister Robert Fico was reelected last year. Supporters see Fico as a caring leader who has their interests at heart while critics say he is a populist whose pro-Russian leanings pose major risks for the country.

Since taking the top job in October, Fico has brought about a major pivot in Slovakia's foreign policy and its previously staunch support for Ukraine. He pledged an immediate end to military support for Kyiv against the Russian invasion and promised to block Ukraine’s ambitions of joining NATO.

Domestically, his coalition government is also pushing controversial reforms that have led to weeks of large-scale peaceful protests. Attempts to overhaul the criminal justice system have been particularly controversial as the government seeks to reduce penalties for corruption. It has already abolished Slovakia's special prosecutor’s office, which was tasked with investigating serious and politically sensitive corruption cases, including some that involved people connected to Fico and his party SMER ("Direction – Social Democracy").

The Slovakian government is also trying to shut down public service broadcaster RTVS, planning to replace it with a new national broadcaster that would be under tighter government control.

Before his stunning political comeback last year, Fico had spent more than a decade as prime minister. He was forced to resign in March 2018 after weeks of mass protests sparked by the murders of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová. Kuciak had reported on corruption among the country’s elite.

This year's tightly contested presidential election saw Fico cement his grip on power as his ally Peter Pellegrini was elected into the role.

What we know about the assassination attempt on Slovakia's prime minister

From CNN staff

Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico is undergoing surgery after being shot five times Wednesday in an assassination attempt, according to officials.

The gunman  is in custody  and no one else was injured in the attack, they said.

Fico  won a third term as Slovakian prime minister  last October after running a campaign that criticized Western support for Ukraine.

Here's what we know:

• What happened: The shooting took place after an off-site government meeting in the central Slovak town of Handlova. The suspected gunman was among a small crowd of people waiting to greet the prime minister on the street outside the cultural center where the meeting took place, local media reported.
• His condition: Fico is “ still fighting for his life ,” according to Robert Kaliňák, Slovakia's minister of defense. Kaliňák said Fico "suffered multiple injuries," but did not provide any details when reporters asked if the prime minister was shot in the stomach.
• Politically motivated: Based on “initial interviews with the suspect,"  Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok said the assassination attempt was politically motivated . He said the suspect decided to carry out the attack after the presidential election. The ministers, Eštok and Kaliňák, blamed rising hate speech and division for the political atmosphere in the country.
• Reaction: Slovakia’s President Zuzana Caputova said the assassination attempt was “also an attack on democracy " and an opposition member of Slovakia’s parliament, Maria Kolikova, called it “an attack on the internal security ” of the country. US President Joe Biden expressed alarm at the attempted assassination, calling it a “ horrific act of violence .” Various other NATO and European Union leaders , as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, also condemned the attack.
• Tie to Russia: Russian President Vladimir Putin called the attack a “monstrous crime.” Fico is known to be a Kremlin sympathizer. He had previously blamed “Ukrainian Nazis and fascists” for provoking Putin into launching the invasion of Ukraine.

Putin calls Fico’s assassination attempt a "monstrous crime”

From CNN’s Mariya Knight

Russian President Vladimir Putin called the assassination attempt on Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico a “monstrous crime.”

“There can be no justification for this monstrous crime,” Putin said in a message sent to Slovakia's President Zuzana Caputova.

The Russian leader also said he knows Fico as “a courageous and strong-willed man,” the qualities that Putin hopes will help Fico overcome “this difficult situation.”

Some context: Fico is known to be a Kremlin sympathizer. He had previously blamed “Ukrainian Nazis and fascists” for provoking Putin into launching the invasion of Ukraine, repeating the false narrative Russia’s president has used to justify his invasion.

Slovakian ministers blame rising hate speech and division for atmosphere that led to attack on prime minister

From CNN’s Ivana Kottasova

Slovakia’s defense and interior minister blamed rising hate speech and division for the political atmosphere in the country, which they said led to the assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fico. 

Speaking to reporters outside the hospital where Fico is being treated, Defense Minister Robert Kaliňák said: “This needs to stop immediately. I beg you, please. Hate is not an answer to hate.”

Visibly shaken and struggling for words during the news conference, Kaliňák said it was “time for some people to have a hard look into the mirror.” 

“There is no question that this was politically motivated. The inability to accept the choice of people, which some may not like … it leads to this,” he said. 

Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok said “everyone needs to calm down.” 

“Those who are endorsing this attack as well as those who are calling for some sort of a revenge. And I am asking you, the media too, please, use your power, your influence. Because until now, it was some of you who sow the hate,” he said.

Fico's assassination attempt was politically motivated, interior minister says

The assassination attempt of Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico was politically motivated, the country's interior minister said, adding the information is based on “initial interviews with the suspect.”

“This assassination attempt was politically motivated and the suspect made the decision to do it shortly after the presidential election,” Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok told a news conference outside the hospital in Banská Bystrica, where the prime minister is being treated.

“It is clear this was politically motivated,” Defense Minister Robert Kaliňák said, speaking alongside Eštok.

Kaliňák said Fico "suffered multiple injuries," but did not provide any details when reporters asked if the prime minister was shot in the stomach.

This post has been updated with additional comments from the defense minister.

Prime Minister Fico was shot five times, interior minister says

From CNN’s Ivana Kottasova in London

Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot five times, Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok said.

“The perpetrator shot five times. The prime minister is in a critical condition, still on the operating table. We will do everything we can to investigate this,” Eštok said at a news conference.

The perpetrator has been arrested, he added.

Slovakia's prime minister "still fighting for his life," defense minister says

Prime Minister Robert Fico is “still fighting for his life,” Robert Kaliňák, Slovakia's minister of defense, said in a press conference in the hospital where Fico is being treated.

“We are singularly focused on the health of Robert Fico. And we are hoping he will be strong enough to pull through,” Kaliňák said.

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Slovakia’s Leader Survives Surgery After Shooting, Deputy Says

Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot five times in what officials said was a politically motivated assassination attempt. The deputy prime minister told the BBC the surgery appeared to have gone well.

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• Mr. Fico is rushed into a vehicle after being shot in Handlova, Slovakia. RTVS via AFP
• The police made an arrest after the shooting. Reuters
• Emergency personnel taking Mr. Fico to a hospital. Jan Kroslák/TASR Slovakia, via Associated Press
• Mr. Fico is transported by helicopter to a hospital in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia. JOJ via Reuters
• The police on the scene after the shooting Radovan Stoklasa/Reuters
• Mr. Fico speaking with a group in Handlova earlier Wednesday. Radovan Stoklasa/TASR Slovakia, via Associated Press

Cassandra Vinograd ,  Andrew Higgins and Richard Pérez-Peña

A suspect is in custody in the Slovakia shooting. Here’s what to know.

Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, a fixture in the country’s politics and known for defying his fellow leaders in the European Union, underwent hours of emergency surgery on Wednesday after being shot five times and critically wounded in a town in central Slovakia, in what officials said appeared to be a politically motivated assassination attempt.

His deputy, Tomas Taraba, told the BBC that the operation appeared to have gone well. “I guess in the end he will survive,” he said.

The shooting was the most serious attack on a European leader in decades, drawing shock and condemnation from Slovak officials and other European leaders and stoking fears that Europe’s increasingly polarized and venomous political debates had tipped into violence.

The events were captured on videos, which showed Mr. Fico, 59, approaching a small group of people behind a waist-high metal barrier on a public square in the town of Handlova, when a man stepped forward and fired a pistol from just a few feet away. Five bangs could be heard.

With the first bang, Mr. Fico doubled over at the waist and fell backward onto a bench as more reports ring out. Security officers then hustled him into a black Audi several feet away, half-carrying him to the car’s rear door. He was taken to a local hospital and airlifted to another for surgery.

Security officers at the scene of the shooting wrestled a suspect to the ground, and officials said that initial evidence pointed to political motivations. The authorities did not identify the suspect, whom Slovak news outlets described as a 71-year-old poet. The country’s interior minister, Matus Sutaj Estok, said more information would be made public “in the coming days.”

The president of Slovakia, Zuzana Caputova, whose position is largely ceremonial, said in a statement, “The shooting of the prime minister is first and foremost an attack on a human being, but it’s also an attack on democracy.”

The shooting also drew a chorus of condemnation from world leaders, including President Biden, who called it a “horrific act of violence,” and Russia’s leader, Vladimir V. Putin, who lauded Mr. Fico as a “courageous and strong-minded man.”

