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. \nThe 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. \nThis week's rating was the lowest since February 2001, a month after Bush took office. The survey has a 3 percentage-point error margin. \nDemocratic 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. \nBush would beat Kerry's Democratic rivals, the survey found. \nThe 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. \nAnother 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. \nThe 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. \nPublic support for Bush declined 9 percentage points over the last month, according to an AP-Ipsos poll of US adults released yesterday.
The images of a besuited Ferdinand Marcos Jr, clad in a top hat and leaning nonchalantly on a Rolls-Royce, dating from his time in Britain in the 1970s, are as you might expect from the playboy scion of a kleptocratic dictator. Yet as the Marcos family returns to power in the Philippines after a landslide presidential victory by Marcos Jr, he is facing calls to stop misrepresenting the circumstances of his studies at the University of Oxford. The university has confirmed that he did not complete his degree in philosophy, politics and economics after enrolling in 1975. “According to our records, he did
A glimpse of a possible Picasso in the home of Imelda Marcos filmed during a visit by her son after his presidential election win has set off a flurry of speculation in the Philippines, where the family that once plundered billions is set to return to power. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, the son and namesake of the late dictator, won a landslide victory in Monday’s presidential election, an outcome that has appalled those who survived his father’s regime. Images released by the family showed Marcos Jr visiting the home of his mother, who had displayed Picasso’s Femme Couche VI (Reclining Woman VI),
HATE CRIME: Officials were investigating a detailed ‘manifesto’ posted online before the livestreamed shooting, in which the suspect outlined his reasoning and plans A heavily armed 18-year-old white man on Saturday shot 10 people dead at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store in a “racially motivated” attack that he livestreamed on camera, authorities said. The gunman, who was wearing body armor and a helmet, was arrested after the massacre, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told a news conference. Gramaglia put the toll at 10 dead and three wounded. Eleven of the victims were African Americans. The gunman shot four people in the parking lot of the Tops supermarket, three of them fatally, then went inside and continued firing, Gramaglia said. Among those killed inside the store was
CALIBRATED RESPONSE: The city-state has learned from its past experiences of dealing with COVID-19 variants to assess the situation and the risks, the transport minister said Singapore will strive to keep its borders open and stay connected to the rest of world even if a new variant of COVID-19 emerges, Singaporean Minister for Transport S. Iswaran said on Wednesday. The city-state has learned from its past experiences of dealing with COVID-19 variants, Iswaran said in an interview with Bloomberg News. When the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 hit, Singapore did not backtrack on its reopening plans, but rather decided to wait and see how things panned out, he said, adding that the response was different versus the Delta outbreak. “We’ve all learned to adapt,” Iswaran said on the sidelines