US President George W. Bush's approval rating is 48 percent, the lowest in three years, and 50 percent don't want him to be re-elected in November, a Newsweek poll said.
The nationwide poll of 1,004 adults taken Feb. 5-6 showed that 45 percent said they would like to see Bush re-elected. Bush's job approval was 49 percent in last week's poll, and 50 percent the week before.
This week's rating was the lowest since February 2001, a month after Bush took office. The survey has a 3 percentage-point error margin.
Democratic front-runner John Kerry, a Massachusetts senator, would win the election over Bush if the contest were held today, with 50 percent of voters supporting Kerry, the poll found. About 45 percent said they would vote for Bush.
Bush would beat Kerry's Democratic rivals, the survey found.
The poll showed Bush leads North Carolina Senator John Edwards by 49 percent to 44 percent, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean by 50 percent to 44 percent and retired General Wesley Clark by 51 percent to 43 percent.
Another survey showed Bush's decline in public opinion started after David Kay, who quit last month as leader of the search for chemical and biological weapons in Iraq, said he didn't believe the Middle Eastern country had any of the banned weapons, the Associated Press reported.
The National Annenberg Election Survey found Bush's approval rating fell 10 points from Jan. 25-31, to 54 percent from 64 percent. The tracking poll of 1,032 adults takes a nightly sample and rolls together two or three nights' findings at a time. It has a 3 percentage-point error margin.
Public support for Bush declined 9 percentage points over the last month, according to an AP-Ipsos poll of US adults released yesterday.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
CONFIDENCE BOOSTER: ’After parkour ... you dare to do a lot of things that you think only young people can do,’ a 67-year-old parkour enthusiast said In a corner of suburban Singapore, Betty Boon vaults a guardrail, crawls underneath a slide, executes forward shoulder rolls and scales a steep slope, finishing the course to applause. “Good job,” the 69-year-old’s coach cheers. This is “geriatric parkour,” where about 20 retirees learned to tackle a series of relatively demanding exercises, building their agility and enjoying a sense of camaraderie. Boon, an upbeat grandmother, said learning parkour has aided her confidence and independence as she ages. “When you’re weak, you will be dependent on someone,” she said after sweating it out with her parkour classmates in suburban Toa Payoh,
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
RSS