Mr. Fico began his three-decade political career as a leftist but over the years shifted to the right, as did the party he founded, Smer. He served as prime minister from 2006 to 2010 and from 2012 to 2018, before returning to power in elections last year. After being ousted amid street protests in 2018, he was re-elected on a platform of social conservatism, nationalism and promises of generous welfare programs.

Mr. Fico presented himself as a pugnacious fighter for the common man and an enemy of liberal elites and immigration from outside Europe, and he aligned with Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, in opposing aid to Ukraine and challenging mainstream opinions within the European Union.

Domestically, his critics accused him of undermining the independence of the news media, opposed his efforts to restrict foreign funding of civic organizations and called him a threat to democracy. They also accused Mr. Fico of seeking to take Slovakia back to the repressive days of the Soviet bloc.

Here is what else to know:

Mr. Fico was in Handlova to hold a governmental meeting, which he followed with a nearly hourlong news conference . He had just emerged from those events when he was attacked.

The Parliament of Slovakia suspended its meetings and said it was “significantly” bolstering its security measures. Some of Mr. Fico’s parliamentary allies suggested that his liberal opponents had created the atmosphere for the shooting.

Michal Simecka, the chair of the opposition party Progressive Slovakia, said he shared in the “horror” of the attack and stressed that the attacker was not a member of his movement or connected to his party in any way.

Pavol Strba and Gaya Gupta contributed reporting.

The New York Times

Slovakia has largely charted its own course since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Slovakia, which was left reeling on Wednesday after an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fico, is a relatively young country whose history is closely intertwined with that of its central European neighbors.

Slovakia is one of two nations born out of the former Czechoslovakia amid the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the waning years of the 20th century.

Czechoslovakia was a multiethnic nation established at the end of World War I that endured dismemberment by the Nazis and more than four decades of Communist rule. But during the fall of Communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when independence movements gained strength throughout the Soviet Union, a series of largely peaceful protests called the Velvet Revolution led Czechoslovakia first to independence and then to a split, often referred to as the Velvet Divorce , that left two nations: the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

After several years of economic and political upheaval following its independence, Slovakia joined the European Union and NATO in 2004, and adopted the euro in 2009. As the country navigated the establishment of its national identity , some tensions remained with the Czech Republic, its richer and larger neighbor , which has roughly twice Slovakia’s population of five million.

Like much of Europe, Slovakia has been deeply polarized over the past decade. Mr. Fico, who has been a leading politician in the country since its independence, was forced to resign from office in 2018 amid sweeping protests over the murder of a journalist who was investigating government corruption.

He was re-elected last fall, after taking a pro-Russian campaign stance that capitalized on Slovakia’s historical Russian sympathies.

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James C. McKinley Jr.

Slovakia’s deputy prime minister, Tomas Taraba, told the BBC late on Wednesday that Fico’s emergency surgery appeared to have gone well.

“He’s not in a life-threatening situation at this moment,” Taraba said.

When asked about the identity of the attacker, the interior minister, Matus Sutaj Estok, declined to provide further detail. “Not today,” he said, adding that officials would provide more information in the “coming days.”

The interior minister also told reporters that Fico was still in surgery and remains in critical condition.

The prime minister was shot five times, he said.

Slovakia’s interior minister, Matus Sutaj Estok, said in a news conference that an investigation into the attack against Mr. Fico is ongoing, and initial evidence “clearly points to a political motivation.”

Cassandra Vinograd

Hours after the attack, the police in Slovakia have not offered any details or issued a statement on the assassination attempt. They asked the media and the public to disable comments on social media posts and articles about the attack.

Daniel Victor

Fico campaigned on ending support for Ukraine, alarming many in the West.

Robert Fico, the Slovakian prime minister whose life was in danger after being shot on Wednesday, was elected in 2023, completing an unlikely political comeback after resigning from the position in 2018 after major street protests over the killing of an investigative journalist.

Mr. Fico won in part on a message of social conservatism, nationalism, anti-L.G.B.T.Q. rhetoric and promises of generous welfare programs. But it was another key plank of his campaign that alarmed many countries in the West: His unsparing support for Russia in its war against Ukraine.

A public opinion poll in March 2023 found that 51 percent of Slovaks believed that either the West or Ukraine were “primarily responsible” for the war. Mr. Fico capitalized on the sentiment, campaigning on stopping all arms shipments to Ukraine while blaming Russia and Ukraine equally for the war.

