Biden urges America to 'lower temperature' after Trump shooting

US President Joe Biden has condemned the assassination attempt on his predecessor Donald Trump in a primetime address from the White House, telling Americans that US politics must never be a "killing field".

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, was wounded in the ear after a gunman opened fire at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. One person was killed and two more were critically injured in the attack.

In the Oval Office address - just the third of his presidency - Mr Biden urged Americans to "take a step back" and warned that "political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated". "No matter how strong our convictions, we must never descend into violence," Mr Biden said in remarks that lasted just under seven minutes.

His short, but forceful, address largely went off without a hitch, amid ongoing scrutiny following a number of high-profile verbal slips.