In October, Mr. Fico said he was halting all military aid to Ukraine, though he said nonmilitary aid would continue. The decision was met with outrage among other E.U. members and supporters of Ukraine.

Mr. Fico, who was prime minister for a decade before resigning in 2018, has aligned himself rhetorically with Viktor Orban, the pro-Russian leader of neighboring Hungary.

“Fico was inspired by Orban, but does not have the same deep ideological roots, and is more of a pragmatist,” Ludek Sekyra, a Czech businessman who chairs the Sekyra Foundation, a supporter of liberal causes, said in October . “He has been adept in exploiting unease over the vast influx of Ukrainian refugees, small-country resentment of the European Union and Russian sympathies that do not exist in the Czech Republic.”

Though he won the election, he remains reviled by many voters outside his party’s loyal base. His party, Smer, is nominally leftist but has moved to the right on immigration and cultural issues.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia called Mr. Fico a “courageous and strong-minded man,” adding that this “monstrous crime cannot have any justification.”

Lauren Leatherby

Videos from the scene indicate that the attacker shot the prime minister, Robert Fico, in Banikov Square, in the center of the town of Handlova. The attacker is seen standing with other people behind a barrier before shooting Mr. Fico when he came to greet them. Mr. Fico had been at an event in Handlova’s House of Culture, according to Slovakian media.

Location of

train station

The parliament of Slovakia has suspended its meetings and said it was “significantly” bolstering its security measures in response to the attack on Fico.

President Biden said he was “alarmed to hear” about the attack on Fico and condemned the “horrific act of violence.”

“Jill and I are praying for a swift recovery, and our thoughts are with his family and the people of Slovakia,” he said in a statement, adding that the U.S. Embassy was in “close touch” with Slovakia’s government and stood ready to assist.

Matthew Mpoke Bigg

Who is Robert Fico?

Robert Fico, 59, has played a pivotal role in Slovakian politics in the years since it gained independence in 1993 and has served as prime minister longer than any other leader.

Slovakia — a landlocked country of around 5 million people — gained independence after the so-called Velvet Revolution, a series of popular and nonviolent protests in 1989 against the Communist Party in what was at that time still Czechoslovakia. That year, the Berlin Wall fell, Communist power in much of Eastern Europe collapsed and the Cold War in effect ended.

Mr. Fico, who had been a Communist Party member while it was in power, founded the Smer party in the late 1990s. He began the first of his three terms as prime minister in 2006, serving for four years before going into opposition after his coalition lost an election. Mr. Fico returned to power in 2012 but resigned as prime minister in July 2018 following mass demonstrations over the murder of a journalist, Jan Kuciak, and his fiancée, Martina Kusnirova, who had been uncovering government corruption. The protests, which rocked the country, were the largest seen since the Velvet Revolution; demonstrators demanded the resignation of the government and new elections.

Slovakia ranks high in independent assessments of press freedom, but the protesters had also sought deeper changes in the country Mr. Fico had overseen.

The Smer party started out on the political left but has increasingly embraced right-wing views on immigration and cultural issues. Much of the international discussion of Mr. Fico’s leadership in recent years has focused on his ties to President Vladimir Putin of Russia and to Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, Slovakia’s southern neighbor. Like Mr. Orban, Mr. Fico has been a staunch critic of the European Union.

After a parliamentary election last fall, Mr. Fico began his third term as prime minister, then had heart surgery the next month. He emerged to form a coalition government after securing around 23 percent of the vote, having campaigned against sanctions that were imposed on Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. Not one round of the country’s ammunition should be sent to Ukraine, he had told voters.

That stance, in a country where pro-Russian sentiment had historically been significant, worried E.U. leaders in Brussels, who said they feared that Slovakia could form a pro-Russian alliance with Mr. Orban and, potentially, Italy’s leader, Giorgia Meloni, that would impede support for Ukraine in the European Union. At the time, it was also seen as a sign of the apparent erosion of the pro-Ukrainian bloc that Europe had formed after the invasion.

Slovakia’s military contributions to Ukraine were negligible compared with countries such as the United States and Britain. But last year it became one of several European Union countries on Ukraine’s borders to block imports of its grain, fearing that it could undermine Slovakia’s farmers.

In April, an ally of Mr. Fico, Peter Pellegrini, won a vote to become Slovakia’s president. The position is largely ceremonial, but analysts said the victory strengthened the grip of political forces friendly to Russia in Central Europe, given that Mr. Pellegrini opposed providing military and financial aid to Ukraine.

Mr. Fico was born on Sept. 15, 1964, into a working-class family in the city of Topolcany in the Nitra Region of what is now Slovakia. He graduated in 1986 from Comenius University Bratislava, where he received a law degree, according to the Slovak government’s website . He earned a doctorate at the Institute of State and Law at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, and served in the military from 1986 to 1987.

Mr. Fico studied in the United States, Britain, Finland, Belgium and France, specializing in human rights and criminal law, according to the government website. He married Svetlana Ficova, a lawyer and professor, and they have a son. News reports in Slovakia say the couple is separated.

An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of Italy’s leader. She is Giorgia Meloni, not Georgia.

How we handle corrections

Slovakia’s president, Zuzana Caputova, said at a news conference in Bratislava that the police had arrested the suspected perpetrator at the scene. She again expressed her shock over the attack, calling it an “attack on democracy.”

Peter Pellegrini, who will soon assume the Slovak presidency, echoed that sentiment. “An assassination attempt on one of the highest constitutional officials is an unprecedented threat to Slovak democracy,” he wrote on social media. “If we express different political opinions with guns in the squares, and not in polling stations, we endanger everything we have built together in 31 years of Slovak sovereignty.”

Slovakia’s interior minister, Matus Sutaj Estok, said that the assassination attempt would be investigated “as quickly as possible.” “Slovakia is experiencing the worst day of its democracy,” he wrote on Facebook . “For the first time in the 31 years of our democratic sovereign republic, it happened that someone decided to express a political opinion not in an election, but with a gun on the street.”

Richard Pérez-Peña

Fico was airlifted to the F.D. Roosevelt Hospital in Banska Bystrica, a city near Handlova, according to Slovak officials.

He was taken there because it would have taken too long to get to the capital, Bratislava, according to his official Facebook pag e.

Matina Stevis-Gridneff

World leaders express shock at an assassination attempt against Robert Fico, Slovakia’s prime minister.

Leaders from the European Union and beyond expressed shock at the assassination attempt against Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, on Wednesday, even as the details of the shooting incident outside Bratislava, the capital, remained unclear.

Mr. Fico remains in the hospital in “life-threatening condition,” according to his staff.

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, called the attack “vile” on social media . “Such acts of violence have no place in our society and undermine democracy, our most precious common good,” she added.

Charles Michel of the European Council, the other major European Union institution, expressed shock on social media and wrote, “Nothing can ever justify violence or such attacks.”

Mr. Fico has had a testy relationship with European Union partners, expressing pro-Russian views and at times siding with Hungary, the bloc’s closest Russian ally. Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary and Mr. Fico’s personal ally, said he was “deeply shocked by the heinous attack against my friend, Prime Minister Robert Fico.”

But such conflicts were put firmly aside as European leaders grappled with the attack against Mr. Fico, which has come just weeks before a major European Union-wide election is to be held between June 6 and 9.

President Emmanuel Macron of France said that he was “shocked” by the shooting. “I strongly condemn this attack,” he wrote on X . “My thoughts and solidarity are with him, his family and the Slovak people.”

António Guterres, the U. N. secretary general, strongly condemned the “shocking attack” against Mr. Fico, according to a statement from his spokesperson’s office, adding that his thoughts were with the prime minister and his loved ones.

Violent attacks, especially shootings, against elected officials have been extremely rare in recent European history.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine also took to social media to voice shock at the assassination attempt against Mr. Fico. While Slovakia’s support for Ukraine has waned recently, it was the first country to deliver fighter jets there when its war began.

“We strongly condemn this act of violence against our neighboring partner state’s head of government,” wrote Mr. Zelensky. “Every effort should be made to ensure that violence does not become the norm in any country, form, or sphere,” he said.

Images from the scene published by the Reuters news agency showed what appeared to be members of Fico’s security detail running around a black sedan. Other photographs and video showed a person handcuffed on the ground at the scene.

Attacks against elected officials are virtually unheard of in recent European Union history, contributing to the deep shock over the attempt on Robert Fico’s life.